IS UNCERTAINTY A SOUND FOUNDATION FOR RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE? ...............................................

DOES THE BALANCE BETWEEN SAVED AND LOST ................................................................................. 15

DEPEND ON OUR OBEDIENCE TO CHRIST’S GREAT COMMISSION? ...................................................... 15

SHOULD PETER GET A NEW PHILOSOPHICAL ADVISOR?....................................................................... 21

"NO OTHER NAME": ............................................................................................................................ 26

A MIDDLE KNOWLEDGE PERSPECTIVE.................................................................................................. 26

ON THE EXCLUSIVITY OF SALVATION THROUGH CHRIST ...................................................................... 26

SHOULD PETER GO TO THE MISSION FIELD? ........................................................................................ 39

MIDDLE KNOWLEDGE AND CHRISTIAN EXCLUSIVISM .......................................................................... 43

POLITICALLY INCORRECT SALVATION ................................................................................................... 55

TALBOTT'S UNIVERSALISM ................................................................................................................... 69

TALBOTT'S UNIVERSALISM ONCE MORE .............................................................................................. 80

Is Uncertainty A Sound Foundation For Religious Tolerance?

In Religious Tolerance through Humility, pp. 13-27. Ed. James Kraft and David Basinger.
Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2008. Used by permission. Details of the definitive version are
available at
http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754661023

Introduction

There is abroad in the Christian philosophical community a view, rarely articulated and
defended, but nonetheless widespread, that the proper foundation for religious tolerance is to
be found in one's uncertainty that one's own particular religious worldview is true. The rough
idea seems to be that the more uncertain one is about the truth of one's own religious views,
the less apt one will be to persecute persons who disagree with those views—after all, for all
one knows, those persons may well be correct. Insofar as religious diversity serves to
undermine one's confidence that one's religious beliefs are true, it is to be welcomed as
abetting religious tolerance.

This rough and ready view is subject to formidable objections. In the first place, the view does
not provide a moral foundation for religious tolerance, for why we ought to be religiously
tolerant. It is at best a theory about human psychology: it predicts that persons who are
uncertain about their religious views are less apt to persecute people holding to different
views. Even if this empirical prediction were to prove true, however, it fails to answer our
deepest need, to be able to say that it is wrong to use violence and coercion in the name of
religion. We want to be able to say that people ought not to be intolerant, not merely to
predict that they will, in fact, be tolerant under such-and-such circumstances.

In the absence of any moral foundation for religious tolerance, the merely psychological
approach is unstable and even dangerous. It fails to reckon with the fact that some religions,
such as Christianity or Bahai'ism, have as inherent components of their belief systems an ethic
of religious tolerance, of love of one's enemy and passivity in the face of religious persecution.
With regard to such religions, it is certainty rather than uncertainty of one's religious view
which ought to be cultivated for the sake of religious tolerance. By undermining the
confidence of the adherents of such religions in the truth of their respective views, the
psychological approach to religious tolerance actually erodes such persons' moral grounds for
being religiously tolerant and so increases the odds of intolerant behavior.

On the other hand, in the case of religions, such as Islam, which endorse violence and
persecution in the propagation of the faith, the psychological approach leads to the conclusion
that should such persons become certain of their religious beliefs, then any grounds for being
religiously tolerant have been removed. Since psychological certainty does not imply true
belief, it does not require that persons know their religious beliefs to be true, but only that
they confidently believe them to be true. Religious tolerance is thus made to balance
precariously on 1.2 billion Muslims' remaining in a state of epistemic equilibrium with respect
to their religion. Should they become relatively certain that Islam is true, the constraints of
intolerance have to that degree evaporated and the fury of jihad may be unleashed upon
those nations not yet brought into the dar al-Islam (house of submission). Founding religious
tolerance upon uncertainty is frighteningly dangerous.
Finally, the psychological approach seems naive with respect to the sources of religious
persecution and violence. I suspect that intolerance is born, not so much out of certainty of the
truth of one's views, as out of hatred for those who are different. This motive drives cases of
intolerance which are not specifically religious, as in tribal clashes between Hutus and Tutsis in
Christian Rwanda. When it comes to conflicts which are religiously colored, such as those
between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, between Hindus and Muslims in India,
or between Buddhists and Hindus in Sri Lanka, the conflict seems not so much intellectual as
socio-cultural.1 Different communities are in friction, and the outsider is resented and
despised. In these cases, religion helps to provide some of the social identity of the competing
subcultures. It is this social function of religion more than, or at least as much as, certainty of
its objective truth which is crucial in cases of conflicting communities of different religions. But
if it is hatred of the other that primarily fuels such violence, then the diminution of one's
certainty that one's religion is true may not translate into reduced violence: the outsider is still
different, not one of us, and therefore to be despised.

Again, the attendant suggestion that religious diversity serves to diminish one's certainty
about one's own religious views is surely implausible, if not falsified, in light of the religious
experience of mankind. Christianity, for example, was introduced into a broader Hellenistic
culture that was overwhelmingly pagan. Whole cities, such as Athens, were dedicated to
various gods or goddesses, and nations would go to war on the basis of the manic utterances
of the Oracle at Delphi. It is hard for us today to imagine the lonely figure of the apostle Paul
arriving at the port of Corinth or standing in the shadow of the great temple to Athena on the
acropolis of Athens, boldly proclaiming that God had appointed the man Jesus of Nazareth to
judge the world and that the time to repent had at last arrived. Paul risked his life to bring the
Gospel of salvation to a pagan culture predominantly hostile or at best indifferent to the
message he preached. A study of his extant letters reveals that Paul had an almost wholly
negative opinion of the pagan religions around him. They were not sources of salvation or
means of access to God for their adherents (Rom. 1.18-25; Gal. 4.8; Eph. 2.11-12; 4.17-18; I
Thess. 1.9; 4.5); on the contrary, they were manifestations of spiritual darkness and even
demonic (I Cor. 10.20; Eph. 6.12). Despite seemingly impossible odds and horrible persecution,
the Christian churches grew and multiplied until within three centuries Christianity had
officially supplanted the religions of Greece and Rome. The religious diversity of the Roman
Empire had no apparent effect upon the confidence of early Christians that their religious
beliefs were true.

Of course, similar stories could be told about persecuted religious minorities elsewhere, such
as European Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, and even Falun Gong in China. The suggestion that
religious certainty is diminished by increased contact with and familiarity with other religions
does not seem remotely true. For all of these reasons, the rough attempt to found religious
tolerance upon uncertainty is untenable and even dangerous.

Quinn's Combinatorial View

Philip Quinn is one of those few thinkers who have attempted to provide a more nuanced
version of this approach.2 For Quinn it is the uncertainty of the truth of one's own religious
views, which is (or should be) fostered by religious diversity, combined with the relative
certainty of various moral principles, such as that it is wrong to try to coerce belief by violence,
that supplies the foundation for religious tolerance. But does his view avoid the problems and
pitfalls of the merely psychological approach?
Consider Quinn's point of departure, an argument by Pierre Bayle for religious toleration,
stemming, ironically, not from Bayle's sceptical period but from his earlier Reformed period.
Bayle is arguing that the Catholic appeal to the words "Compel them to come in" found in
Jesus' parable of the great banquet (Lk. 14.16-24) to justify coerced conversions is mistaken.
Bayle asserts, "by the purest and most distinct ideas of reason, we know there is a being
sovereignly perfect who governs all things, who ought to be adored by mankind, who approves
certain actions and rewards them, and who disapproves and punishes others."3 Bayle claims
that it is also evident that our chief worship which we owe to God consists of inner acts of the
mind. But since coercive actions taken against the body cannot move the mind to perform
those acts of the will constitutive of the essence of religion, compulsion is a mistaken way of
establishing a religion.

Quinn esteems Bayle's argument "a mess."4 In the first place, none of the premises of the
known arguments of natural theology has "an epistemic status as high as the law of
noncontradiction or other things that are supposed to be known by the natural light."5
Similarly, Quinn denies that it can be known by the natural light of reason that it is always
wrong to use compulsion to try to produce the acts of the mind essential to religion. Even
apart from the knotty problem of special divine commands abrogating what would otherwise
be one's moral duty, it will be only egregious acts of religious compulsion that are self-
evidently immoral; in other cases—for instance, mandatory religious education in public
schools of a nation having an established church, like the Church of England—compulsion will
not be evidently immoral.6 Finally, Quinn indicts Bayle's argument for failing to supply any
moral foundation for religious tolerance. The argument at best shows that religious
compulsion is ineffectual and therefore futile.

Quinn proposes to remedy these defects by introducing a number of revisions to Bayle's

argument. He remedies the want of a moral sanction against intolerance by substituting for
Bayle's claim that religious compulsion is ineffectual the claim that it is morally wrong to use
compulsion to produce the inner acts that are essential to religion. This crucial revision renders
Quinn's theoretical foundation for religious tolerance superior to the merely psychological
approach.

Quinn then suggests that we remedy the epistemic defects of Bayle's argument by relaxing the
reliance on the natural light:

The best strategy for the defender of toleration is to conduct the argument entirely in
epistemic terms and not to make any dubious appeals to the Cartesian natural light. The
epistemic credentials of two conflicting claims are to be assessed and then compared. One is a
moral principle to the effect that intolerant behavior of a certain kind is wrong; the other is a
conflicting religious claim about that intolerant behavior. The applicable epistemic principle is
that, whenever two conflicting claims differ in epistemic status, the claim with the lower
epistemic status is to be rejected.7

One will thus assess instances of religious intolerance on a case by case basis.

This seems a very sensible approach. Bayle could argue that we have good, if not compelling,
grounds for thinking that a supreme being such as he describes exists and that we have good
grounds as well for thinking that God disapproves of certain cases of religious compulsion and
therefore they are wrong. Therefore, we ought to refrain from such intolerant behavior.

But Quinn is not sympathetic to such an approach. One of his concerns is that this more
modest Baylean approach might not rule out cases of more subtle religious compulsion, such
as mandatory religious instruction in the doctrine of the state church. Quinn therefore
welcomes the reduction in the epistemic status of religious claims justifying intolerance which
is wrought by religious diversity. Religious diversity undermines the epistemic status of such
claims by lowering the epistemic credentials of the whole religious worldview which
undergirds them. Thus, with regard to the Catholic tradition of appealing to Lk. 14.23 to justify
religious compulsion, Quinn asserts, "considerations of religious diversity can play a valuable
role in defeating the epistemic authority of this tradition. They do so indirectly by diminishing
the epistemic rationality of the whole Christian package or worldview of which the tradition is
a part."8 Quinn thus advocates undercutting the specific religious claim justifying intolerance
with a breathtakingly wide swath. One would have thought it easier and more effective to
expose the faulty exegesis of Jesus' parable represented by this tradition. Instead, Quinn,
prefers to call into question the epistemic credentials of an entire worldview.

This procedure will appear to be a clear case of epistemic overkill unless one realizes that
Quinn thinks that the comparative epistemic credentials of religious worldviews are already
roughly on a par. Quinn frequently adverts to William Alston's envisioned scenario of
adherents of two incompatible religions each claiming that his religion is true on the sole basis
of the reliability of his religious doxastic practice. The two believers have no other justification
for their worldviews than their respective doxastic practices and the internal support that they
provide, such as, for example, personal, religious experience. Alston is constrained to show
that even in such an epistemic standoff, each person remains rational in continuing to adhere
to his own doxastic practice and, hence, to his own religion.

Quinn agrees with this conclusion, though he thinks that it would also be rational for each
adherent to revise his religious beliefs in such a way as to construe them as only phenomenally
true, that is to say, as beliefs about how things appear rather than how they really are.9 The
main lesson, however, that Quinn takes from the scenario described by Alston is that religious
diversity substantially decreases the epistemic justification for engaging in any religious
doxastic practice. Quinn also takes it that religious diversity has a negative epistemic impact
not only on the beliefs that issue from one's religious doxastic practice but also upon one's
total religious belief system supported by that practice.

In cases of less egregious religious intolerance, cases in which the moral principle proscribing
religious compulsion has a low epistemic status, the awareness of religious diversity can drive
the epistemic status of the religious belief even lower, so that it should be rejected. Quinn
writes,

The claim that God has commanded mandatory education in orthodoxy might, it seems, derive
a good deal of justification from sources recognized by members of the established church . . .
. So if the challenge of religious diversity were not taken into consideration, the claim that God
commands mandatory education in orthodoxy might derive enough justification from various
sources to put it above the threshold for rational acceptability for members of the established
church. But the factoring in of religious diversity may be enough to lower the claim's
justification below that threshold, thereby rendering it rationally unacceptable even for
members of the church who are sufficiently aware of such diversity.10

By undermining the epistemic credentials of one's particular religious doxastic practice, then,
the awareness of religious diversity also undermines the epistemic status of the religious
worldview based on that practice and thereby the particular religious belief comprised by that
worldview which is thought to justify a case of religious intolerance.
Assessment of Quinn's View

Are All Religions on an Epistemic Par?

What can be said by way of assessment of Quinn's proposal? One of the immediate problems
with Quinn's roundabout justification of religious tolerance via worldview uncertainty is that,
as James Kraft observes,11 what Alston takes to be a worst case scenario Quinn thinks to be
typical. I do not think that adherents of the various world religions do find themselves in the
sort of epistemic standoff Alston describes. On the one hand, it is possible that a religious
doxastic practice is self-authenticating in the sense that it yields warranted, true beliefs and is
an intrinsic defeater of putative defeaters brought against it; on the other hand, there are
sources of justification and defeat for important religious claims independent of doxastic
practices in the form of argument and evidence. Quinn's justification of religious tolerance
depends crucially upon a radical scepticism which places all major religions roughly on an
epistemic par.

This is not the place to digress at length into such matters. Nor is it necessary, since Quinn's
sceptical contentions have been adequately answered elsewhere, and he offers almost
nothing in his most recent work to advance the argument.

Consider, first, the claim, defended by Reformed epistemologists like Alvin Plantinga, that the
inner witness of the Holy Spirit to the central truths of the Gospel may so warrant those beliefs
that they become intrinsic defeater-defeaters. Quinn had objected to Plantinga's earlier claim
that belief in God may be properly basic for an intellectually sophisticated adult on the basis of
the defeaters posed by the problem of evil and by projective psychology. Plantinga not only
showed convincingly, I think, that there are extrinsic defeaters for these alleged defeaters, but
he also argued that the warrant supplied by the sensus divinitatis or, better, by the Holy
Spirit's witness may so exceed the warrant of these alleged defeaters that the truths attested
by the Spirit intrinsically defeat the defeaters Quinn mentions.

In his most recent reflections on their debate, Quinn backs away from claiming that non-moral
evil highly confirms God's non-existence to the weaker claim that such evil merely confirms
God's non-existence and so "has some justificatory force" in support of atheism. 12 This claim
is so weak that it does not come even remotely near to generating a successful defeater of
theism.13 As for projectionist psychology, although Quinn bristles at Plantinga's easy dismissal
of such theories, Plantinga seems entirely correct in saying that as arguments for God's non-
existence they are textbook examples of the genetic fallacy. Thus, the issue is not, as Quinn
supposes, their "success in explaining religious beliefs of some sorts," but rather whether "the
success of projective explanations . . . is evidence against the existence of God"14—an
inference which depends crucially upon a facile appeal to Ockham's Razor.15 Plantinga later
came to believe that projective theories should not be construed as arguments for God's non-
existence but rather as arguments that one's cognitive faculties are not functioning properly in
forming the belief that God exists.16 As such, they are, indeed, an important potential
defeater of the claim that belief in God is warranted in a basic way. Plantinga argues, however,
that such projectionist defeaters already assume the non-existence of God and offer no
independent reason for thinking that our cognitive faculties are malfunctioning in forming the
belief that God exists. Quinn simply notes Plantinga's response and does not disagree.17

To these two alleged defeaters Quinn now adds the awareness of religious diversity. Quinn
claims that Plantinga shares the view that religious diversity is a source of potential defeaters
for properly basic theistic belief for those who are sufficiently aware of it.18 Elsewhere he
observes that Plantinga acknowledges that awareness of religious diversity can have a negative
epistemic impact on religious beliefs by reducing the believer's confidence in the truth of those
beliefs.19 Quinn's claim here is, however, misleading. Plantinga does not think that for a purely
rational individual religious diversity serves to undercut or rebut religious beliefs attested by
the witness of the Holy Spirit. But a believer might react to religious diversity arationally —for
example, it might have an emotional impact upon him—in such a way that his confidence in
his own religious beliefs is diminished. Since warrant depends on the strength of belief, his
warrant is accordingly reduced. But this loss of confidence is wholly unnecessary; there is
nothing about the presence of religious diversity which should lead him rationally to doubt the
truth of beliefs warranted by the Spirit's witness. Plantinga's defense of his position is long and
involved; Quinn therefore begs off a discussion of it and so leaves it an "open question"
whether Plantinga's response is adequate20—which is just to say that Quinn has failed to
show that an awareness of religious diversity does substantially reduce the epistemic status of
religious belief.

Quinn adds that even if these three defeaters are individually insufficient to defeat religious
belief, they might form a cumulative case that would successfully defeat it. But if, as Plantinga
argues, both the problem of evil and psychological projective theories actually presuppose
atheism, then it is hard to see how they can have cumulative force as defeaters; nor would the
addition of religious diversity add any rational force to the case. Moreover, Quinn
acknowledges that some basic theistic beliefs are or can be intrinsic defeater-defeaters,21 and
he says nothing against the witness of the Holy Spirit's so warranting beliefs that they become
intrinsic defeaters of their putative defeaters, including any cumulative defeater. We must not
be misled by Quinn's tendency to restrict such intrinsic defeater-defeaters to beliefs grounded
in "burning bush" experiences like Moses'.22 Given Plantinga's externalism, the Spirit's
powerful witness to the central truths of the Gospel may manifest itself experientially as
simply a quiet assurance of salvation. Finally, the mere possibility of such a cumulative case is
not sufficient for Quinn's purposes. He must show that there actually exists some sort of
powerful cumulative case if he is to sustain his assertion that the epistemic status of religious
beliefs has in fact been substantially diminished by such defeaters. In short, Quinn has said
very little to justify his sweeping claim that no religious doxastic practice is self-authenticating
or that all such practices are epistemically equivalent.

When it comes to sources of justification and defeat independent of one's doxastic practice,
Quinn has even less to say. With respect to natural theology, he says, "The conclusions of the
metaphysical arguments of natural theology conflict with the conclusions of impressive
metaphysical arguments in nontheistic religious traditions;"23 specifically, "nontheistic
religions such as Theravada Buddhism and Advaita Hinduism seem to be no less well-
supported than theistic religions by . . . philosophical arguments."24

Really? Consider first the arguments of natural theology. Are there serious problems with
those arguments? With respect to Plantinga's version of the ontological argument, Quinn's
modal scepticism leads him to doubt that it is rationally permissible to accept its key premiss
that maximal greatness is possibly exemplified.25 But Quinn does not interact with Plantinga's
defense of the rational permissibility of that premiss, nor does he take cognizance of more
recent a posteriori defenses of the truth of that premiss.26 With respect to the cosmological
argument, Quinn opines that the key premiss of the Leibnizian version of the argument—that
every existing thing has a reason for its existence either in the necessity of its own nature or in
the causal efficacy of some other beings—is at best rationally permissible.27 But, again, he
does not seek to justify this opinion, apart from commenting that reasonable people may not
accept the premiss, which is just to say the same thing in different words. What we really want
to know is if there are better reasons to accept that premiss than to reject it, and that Quinn
does not discuss. I should say that the reasons in its favor outweigh those (if any) against.28
Quinn says nothing about other versions of the cosmological argument.29 When it comes to
the teleological argument, Quinn's remarks are restricted to expressing scepticism about the
heavy use Richard Swinburne makes of the criterion of simplicity in his inductive argument for
God's existence and about his probability estimates concerning evil;30 but these are
idiosyncratic to Swinburne and fail to reflect on the cogency of design arguments in general.31
With respect to axiological arguments, I should say that Quinn's own work on divine command
meta-ethics has been very helpful in formulating powerful moral arguments for God's
existence.32 These are only a few of the arguments of natural theology; Alvin Plantinga has
articulated more than two dozen which he regards as cogent.33 Moreover, Quinn agrees that
in a cumulative case argument the final force of the case may exceed mere rational
permissibility even though the conclusions of its constituent parts do not. Quinn gives no
reason to think that this does not happen in the case of theism.

So are the arguments of natural theology counterbalanced by a comparable case for non-
theistic religions? What are these metaphysically impressive arguments alluded to by Quinn
for Theravada Buddhism and Advaita Vendanta Hinduism? Quinn does not say. Since
Theravada Buddhism simply leaves God out of account, being agnostic in this regard, it is not
at all clear what positive arguments Quinn can have in mind. In fact, conjoining theism to
Theravada Buddhism would actually fill an explanatory gap in the latter, since nothing exists in
the system to apportion one's karmic desserts to behavior in successive cycles of rebirth. And
as for Advaita Vendanta Hinduism, does Quinn think that there really are impressive
metaphysical arguments supporting Sankara's absolute monism and consequent phenomenal
illusionism? Even his fellow Vedantists Ramanuja and Madhva did not think so. In fact,
Sankara's system is principally an explication of his interpretation of the Upanishads, not the
conclusion of powerful metaphysical arguments, nor could it be, given his belief in the
unreliability of human reason. There certainly are rich philosophical traditions in Hindu and
Buddhist religion, but that is not to say that there are impressive philosophical arguments for
the truth of these non-theistic religions, much less arguments equal in force to those that can
be marshaled on behalf of theism.

Moreover, what about defeaters of these competing worldviews? We have already seen that
Quinn failed to advance the argument in his debate with Plantinga over the extent to which
the problem of evil and projective psychological theories defeat theism, and he declined to
engage Plantinga's epistemological model with respect to religious diversity. Only the first of
the trio is, in any case, a potential defeater of theism per se, and here there are extrinsic
defeater-defeaters available to the theist. So Quinn has not shown that theism supported by
natural theology faces significant defeaters.

So what about defeaters confronting non-theistic religions, specifically those Quinn names?
Quinn's silence on this matter constitutes a significant lacuna in his appraisal of the
comparative epistemic credentials of theistic versus non-theistic religions. Interestingly, the
non-theistic religions mentioned by Quinn confront some of the same defeaters as theism,
such as the problem of evil and the problem of religious diversity, and their responses thereto
need to be assessed. With respect to the problem of evil, for example, Theravada Buddhism
attempts to explain non-moral evil by means of reincarnation and accumulated karma, which
simply pushes the problem back a notch rather than solves it.34 Advaita Vendanta Hinduism is
reduced to regarding the distinction between good and evil as merely illusory. True, these
religions do not face the projective psychological defeater, but ironically that very fact tends to
undercut such projective theories as defeaters of theism, since these religions constitute
striking counter-examples to the claim that belief in God is a neurotic father-figure projection
endemic to mankind. Quinn needs to show that these religions' responses to the defeaters he
lodges against theism are as plausible as the responses offered by theism.
Furthermore, these religions face additional serious and, in my mind, sometimes decisive
defeaters. Theravada Buddhism's most interesting metaphysical doctrine is its denial of an
enduring, substantial self. But this doctrine is incompatible with its doctrine of karma, that
what one suffers in this life is recompense for one's behavior in previous incarnations. It makes
no sense to regulate one's life in accordance with Buddhist ethical principles so as to avoid
future suffering, since there is no persisting person and so no diachronic personal identity.
Advaita Vendanta Hinduism faces utterly crushing defeaters, since its monism and illusionism
fly in the face of all our experience of the internal and external worlds and are, moreover, self-
defeating, since they undermine their own epistemic credentials, since everything we "know"
belongs to the realm of illusion. Advaita Vendanta Hinduism thus has vastly lower epistemic
status than even Theravada Buddhism, not to speak of theism. Because Quinn does not even
consider the various defeaters confronting these religions, he has not justified his claim that all
religions are on an epistemic par.

In addition to natural theology, Quinn recognizes, "Christianity also purports to derive support
from other sources such as . . . divine action in history."35 But, he says, "Christian claims about
divine action in history compete with the claims of other religions about which historical
events have decisive religious significance."36 Exactly; and for that reason an examination of
the historicity of those events and the credibility of the documents attesting to them can help
to determine which religion has the better claim to truth. Consider in this regard the contrast
between Islam and Christianity with regard to Jesus of Nazareth. Over the last two centuries
the documents of the New Testament have been subjected to an unparalleled examination on
the part of critical, historical scholarship, and as a result of such scrutiny the consensus today is
that the gospels belong to the genre of ancient biography and are largely reliable sources for
the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. By contrast, despite its many passages concerning
Jesus, no historian turns to the Qur'an as a source of historical information for Jesus. The
reason is easy to understand: in marked contrast to the documents of the New Testament,
which were written within the first generation after the events they record, the Qur'an was
written six hundred years after Jesus' death by a person (or persons) having no independent
source of information for Jesus. In fact, the Qur'an incorporates later legendary stories about
Jesus that first appear in the apocryphal gospels, such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
Significantly, the Qur'an rejects facts concerning Jesus' fate which are accepted by most New
Testament historians such as (i) Jesus' burial in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea, (ii) his tomb's
being found empty by several of his female followers, (iii) his disciples' having multiple
experiences of appearances of Jesus alive after his death, and (iv) his disciples' suddenly and
sincerely coming to believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead. The reason for the
Qur'an's rejection of these facts has nothing to do with the reasons proffered by
contemporary, sceptical scholars for denying these events. Rather the Qur'an rejects them for
the remarkable reason that it denies that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified (IV. 157). This denial
is a thorn in the eye of historical scholarship, since the crucifixion is, in the words of Robert
Funk, "the one indisputable fact" we have about Jesus.37 In light of these facts, the historian
cannot take seriously the Qur'anic testimony to the life of Jesus.

The question that remains is whether Islam can be freed from its commitment to the
infallibility of the Qur'an so as not to be defeated by these historical errors.. Given the
dictation theory of inspiration behind the Qur'an and its virtual divinization as the eternal, pre-
existent Word of God (strikingly analogous to the divine Word of John 1.1), one wonders
whether Islam could survive such a mutilation any more than Christianity could survive the loss
of the historical resurrection of Jesus. In any case, anyone who wants to maintain that the New
Testament and the Qur'an have comparable historical credentials has his work cut out for him.
It is plainly false that all religions make comparably credible claims about divine actions in
history.

The point of this cursory review of sources of justification independent of religious doxastic
practice is simply to remind us that Quinn has not shown that, even if competing doxastic
practices were on an epistemic par, none of the world's religions enjoys higher epistemic
credentials than any of its rivals. Add to this the fact that Quinn has, moreover, not even
shown that all major religious doxastic practices are epistemically equal, and it becomes clear
that Quinn's formula for religious tolerance is based upon an important and yet to be justified
assumption.

Do All Religions Have a Lower Epistemic Status than Moral Principles?

But let us suppose that we can succeed in reducing representatives of the various world
religions to a state of epistemic parity concerning their respective faiths. Why should they be
religiously tolerant of one another? Quinn's view requires not merely that the religions be on
an epistemic par but that they be on an epistemic level lower than the moral principles with
which some of them may come into conflict. When one reflects on some of the situations of
religious intolerance that Quinn envisions—such as the Amish's excluding from their
community people who do not adopt their lifestyle—, the epistemic credentials of the various
world religions must be diminished to a very low level, indeed. Let us suppose, then, that this
task can be accomplished. Quinn assumes that the epistemic status of the relevant moral
principles is sufficiently independent of one's religious beliefs that they do not suffer an
attendant and proportional diminution. Here Quinn's strategy backs into the same paradox as
the rough and ready view: by undermining the epistemic credentials of religions which enjoin
religious tolerance, Quinn actually lowers the epistemic status of the moral principles for
adherents of those religions. A person who, like Quinn himself, finds it difficult to make sense
of moral obligation and prohibition apart from divine will or commands will find himself led to
doubt the moral principles he apprehends insofar as the epistemic status of his belief in God is
diminished. If the epistemic status of his belief in the necessity of God as a basis for moral duty
becomes greater than his belief in the objectivity of moral duties due to the diminution
suffered by the latter as a result of the reduction in the epistemic credentials of theism, then
such a person will no longer have any reason to be tolerant. Quinn's strategy could have the
perverse result of turning Christians into Nietzscheans.

In fact, Quinn's strategy may backfire for any religious believer who has a strong belief in
divine command morality, regardless of whether his religion enjoins tolerance or not. For
example, if a Muslim, as a result of Islam's diminution in epistemic status, comes to be
uncertain that theism is true, as he must if Islam is to be on a par with the non-theistic
religions, then it is likely that any moral principles he entertains will likewise suffer diminution,
in which case he may become an amoralist. Thus his last state may be worse than his first.

Let us grant, however, that we do have a grasp of moral requirements and prohibitions that is
largely independent of our grasp of religious beliefs. Let us suppose that we do discern that
religiously intolerant acts of various sorts are evil and that we have a moral duty to refrain
from them. What Quinn does not seem to appreciate is that in so concluding one has, in effect,
produced a defeater for many of the world's religions. Take Advaita Vendanta Hinduism, for
example. It lies at the heart of this religion that all reality is ultimately one, that the realm of
distinctions, including moral distinctions between good and evil, right and wrong, is illusory. It
follows, therefore, that my perceived duty to be tolerant is illusory; I really have no such duty,
since there is no distinction between right and wrong. At best, then, Vedantists may argue
about which moral illusions we have. We have, for example, the illusion that we ought not to
persecute our Buddhist neighbors, rather than the illusion that we should. We can describe
more or less accurately our moral illusions, but we have no moral duty to act in accord with
those illusions (though we may have the illusion that we do). Insofar as the moral principles
supporting religious tolerance have a higher epistemic status than Advaita Vendanta Hinduism,
then, a Hindu's grasping such principles constitutes for him a defeater of his religious system of
belief. And the same goes for all religions committed to metaphysical monism, such as
Mahayana Buddhism and Taoism. With respect to such religions, Quinn's theory of religious
toleration is incoherent, for acceptance of his claim of the epistemic superiority of various
moral principles on the part of any adherent of such a religion precludes his believing those
very religions.

Moreover, Quinn's strategy for defending religious toleration, while not incoherent with
respect to every non-theistic religion, will be incoherent with respect to any such religion
which denies the objective reality of moral duties, whether it be monistic or not. Marxism,
doubtless the worst source of religious persecution in the twentieth century, is arguably a non-
monistic religion which falls into this category. Quinn's attempt to found religious tolerance
upon the twin pillars of religious uncertainty and moral conviction is therefore unstable and,
for some major religions, incoherent.

Bayle's Argument Re-considered

This conclusion ought to lead us to reconsider Bayle's defense of religious tolerance. Bayle
rightly saw, I think, that the moral duty of religious tolerance depends upon which God is real.
Non-theistic religions arguably lack any basis for objective moral duties and thus for an
obligation to be tolerant. Islam, though theistic, has a morally defective concept of God, whose
goodness is trumped by His power, and whose love for people is arbitrary, partial, and
conditional. As Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) recently boldly affirmed, it is no accident
that Islam endorses violence in the propagation of religion; such an injunction flows from its
concept of God.38 It is therefore vital, as the Pope explained, that we raise the question as to
which is the true God.

This conclusion may seem discouraging for two reasons. First, it seems to imply that persons
outside the Judaeo-Christian tradition have no reason to be tolerant. Now in one sense, that is
not the case. For since Christianity is true and God has commanded us to love even our
enemies and to pray for our persecutors, every person, whether he recognizes it or not, has a
duty to be tolerant. In another sense, however, it is the case that non-Christians will not
generally find in their religions adequate grounds for an objective moral duty of religious
tolerance. In that sense they have no reason to be tolerant. That is why the recent U. S.
government intelligence report "National Strategy for Combating Terrorism" concluded that in
view of their religious beliefs Muslim suicide bombers are "rational actors," however irrational
their actions may appear to us.39 This is admittedly a terrifying conclusion. But Quinn's
proposal also proved incapable of founding a universal injunction to religious tolerance. So
how should we respond to persons in non-Christian religions who practice religious intolerance
consistently with their worldview? It seems to me that on the one hand on a societal level we
have no choice but to oppose them with the rule of law so as to check their intolerant
behavior, and that on the other hand on a personal level those of us who are Christians should
share with such persons the Gospel of Christ and try to persuade them to become Christians,
with the result that they will recognize a sound foundation for religious tolerance.
That leads me to the second discouragement. It seems a daunting task to provide convincing
grounds for persons in all other religions to become Christians. Quinn thought his own
approach superior because "It does not impose on defenders of tolerance the apparently
impossible task of showing that the whole belief system of any world religion falls short of
rational acceptability according to standards to which the adherents of that religion are
committed."40 However that may be, Quinn's proposal does impose on defenders of tolerance
the task of showing that Alston's imagined worst case scenario in fact obtains and that
religious views justifying intolerance have lower epistemic status than competing moral
principles. That will involve leveling all the doxastic practices of the religions of the world and
all of the arguments and evidence adduced for each along with all the defeaters faced by each,
so as to leave us all in a state not merely of religious epistemic parity but also in a state of
parity below our epistemic state with respect to the moral principles of religious tolerance.
Such a task, even if it were coherent, would be at least equally as arduous and daunting as the
task which I envision. The task of providing an adequate Christian apologetic vis à vis the world
religions is best seen as a shared one distributed among the members of the body of Christ.

The foundations of religious tolerance, then, are not to be found in our uncertainty about
religious truth; quite to the contrary. The foundation of religious tolerance is to be found in the
intrinsic value of every human being created in the image of God and therefore endowed with
certain inalienable rights, such as freedom of worship and expression.41

Endnotes

1 This impression was borne out by a recent conversation with an international missions
representative in India. He told me of Hindu converts to Christianity who have chosen to call
themselves "Hindu" and remain within Hindu culture, despite their new Christian beliefs,
about which they are quite open. They were investigated by the RSS, the enforcement wing of
the radical Hindu nationalist party, responsible for so much terrible persecution of Christians in
India. The RSS decided in the end that they did not care what these people believed; what was
crucial is that they retained their Hindu identity, and that was sufficient!

2 See, for example, Philip L. Quinn, "Toward Thinner Theologies: Hick and Alston on Religious
Diversity," International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 38 (1995): 145-64; idem, "Religious
Diversity and Religious Toleration," International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion 50
(2001): 57-80; idem, "Epistemology in Philosophy of Religion," in The Oxford Handbook on
Epistemology, ed. Paul Moser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 513-38; idem, "On
Religious Diversity and Tolerance," Daedalus (Winter 2005), pp. 136-9.

3 Pierre Bayle, Philosophical Commentary, trans. A.G. Tannenbaum (New York: Peter Lang,
1987), p. 35, cited in Quinn, "Religious Diversity and Religious Toleration," p. 67.

4 Quinn, "Religious Diversity and Religious Toleration," p. 68.

5 Ibid.

6 Quinn, "On Religious Diversity," p. 138.

7 Quinn, "Religious Diversity and Religious Toleration," p. 70.

8 Ibid., p. 71.
9 Quinn, "Toward Thinner Theologies," p. 241; idem, "Religious Diversity and Religious
Toleration," p. 63.

10 Quinn, "On Religious Diversity," p. 139.

11 James Kraft, "Philip Quinn's Contribution to the Epistemic Challenge of Religious Diversity,"
preprint.

12 Quinn, "Epistemology," p. 532. Cf. his earlier "The Foundations of Theism Again: A Rejoinder
to Plantinga," in Rational Faith, ed. Linda Zagzebski, Library of Religious Philosophy 10 (Notre
Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), pp. 40-1, where he asserts that even if
God's non-existence cannot be shown to be improbable with respect to non-moral evil in the
world, still such evil highly confirms God's non-existence, a claim which is strikingly weak.

13 I vividly recall a conversation with Keith Yandell in a Madison café in which he complained
that the claim that "Leah the seven-foot Queen of the leprechauns goes about leaving paper
cups on tables" is confirmed by the paper cups before us on the table.

14 Quinn, "Epistemology," p. 533.

15 Not mentioned in his most recent work, Ockham's Razor plays the key role in Quinn's earlier
"Foundations of Theism Again," p. 42. Quinn says that if projective theories are successful,
then God should be regarded as non-existent because He is explanatorily idle. But as Plantinga
has often emphasized, for the theist who takes belief in God as properly basic, God is not
posited as an explanatory hypothesis.

16 Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 152,
194.

17 Quinn, "Epistemology," p. 537.

18 Ibid., p. 534.

19 Quinn, "Religious Diversity and Religious Toleration," pp. 64-5.

20 Ibid., p. 65. Quinn does sometimes suggest that such an appeal to internal sources of
justification is question-begging (Quinn, "On Religious Diversity," p. 137; cf. Quinn, "Religious
Diversity and Religious Toleration," p. 62); but this is just to repeat what Plantinga has styled
the "Son of Great Pumpkin" objection and convincingly answered in Warranted Christian
Belief, pp. 342-53.

21 Quinn, "Foundations of Theism Again," pp. 38-9.

22 Quinn, "Epistemology," p. 535; cf. Quinn, "Foundations of Theism Again," p. 40. The burning
bush illustration was drawn from a satirical crack by Plantinga, which Quinn took to represent
the typical grounding experience behind intrinsic defeaters.

23 Quinn, "Religious Diversity and Religious Toleration," p. 64.

24 Quinn, "Epistemology," p. 534.

25 Ibid., p. 519.
26 See, for example, William Lane Craig, "Natural Theology: Introduction," in Philosophy of
Religion: A Reader and Guide, ed. Wm. L. Craig (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press,
2002), p. 79.

27 Quinn, "Epistemology," p. 520.

28 See Alexander Pruss, The Principle of Sufficient Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, forthcoming); also Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2d ed., ed. D. M. Borchert, s.v. "The
Cosmological Argument," by Wm. L. Craig (New York: Thompson-Gale, 2006).

29 See William Lane Craig, The Kalam Cosmological Argument (London: Macmillan & Co.,
1979); William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith, Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993); William Lane Craig and Paul Copan, Creation out of Nothing:
A Biblical, Philosophical, and Scientific Exploration (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Bookhouse,
2004). But see Philip L. Quinn, critical notice of William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith, Theism,
Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (1996): 733-
6.

30 Quinn, "Epistemology," p. 523.

31 For versions of the design argument, see William Dembski, The Design Revolution (Downers
Grove, Ill.: IVP, 2004): Robin Collins, The Well-Tempered Universe (forthcoming).

32 See Philip L. Quinn, Divine Commands and Moral Requirements (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978);
for application see discussion of an axiological argument in Does God Exist?, ed. Stan W.
Wallace (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2003).

33 Alvin Plantinga, "Two Dozen (or so) Theistic Arguments," 33rd Annual Philosophy
Conference, Wheaton College, Illinois, October 23-25, 1986, now accessible on-line at
http://philofreligion.homestead.com/files/Theisticarguments.html. For Plantinga's
reaffirmation of the worth of those arguments, see Alvin Plantinga, "Historical Arguments and
Dwindling Probabilities," Philosophia Christi 8 (2006): 20.

34 One recalls Leibniz's illustration of geometry books' being copied from eternity past's failing
to explain why there are such books at all.

35 Quinn, "Religious Diversity and Religious Toleration," p. 64.

36 Ibid.

37 Robert Funk, Jesus Seminar videotape.

38 For the full text of the Pope's speech, see

catholicculture.org/news/features/index.cfm?recnum=46474. N.B. especially his crucial point:
"As far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we
find ourselves faced with a dilemma which nowadays challenges us directly. Is the conviction
that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and
intrinsically true?"

39 As reported by World Net Daily, "Suicide Bombers Follow Quran, Concludes Pentagon
Briefing," September 26, 2006, 10:17 p.m. Eastern.
40 Quinn, "On Religious Diversity," p. 139.

41 My thanks to David Basinger for his comments on the first draft of this paper.

Does the Balance Between Saved and Lost

Depend on Our Obedience to Christ’s Great Commission?

As a follow-up to my middle knowledge solution to the problem of Christian exclusivism, I ask

whether the problem does not recur in another form under that solution: is it not the case that
the balance between saved and lost depends upon the degree to which we Christians obey our
Lord’s Great Commission to bring the gospel to every nation? If so, then is not that conclusion
as morally objectionable as the claim that people’s eternal destiny hinges upon the historical
accidents of the time and place of their birth? I argue that such a conclusion does not follow
because, given divine middle knowledge and providence, it may not lie within our power to
bring about a better balance between saved and lost.

“Does the Balance between Saved and Lost Depend on Our Obedience to Christ’s Great
Commission?” Philosophia Christi 6 (2004): 79-86.

In the interface of evangelical Christianity and other religions, the principal stumbling block for
many is Christianity’s claim that salvation is available exclusively through Jesus Christ. But what
exactly is the problem here supposed to be? The central difficulty posed by the doctrine of
Christian exclusivism, it seems to me, is counterfactual in nature: even granted that God has,
through general or special revelation, accorded sufficient grace to all persons for their
salvation, should they desire to accept it, still some persons who in fact freely reject God’s
general revelation might complain that they would have responded affirmatively to His
initiatives if only they had been accorded the benefit of His special revelation in the Gospel. If
God is omnibenevolent, He must surely, it seems, supply all persons with grace, not merely
sufficient, but efficacious for their salvation. But then Christian exclusivism is incompatible
with the existence of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God.

In previously published work1, I have argued that to this challenge the Molinist may respond
that it is possible that there is no world feasible for God in which all persons freely respond to
His gracious initiatives and so are saved. Given the truth of certain counterfactuals of
creaturely freedom, it is possible that God did not have it within His power to realize a world in
which all persons freely respond affirmatively to His offer of salvation. But in His
omnibenevolence, He has actualized a world containing an optimal balance between saved
and unsaved. God in His providence has so arranged the world that as the Christian gospel
went out from first century Palestine, all who would respond freely to it if they heard it did
hear it, and all who do not hear it are persons who would not have accepted it if they had
heard it. In this way, Christian exclusivism may be seen to be compatible with the existence of
an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God.
In a very engaging response to this proposed middle knowledge solution2, William Hasker
imagines a veteran missionary, Paul, and a prospective missionary, Peter, who are engaged in
some reflective thinking. Paul asks himself the two questions:

(A) Are there persons to whom I failed to preach who are going to be lost and who would have
been saved had I gone to them with the gospel?

(B)Are there persons who have been saved as a result of my preaching, who would not have
been saved had they never heard the gospel?

Being apprised of my proposed middle knowledge solution, Paul will conclude, says Hasker,
that the answer to (A) is in all probability, “No.” For given:

1. God has actualized a world containing an optimal balance between saved and unsaved in
which not all are saved, and those who are unsaved would not have believed the Gospel if they
had heard it.

(and assuming for the sake of argument that no one else carries the gospel to the unreached
tribe in question), it follows that those to whom Paul failed to preach would probably not have
been saved even if Paul had gone to them with the gospel. Hasker concludes that had Paul
therefore gone to the tribe with the gospel, that “would have resulted in no conversions.”3

In my response to Hasker I pointed out that this conclusion is overly hasty.4 While I should
agree that a negative answer to (A) is plausible, it does not therefore follow that had Paul
carried the gospel to the unreached tribe there would have been no conversions. For were
Paul to have gone to them with the gospel, God, via His middle knowledge, would have known
this logically prior to His decree to create a world and so might well have decreed to create
different persons in the tribe who He knew would respond affirmatively to Paul’s message.
Hence, if Paul had gone to the tribe, there might well have been conversions. It must not be
forgotten that from the Molinist perspective such affairs are a matter of God’s providential
planning, not mere happenstance. Hence, had Paul gone to the tribe there might well have
been conversions, but his failure to go did not bring it about that anyone was lost who would
have been saved otherwise.

But that leads naturally to Paul’s question (B). Hasker affirms that in all likelihood the answer
to (B) is “Yes.” “There is no reason to doubt that, in the vast majority of instances, those who
respond to the Gospel in faith are saved specifically because they have been evangelized and
would not have been saved otherwise.”5 This affirmation contains, however, a noteworthy
ambiguity. Hasker interprets this affirmation to mean that had Paul not gone to them, many of
those saved through his ministry “would otherwise have been lost.”6 But that does not follow.
Assuming once more for the sake of argument that had Paul not preached the gospel to these
persons no one else would have, we may agree that most of them would then not have been
saved. But that does not imply that most of them would have been damned. Rather God,
knowing via His middle knowledge that Paul would not go to the tribes in question, would not
perhaps have placed there the people which He in fact has, but would have created other
people instead who He knew would not respond to the gospel even if they heard it. Thus, if
Paul had not preached to the tribes as he did, the people who were saved under his ministry
would not have been saved, but neither would they have been lost. On the other hand,
perhaps it is true that the people saved under Paul’s ministry would have been lost if he had
not gone to them; but no matter: since God knew via His middle knowledge that Paul would
under the foreseen circumstances go to them, God placed in the villages persons who He knew
would have been lost had Paul not gone, being absolutely certain that Paul would go to them
and they would be saved.

Thus, Paul, can, indeed, rest in his reflections: he can take assurance in the belief that as a
result of his missionary outreach people will be in heaven who, had he not gone to them,
would not have been there, since God would then have foreknown Paul’s not going to the field
and so in His providence would not have placed the persons there whom He did. On the other
hand, he need not be burdened by guilt and worry that had he only gone to yet another tribe
which he failed to reach, persons would have been saved who instead were lost. He can be
sure that people were saved through his toil, but that no one was lost through his slackness.

Turn now to Peter, who is considering leaving the pastorate to become a foreign missionary.
He also asks himself two questions:

(C) If I was to go to the mission field and preach to those who otherwise would never hear the
gospel, are there persons who would be saved as a result of my preaching, who would
otherwise be lost?

(D) If I were to fail to go to the mission field, are there persons to whom I would in
consequence not preach who would then be lost, and who would have been saved had I gone
to them with the gospel?

In response to (C), Hasker answers affirmatively, since, according to the middle knowledge
perspective, God has providentially ordered the world such that the good news will be brought
to persons who God knew would respond if they heard it. Peter can justifiably assume that the
answer to (C) is “Yes” because in most cases God will have providentially arranged for
responsive persons to be among Peter’s prospective audiences.

But Hasker’s formulation of (C) is problematic. In the first place, the question is malformed,
combining as it does the subjunctive and indicative moods. As a deliberative conditional, both
the antecedent and the consequent should be in the subjunctive mood. Secondly, the question
falsely equates “not being saved” with “being lost.” But we have seen that under certain
circumstances, persons whom God has created would not have been created, in which case
they would not have been saved, but neither would they have been lost. The real question
Peter should ask is:

(C’) If I were to go to the mission field and preach to those who otherwise would never hear
the gospel, would there be persons who would be saved as a result of my preaching, who
would otherwise not be saved?

Now in weighing a deliberative conditional, we generally assume that its antecedent is true. So
doing, Peter may, on the basis of God’s middle knowledge and providence, justifiably assume
that the answer to (C?) is “Yes.” But what if the antecedent is false? In that case, though the
answer to (C?) remains affirmative, the answer to (C) is negative. For if the antecedent of the
counterfactual expressed interrogatively in (C?) is false, that is, if Peter does not go to the
mission field, then God via His middle knowledge knew this and so has not placed any
potential converts on Peter’s unreached field. Thus, there are no persons who are such that if
Peter were to go to the field and preach the gospel they would be saved. Nevertheless, it is still
true that if Peter were to go to the field and preach the gospel, there would be persons
awaiting him as prospective converts, since God via His middle knowledge would then have
known that Peter would leave on his mission and so have placed potential new believers in his
path.
Now consider (D). Hasker answers (D) negatively because “in all likelihood there is no one who
would be saved as a result of his preaching who would not be save otherwise,” for all who are
lost would not have believed the Gospel even if they had heard it. But (D) is as malformed as
(C). What Peter wants to know is not the answer to (D) but to:

(D?) If I were to fail to go to the mission field, would there be persons to whom I would in
consequence not preach who would then not be saved, but who would have been saved had I
gone to them with the gospel?

Assuming that the antecedent of (D?) is true, Peter will answer (D?) in the negative because
the persons to whom he would fail to preach would be persons who would not have believed
the Gospel had they heart it. But from that Hasker’s inference does not follow that there is no
one who would be saved as a result of his preaching who would not be saved otherwise. For if
the antecedent of the counterfactual expressed interrogatively in (D?) is false, the answer to
(D?) will remain negative, but the answer to (D) will be “Yes.” For if the antecedent is false,
then God via His middle knowledge knew this and so has placed potential converts on Peter’s
soon to be reached field. Thus, there are persons who are such that if Peter were to fail to go
to the field and preach the gospel, they would not be saved. Nevertheless, it is still true that if
Peter were to fail to go to the field and preach the gospel, there would be no persons out
there who would be potential converts, since God via His middle knowledge would then have
foreknown Peter’s failure to go and so placed on the field only such persons as would not have
believed the Gospel even if they had heard it.

Thus, Peter is no more perplexed about his situation than Paul. For the antecedents of (C?) and
(D?) are (roughly) contradictories. Hence, if the antecedent of (C?) is true, there are actually
existing persons who will be saved as a result of Peter’s preaching who would otherwise not be
saved, and if the antecedent of (D?) is false, there are persons who will be saved through
Peter’s preaching and who are such that they would not be saved if Peter were to fail to go to
the field. On the other hand, if the antecedent of (D?) is true, then there are no persons who,
as a result of Peter’s failure, will be unsaved but would have been saved had he gone to the
field, and if the antecedent of (C?) is false, then there are no persons who are such that they
would be saved if Peter were to go to the field. There is no inconsistency here.

Now all this is by way of review. In a conversation with one of my former students Glenn
Runnals the question arose as to whether the scenario I have envisioned does not make the
balance between saved and lost dependent upon our obedience to the Lord’s Great
Commission to go into all the world and preach the Gospel. If so, this seems as objectionable
as the view that people’s salvation depends on the historical and geographical accidents of
their birth.

As a way of gaining insight into this question, I reproduce here the following transcript of a
telephone conversation between Peter, who, one will recall, is contemplating going to the
mission field, and Paul, the veteran missionary, who had previously responded to Peter’s
questions via the post:

<The telephone rings.>

Paul: Hello, this is Paul speaking.

Peter: Hi, Paul, this is Peter. I’m calling because, after reflecting on your letter,
I’ve got a further question that I’d like to ask you.

Paul: Sure, go ahead.

Peter: Well, in your letter you said that all things being equal God, being omnibenevolent,
would necessarily not create any more of the lost than is required to create a certain number
of the saved, so that the world contains an optimal balance of saved and unsaved. But, given
human freedom, it’s possible that such an optimal balance may involve a considerable number
of persons who are lost, since worlds with a better balance between saved and lost are not
feasible for God.

Well, one of the factors determining the balance between saved and unsaved would seem to
be our obedience to the Lord’s Great Commission to evangelize the world. You said in
response to my question (D) that if I were not to go to the mission field, God would not place
there persons who would receive the gospel if they heard it. And in response to (C¢) you said
that if I were to go, then God would probably have placed people there who would be
receptive to the gospel. So it seems that I, by my obedience or disobedience, have the power
to bring it about that more people will be saved and fewer people lost or fewer people saved
and more people lost. But then the number of the lost seems to depend upon the accident of
my obedience or disobedience, which seems almost as objectionable as making people’s
salvation or damnation hinge on historical and geographical accidents.

Paul: Hmm. It seems to me that if there is such a thing as an optimal balance between saved
and lost, then I doubt that we do have the power to act in such a way that if we were to act in
that way, the balance between saved and unsaved would have been better as a consequence.
Of course, if there is no such thing as an optimal balance, then God can’t be blamed for not
creating a world in which such an optimal balance exists, since that would be logically
impossible. But, assuming that there is such a thing, God would, all things being equal, prefer a
world having such a balance. Thus, even if we were more obedient to the Great Commission,
the balance between saved and lost would not be improved.

Peter: But then we may as well all just go to the Bahamas instead of the mission field, trusting
that God will create all the persons who would have been saved on the mission field, had we
gone there, in the Bahamas instead, where they will still be saved!

Paul: No, for while it may not be the case that we have the power to act in such a way that if
we were to act in that way, the salvific balance would be improved, we may nonetheless have
the power to act in such a way that, if we were to act in that way, the salvific balance would be
worse. It may well be the case that if we were all to go to the Bahamas, fewer people would be
saved and more people lost than in fact will be saved and will be lost.

Peter: But then doesn’t the salvific balance depend on our obedience?

Paul: Not in any objectionable sense. For under the envisioned scenario, God knew that if He
were to use any other means of reaching the lost with the gospel, including those not involving
us as intermediaries, no better balance would be achieved than will be achieved. Nor is there
anything we humans might do, such that if we were to do it, the balance would be improved.
So the salvific balance doesn’t crucially depend on our obedience to the Great Commission.

Peter: But if we were all to go to the Bahamas, wouldn’t it then be the case that if we were to
obey the Great commission, as we do in the actual world, then the balance between saved and
lost would be better, just as it is in the actual world?
Paul: Oddly enough, no. For on the envisioned scenario whichever world is actual, that world
has an optimal balance which cannot be improved by greater obedience on the part of the
saved.

Peter: So if we were all to go to the Bahamas, it would be the case that no better balance
could be achieved than would be achieved, even though the balance would be worse than it is
in the actual world?

Paul: Yes. For in the actual world, this world a is among those feasible worlds having an
optimal balance between saved and unsaved. But in the Bahamanian world b, a would not be
among the optimally balanced feasible worlds; instead b would be. In b, a would be infeasible.

Peter: But it still seems that the salvific balance does depend on our obedience. For in b, the
reason a is infeasible for God is because of our disobedience. If we were to be obedient, a
would be actual instead of b.

Paul: No, for in b different counterfactuals of freedom are true than are true in a. In b it is true
that “If we were to obey the Great Commission rather than go to the Bahamas, no better
balance would be achieved.” But in a it is true that “If we were to obey the Great Commission
rather than go to the Bahamas, a better balance would be achieved.”

Peter: But still there is a correlation between our obedience and a more optimal balance. In
the world in which we are obedient, the balance is better than in the world in which we are
disobedient.

Paul: Only when we compare a and b! There is any number of possible worlds in which we fully
obey the great Commission and the balance is worse. In any case, a mere correlation is
insufficient to show a relation of counterfactual dependency between our obedience and an
optimal balance. Our obedience to the Great commission could serve as evidence of what
optimal balance obtains, but that balance does not depend on our obedience. It is neither
within God’s power nor within our—that is, the saved’s—power to bring it about that a more
optimal balance exist than does exist.

Peter: But then who does have the power to bring it about that a better balance's existence?

Paul: Very simply, it lies only within the power of the lost themselves.

Peter: Of course! Improving the balance between the saved and the lost naturally depends on
the lost’s obedience or disobedience to God’s salvific revelation.

Paul: Correct. It lies entirely within the power of the lost themselves to bring it about that
more persons should be saved and fewer damned than are.

Peter: So I guess that the balance between the saved and lost does not depend in any crucial
sense on our obedience to the Lord’s Great Commission.

Paul: That seems to be correct. We do have the power to act in such a way that were we to act
in that way the salvific balance would be worse. But we do not have the power to act in such a
way that were we to act in that way, the balance would be better. The only persons who have
the power to bring it about that the salvific balance is better are the lost themselves.
Peter: That answers my question. Thanks, Paul!

Paul: Godspeed!

Endnotes

1 “‘No Other Name’: A Middle Knowledge Perspective on the Exclusivity of Salvation through
Christ,” Faith and Philosophy 6 (1989): 172-188.

2 William Hasker, “Middle Knowledge and the Damnation of the Heathen: A Response to
William Craig,” Faith and Philosophy 8 (1991): 380-89.

3 Ibid., p. 382.

4 “Should Peter Go to the Mission Field?” Faith and Philosophy 10 (1993): 261-265.

5 Hasker, “Middle Knowledge and the Damnation of the Heathen,” p. 382.

6 Ibid., p. 383.

Should Peter Get a New Philosophical Advisor?

This article responds to William Hasker’s critique of my article “Does the Balance between
Saved and Lost Depend on our Obedience to Christ’s Great Commission?” I argue that while
Hasker succeeds in exposing a mistake in my argument, it does not prove fatal. On the
contrary, Hasker’s refutation misconstrues certain key counterfactuals, which turn out not to
be counterfactuals of creaturely freedom under our control. The objection to the middle
knowledge solution therefore remains undefeated.

“Should Peter Get a New Philosophical Advisor?” Philosophia Christi 6 (2004): 273-8.

In his “Perils of Paul”1 William Hasker intimates that our imaginary friend Peter needs to seek
out a new philosophical advisor, given Paul’s missteps in counterfactual logic. But has Paul
erred in the ways alleged by Hasker?

It is important to set the context here. Peter’s concern is that Paul’s proffered solution to the
problem of Christian exclusivism—that is, that it seems incompatible with God’s love and
power that some people should be damned due to historical and geographical accident—may
itself involve people’s salvation or damnation’s being the result of the accident of our
obedience or disobedience to the Great Commission.

Paul’s response is to express doubt that we have the power to act in such a way that if we
were to act in that way, the balance between saved and unsaved would have been better as a
consequence. That is to say, he attempts to undercut Peter’s objection by challenging the
assumption that improvement of the salvific balance is counterfactually dependent upon our
actions.
Why does Paul doubt this assumption? Because, he says, if there is such a thing as an optimal
balance,2 the goodness of God would lead Him to prefer ceteris paribus a world exhibiting
such a balance.3 So if there were any other world feasible for God which had a better balance
between saved and lost than the actual world, God would have preferred that world over the
actual world. But then that world would have been actual rather than this one. Given that our
world is actual, it must be a member of that class of feasible worlds exhibiting an optimal
balance between saved and lost.4 So, Paul, concludes, the counterfactual:

A. If we were to be more obedient to the Great Commission, the balance between saved and
lost would not be improved.

is true.

Hasker contends that Paul is mistaken here. Not only does he think that Paul’s reasoning is
confused, but he also thinks that from Paul’s own assumptions it clearly follows that:

A¢. If we were to be more obedient to the Great Commission, the balance between saved and
lost would be improved.

is true.

Why does Hasker think Paul confused? Although he is not as clear as one might wish,5 I think
that Hasker’s fundamental point can be expressed as follows:

Logically prior to His divine creative decree, God finds Himself confronted with a class of
counterfactuals of creaturely freedom which we may, borrowing Thomas Flint’s terminology,
call a creaturely world-type. Unlike counterfactuals of divine freedom, these counterfactuals of
creaturely freedom lie outside God’s control and so determine for Him a galaxy of feasible
worlds. Worlds constituting galaxies determined by other world-types are not actualizable by
God and are, hence, infeasible for Him. Given God’s goodness, He prefers, ceteris paribus,
worlds in which every created person comes freely to salvation. Unfortunately, given the
creaturely world-type that is true, such worlds are infeasible for God. So God must choose
from among worlds in the galaxy of worlds feasible for Him. Here he will prefer worlds
exhibiting an optimal balance between saved and lost and select one of these to be actual.
Thus, the actual world does have an optimal salvific balance within the galaxy of feasible
worlds. Never mind that there are possible worlds exhibiting a better balance: such worlds are
infeasible for God, and so He cannot be held responsible for not choosing such a world to be
actual. We cannot bring it about that the galaxy determined by the true creaturely world-type
should include worlds having a better balance than the class of optimally balanced worlds. This
is just a point of logic, for if we were to act any differently in the same circumstances, a
different world-type would be true and, hence, a different galaxy would confront God. This is
the element of truth in Paul’s reasoning.

But Paul’s confusion becomes evident when we reflect that world-types are person-relative.
The creaturely world-type is the world-type-for-God, containing no counterfactuals of divine
freedom, since He has control over these. The world-type-for-Peter analogously does not
include counterfactuals about his own free decisions, since he has control over these. Unlike
God, Peter has the power to act in such a way that a different creaturely world-type would
have been true. Specifically, Peter could act in such a way that he would be more obedient to
the Great Commission than he actually is. Were he to do so, God would find Himself
confronted with a different creaturely world-type and, hence, a different galaxy of worlds to
choose from. In that galaxy the optimal balance might well be better than in the galaxy with
which God is actually confronted. Thus, Peter may have the power to act in such a way that,
were he to act in that way, the salvific balance would be improved.

Hasker is right: Paul is confused. He inferred rashly from the fact that the actual world has an
optimal salvific balance among worlds feasible for God that (A¢) could not be true. Although
(A¢) is not strictly a counterfactual of creaturely freedom, being of the wrong form,6 and so
not technically part of the true creaturely world-type, still if it is true, it is so logically prior to
the divine decree and so part of what we might call a “thick” creaturely world-type and so true
in all worlds in the galaxy determined by that type.7 Paul therefore thought that God could
weakly actualize the state of affairs described in the consequent by actualizing the relevant
circumstances implied in the antecedent, circumstances under which the antecedent would be
true. But in that case there would be worlds feasible for God in which a better salvific balance
exists than in the actual world—which contradicts the hypothesis that the actual world exhibits
such a balance.

But Hasker in effect holds open the possibility that God could not actualize the state of affairs
described in the antecedent. No matter what circumstances He created us in, we should not
have been more obedient to the Great Commission. Since Paul is willing to entertain scenarios
not involving us as intermediaries to reach the lost, Hasker must say that there is no world
feasible for God in which any persons are more obedient to the Great Commission than we
actually are. This may seem far-fetched, but it is possible. Hence, Paul should not have
concluded that it lies within God’s power to weakly actualize the antecedent of (A¢) and
thereby to weakly actualize its consequent. Therefore, (A¢) might be true even though the
actual world has an optimal salvific balance within our galaxy.

Still, what Paul said was that he doubted that we have the power to improve the salvific
balance, and such a doubt seems rational. We do not know whether other creaturely world-
types available to us are ones determining galaxies exhibiting a better optimal balance than
our galaxy. That is sufficient to undercut, if not rebut, Peter’s objection.

But Hasker maintains that on Paul’s assumptions it clearly follows that (A¢) is true. Hasker lists
the following assumptions:

1. Christ has given a Great Commission to his followers.

2. God has brought it about that, in times and places reached by the Gospel, there are
numerous persons who would accept salvation through Christ if it were offered to them.

3. God has brought it about that, in times and places not reached by the Gospel, the
inhabitants are persons who are transworldly damned and would not accept the Gospel even if
it were preached to them.

From these assumptions, says Hasker, it “clearly follows” that:

4. The more obedient Christians are to the Great Commission, the more saved persons there
will be and the fewer lost.

Now clearly (4) does not follow from (1)-(3). It is compatible with (1)-(3) that there should
come a time at which, no matter how zealous our evangelistic outreaches, no matter how
earnest our exhortations, no more converts would be won by our further obedience to Christ’s
Great Commission. But that is incompatible with (4). Thus, (4) could be false and (1)-(3) true.
Perhaps we could avoid this problem by amending (2) to something like

2¢. God will bring it about that, as new places are reached by the Gospel, there will be persons
there who will accept salvation through Christ

which might be thought to represent fairly Paul’s position. But even so amended, these
assumptions do not imply (4), for one could infer with equal justification that

5. The more obedient Christians are to the Great Commission, the more widely geographically
distributed will the saved be.

Paul does seem to infer something like (5), which is why Peter suggested that we should then
just all go to the Bahamas, trusting that God would concentrate all the saved there. Therefore,
Hasker has failed to show that (A¢) follows from Paul’s assumptions.

It seems that Hasker has not appreciated sufficiently that counterfactuals like (A) and (A¢) are
just as beyond Peter and his fellow believers’ control as they are beyond God’s. He seems to
think that because Peter and his fellow-believers can bring it about that they are more
obedient to the Great Commission, they can by doing so bring about a more favorable balance
of saved and lost. That this does not follow can be made plain by making explicit the different
agents involved, as in:

A*. If we were to be more obedient to the Great Commission, proportionately more people
would have freely embraced salvation and fewer freely rejected it.

(A*), if true, is part of God’s thick world-type and so beyond His control. Similarly, although
Peter and his fellow-believers could bring about the truth of (A*)’s antecedent, whether (A*) is
true will depend upon the free response those reached with the Gospel. Thus, the proposition
expressed by (A*) is also beyond Peter’s control, since it summarizes propositions of the form:

A**. If S were in C (C including being evangelized by more obedient Christians), S would freely
embrace salvation rather than reject it.

Propositions of the form of (A**) are counterfactuals of creaturely freedom which are pre-
volitional for Peter and so part of the world-type-for-Peter and beyond his control. Peter can
bring about the circumstances C of sharing the Gospel with S, but S’s free response is just as
beyond Peter’s control as it is beyond God’s. It is the lost themselves who have control over
whether (A**) is true.

The bottom line seems to be that we just do not know whether (A) or (A¢) is true, if either is
true.8 That is enough to undercut the objection that Paul’s Molinist solution makes people’s
salvation hang on the accident of our obedience to the Great Commission.

Still and all, one can only heartily agree with Hasker’s conclusion that a devout life is no
protection against fallacious reasoning. Peter would do well to take Bill Hasker among his
philosophical advisors, for one will find his advice inevitably stimulating and penetrating, even
if, in the end, not always convincing.9

Endnotes

1 “The Perils of Paul: A Response to William Craig,” this journal.

2 Hasker thinks that on Paul’s proposal there cannot fail to be an optimal balance of saved and
lost in the galaxy of feasible worlds. But when one reflects that an optimal balance involves
both the ratio of saved to lost as well as absolute numbers, this is not obvious. Perhaps as the
numbers increase the ratio declines, with no intrinsic maxima. In that case an optimally
balanced world would be like the chimaera of the best of all possible worlds.

3 Notice that Paul treats worlds which are incompatible with God’s goodness as still feasible
for God, even if rejected by Him. Thomas Flint’s approach is different. He asks:

“Could it be the case that, even within the feasible galaxy, there are certain worlds which God
cannot actualize—because, e.g., doing so would be morally abhorrent? I think not. The
Molinist will insist that, if a certain world is so atrocious that actualizing it would be
inconsistent with God’s moral perfection, then the world in question is not genuinely possible,
and so is not a member of the feasible galaxy in the first place” (Thomas P. Flint, Divine
Providence, Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
1998, p. 51).

Paul is presupposing a stricter modality than Flint. If we adopt Flint’s view, then every world
feasible for God has an optimal salvific balance. Indeed, given God’s essential goodness, any
galaxy of feasible worlds, regardless of which creaturely world-type is true, is composed
exclusively of optimally balanced worlds. Such a conclusion would not materially affect the
issue before us, however, since Paul recognizes that the optimal balance may be different from
galaxy to galaxy, and Hasker’s contention is that we have it within our power to bring it about
that a different creaturely world-type is true so that a different galaxy is feasible for God.

Notice, too, Paul’s ceteris paribus clause. This is a huge assumption, indeed, an arguably false
assumption, since worlds having better salvific balances might have other overriding
deficiencies that make them less preferable. Even if we can act so as to bring about a better
salvific balance, those worlds in which we do so may be less preferable.

4 Thus, Paul is by no means confused, as Hasker alleges, when he asserts that whichever world
is actual that world has an optimal balance between saved and lost. God’s essential goodness
guarantees that only worlds belonging to that class of worlds exhibiting an optimal balance in
their galaxy are candidates for actualization. So if the Bahamanian world b were actual, it
would have an optimal balance of saved and unsaved.

5 See, e.g., his comment that if we were to act in a certain way “the actual world would be part
of a different galaxy than the galaxy to which abelongs.” I take it that he does not envision
inter-galactic travel by worlds, but rather another galaxy’s being feasible than this one and so
another world actual than this one. In Flint’s terminology, a different chosen world would be
actual, and the question is whether it has a better salvific balance than this world. Hasker errs,
moreover, in thinking that the reason that a would be infeasible if bwere actual is because the
counterfactuals of freedom stating what Peter and others would do when confronted with the
call to the mission field would have different truth-values. In fact, precisely the same
counterfactuals concerning them could be true, since it is no part of the envisioned scenario
that Peter and his fellow believers find themselves in the same circumstances in bas in a.
Hasker notes that he is assuming that some persons in bwould reject the missionary call in
exactly the same circumstances in which they actually accept it. Such an assumption is
gratuitous. Hasker recognizes that because circumstances in bbecome increasingly divergent
from those in a, the truth value of counterfactuals concerning subsequent choices might not
have different truth-values. But he fails to appreciate that because C includes the whole
history of the world, at the first difference between band a different counterfactuals
immediately come into play, so that no different truth-values are required in bfor propositions
about the choices which Peter and others like him make in a.

6 Counterfactuals of creaturely freedom have the form If S were in C, S would freely do A,

where S is a free creature, C is a set of circumstances including the causal history of the world
up until the time of S’s decision, and A is some action.

7 In the case of (A) and its variants C will include various gifts of divine grace and solicitations
of the Holy Spirit, but that fact does not make (A) or its variants only post-volitionally true, for
C may include any envisioned circumstances, even circumstances concerning God’s actions;
indeed, such truths are crucial to a Molinist doctrine of providence and predestination.

8 Since neither (A) nor (A¢) is a counterfactual of creaturely freedom, there is no guarantee
that the Law of Conditional Excluded Middle holds for it. Indeed, given the multiplicity of
situations they envision, it may seem intuitively true that:

A***. If we were to be more obedient to the Great Commission, the balance between saved
and lost might or might not be improved.

9 I myself thank Bill for stimulating discussion of this response.

"No Other Name":

A Middle Knowledge Perspective

on the Exclusivity of Salvation Through Christ

The conviction of the New Testament writers was that there is no salvation apart from Jesus.
This orthodox doctrine is widely rejected today because God's condemnation of persons in
other world religions seems incompatible with various attributes of God.

Analysis reveals the real problem to involve certain counterfactuals of freedom, e.g., why did
not God create a world in which all people would freely believe in Christ and be saved? Such
questions presuppose that God possesses middle knowledge. But it can be shown that no
inconsistency exists between God's having middle knowledge and certain persons' being
damned; on the contrary, it can be positively shown that these two notions are compatible.

"'No Other Name': A Middle Knowledge Perspective on the Exclusivity of Salvation through
Christ". Faith and Philosophy 6. (1989): 172-88.
Introduction

"There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men
by which we must be saved" (Acts 4.12). So proclaimed the early preachers of the gospel of
Christ. Indeed, this conviction permeates the New Testament and helped to spur the Gentile
mission. Paul invites his Gentile converts to recall their pre-Christian days: "Remember that
you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and
strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world"
(Ephesians 2.12). The burden of the opening chapters of Romans is to show that this desolate
situation is the general condition of mankind. Though God's eternal power and deity are
evident through creation (1.20) and the demands of His moral law implanted on the hearts of
all persons (2.15) and although God offers eternal life to all who seek Him in well-doing (2.7),
the tragic fact of the matter is that in general people suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
ignoring the Creator (1.21) and flouting the moral law (1.32). Therefore, "all men, both Jews
and Greeks, are under the power of sin, as it is written: 'None is righteous, no, not one; no one
understands, no one seeks for God...'" (3.9-1 1). Sin is the great leveler, rendering all needy of
God's forgiveness and salvation. Given the universality of sin, all persons stand morally guilty
and condemned before God, utterly incapable of redeeming themselves through righteous
acts (3.19-20). But God in His grace has provided a means of salvation from this state of
condemnation: Jesus Christ, by his expiatory death, redeems us from sin and justifies us before
God (3.21-26). It is through him and through him alone, then, that God's forgiveness is
available (5.12-21). To reject Jesus Christ is therefore to reject God's grace and forgiveness, to
refuse the one means of salvation which God has provided. It is to remain under His
condemnation and wrath, to forfeit eternally salvation. For someday God will judge all men,
"inflicting vengeance upon those who do not know God and upon those who do not obey the
gospel of our Lord Jesus. They shall suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion
from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might" (II Thessalonians 1.8-9).

It was not just Paul who held to this exclusivistic, Christocentric view of salvation. No less than
Paul, the apostle John saw no salvation outside of Christ. In his gospel, Jesus declares, "I am
the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me" (John 14.6). John
explains that men love the darkness of sin rather than light, but that God has sent His Son into
the world to save the world and to give eternal life to everyone who believes in the Son. "He
who believes is not condemned; he who does not believe is condemned already, because he
has not believed in the name of the only Son of God" (John 3.18). People are already spiritually
dead; but those who believe in Christ pass from death to life (John 5.24). In his epistles, John
asserts that no one who denies the Son has the Father and identifies such a person as the
antichrist (I John 2.22-23; 4.3; II John 9). In short, "He who has the Son has life; he who has not
the Son of God has not life" (I John 5.12). In John's Apocalypse, it is the Lamb alone in heaven
and on earth and under the earth who is worthy to open the scroll and its seven seals, for it
was he that by his blood ransomed men for God from every tribe and tongue and people and
nation on the earth (Revelation 5.1-14). In the consummation, everyone whose name is not
found written in the Lamb's book of life is cast into the everlasting fire reserved for the devil
and his cohorts (Revelation 20.15).

One could make the same point from the catholic epistles and the pastorals. It is the conviction
of the writers of the New Testament that "there is one God, and there is one mediator
between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all" (I Timothy
2.5-6).

Indeed, it is plausible that such was the attitude of Jesus himself. New Testament scholarship
has reached something of a consensus that the historical Jesus came on the scene with an
unparalleled sense of divine authority, the authority to stand and speak in the place of God
Himself and to call men to repentance and faith.1 Moreover, the object of that faith was he
himself, the absolute revelation of God: "All things have been delivered to me by my Father;
and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and
anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him" (Matthew 11.27) .2 On the day of judgment,
people's destiny will be determined by how they responded to him: "And I tell you, everyone
who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of
God; but he who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God" (Luke 12.8-
9).3 Frequent warnings concerning hell are found on Jesus' lips, and it may well be that he
believed that most of mankind would be damned, while a minority of mankind would be
saved: "Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to
destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard,
that leads to life, and those who find it are few" (Matthew 7:13-14) .4

A hard teaching, no doubt; but the logic of the New Testament is simple and compelling: The
universality of sin and the uniqueness Christ's expiatory sacrifice entail that there is no
salvation apart from Christ. Although this exclusivity was scandalous in the polytheistic world
of the first century, with the triumph of Christianity throughout the Empire the scandal
receded. Indeed, one of the classic marks of the church was its catholicity, and for men like
Augustine and Aquinas the universality of the church was one of the signs that the Scriptures
are divine revelation, since so great a structure could not have been generated by and founded
upon a falsehood.5 Of course, recalcitrant Jews remained in Christian Europe, and later the
infidel armies of Islam had to be combated, but these exceptions were hardly sufficient to
overturn the catholicity of the church or to promote religious pluralism.

But with the so-called "Expansion of Europe" during the three centuries of exploration and
discovery from 1450 to 1750, the situation changed radically.6 It was now seen that far from
being the universal religion, Christianity was confined to a small corner of the globe. This
realization had a two-fold impact upon people's religious thinking: (i) it tended toward the
relativization of religious beliefs. Since each religious system was historically and
geographically limited, it seemed incredible that any of them should be regarded as universally
true. It seemed that the only religion which could make a universal claim upon mankind would
be a sort of general religion of nature. (ii) It tended to make Christianity's claim to exclusivity
appear unjustly narrow and cruel. If salvation was only through faith in Christ, then the
majority of the human race was condemned to eternal damnation, since they had not so much
as even heard of Christ. Again, only a natural religion available to all men seemed consistent
with a fair and loving God.

In our own day the influx into Western nations of immigrants from former colonies, coupled
with the advances in telecommunications which have served to shrink the world toward a
"global village," have heightened both of these impressions. As a result, the church has to a
great extent lost its sense of missionary calling or been forced to reinterpret it in terms of
social engagement, while those who continue to adhere to the traditional, orthodox view are
denounced for religious intolerance. This shift is perhaps best illustrated by the attitude of the
Second Vatican Council toward world mission. In its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, the
Council declared that those who have not yet received the gospel are related in various ways
to the people of God.7 Jews, in particular, remain dear to God, but the plan of salvation also
includes all who acknowledge the Creator, such as Muslims. People who through no fault of
their own do not know the gospel, but who strive to do God's will by conscience can also be
saved. The Council therefore declared that Catholics now pray for the Jews, not for the
conversion of the Jews and also declares that the Church looks with esteem upon Muslims.8
Missionary work seems to be directed only toward those who "serve the creature rather than
the Creator" or are utterly hopeless.9 Carefully couched in ambiguous language and often
apparently internally inconsistent,10 the documents of Vatican II could easily be taken as a
radical reinterpretation of the nature of the Church and of Christian missions, according to
which great numbers of non-Christians are specifically related to the Church and therefore not
appropriate subjects of evangelism.

The difficulty of the orthodox position has compelled some persons to embrace universalism
and as a consequence to deny the incarnation of Christ. Thus, John Hick explains,

For understood literally the Son of God, God the Son, God-incarnate language implies that God
can be adequately known and responded to only through Jesus; and the whole religious life of
mankind, beyond the stream of Judaic-Christian faith is thus by implication excluded as lying
outside the sphere of salvation. This implication did little positive harm so long as Christendom
was a largely autonomous civilization with only relatively marginal interaction with the rest of
mankind. But with the clash between the Christian and Muslim worlds, and then on an ever-
broadening front with European colonization through the earth, the literal understanding of
the mythological language of Christian discipleship has had a divisive effect upon the relations
between that minority of human beings who live within the borders of the Christian tradition
and that majority who live outside it and within other streams of religious life.

Transposed into theological terms, the problem which has come to the surface in the
encounter of Christianity with the other world religions is this: If Jesus was literally God
incarnate, and if it is by his death alone that men can be saved, and by their response to him
alone that they can appropriate that salvation, then the only doorway to eternal life is
Christian faith. It would follow from this that the large majority of the human race so far have
not been saved. But is it credible that the loving God and Father of all men has decreed that
only those born within one particular thread of human history shall be saved?11

But what exactly is the problem with God's condemning persons who adhere to non-Christian
religions? I do not see that the very notion of hell is incompatible with a just and loving God.
According to the New Testament, God does not want anyone to perish, but desires that all
persons repent and be saved and come to know the truth (11 Peter 3.9; 1 Timothy 2.4). He
therefore seeks to draw all men to Himself. Those who make a well-informed and free decision
to reject Christ are self-condemned, since they repudiate God's unique sacrifice for sin. By
spurning God's prevenient grace and the solicitation of His Spirit, they shut out God's mercy
and seal their own destiny. They, therefore, and not God, are responsible for their
condemnation, and God deeply mourns their loss.

Nor does it seem to me that the problem can be simply reduced to the inconsistency of a
loving and just God's condemning persons who are either un- , ill-, or misinformed concerning
Christ and who therefore lack the opportunity to receive Him. For one could maintain that God
graciously applies to such persons the benefits of Christ's atoning death without their
conscious knowledge thereof on the basis of their response to the light of general revelation
and the truth that they do have, even as He did in the case of Old Testament figures like Job
who were outside the covenant of Israel.12 The testimony of Scripture is that the mass of
humanity do not even respond to the light that they do have, and God's condemnation of
them is neither unloving nor unjust, since He judges them according to standards of general
revelation vastly lower than those which are applied to persons who have been recipients of
His special revelation.

Rather the real problem, it seems to me, involves certain counterfactuals of freedom
concerning those who do not receive special revelation and so are lost. If we take Scripture
seriously, we must admit that the vast majority of persons in the world are condemned and
will be forever lost, even if in some relatively rare cases a person might be saved through his
response to the light that he has apart from special revelation.13 But then certain questions
inevitably arise: Why did God not supply special revelation to persons who, while rejecting the
general revelation they do have, would have responded to the gospel of Christ if they had
been sufficiently well-informed concerning it? More fundamentally, Why did God create this
world when He knew that so many persons would not receive Christ and would therefore be
lost? Even more radically, why did God not create a world in which everyone freely receives
Christ and so is saved?

Now all of these questions appear, at least, to presuppose that certain counterfactuals of
freedom concerning people's response to God's gracious initiatives are true, and the last two
seem to presuppose that God's omniscience embraces a species of knowledge known as
middle knowledge (scientia media). For if there are no true counterfactuals of freedom, it is
not true that certain persons would receive Christ if they were to hear the gospel, nor can God
be held responsible for the number of the lost if He lacks middle knowledge, for without such
knowledge He could only guess in the moment logically prior to His decree to create the world
how many and, indeed, whether any persons would freely receive Christ (or whether He would
even send Christ!) and be saved. Let us assume, then, that some such counterfactuals are true
and that God has middle knowledge.14

For those who are unfamiliar with this species of knowledge and as considerable confusion
exists concerning it, a few words about the concept of middle knowledge and its implications
for providence and predestination might be helpful.
Scientia Media

Largely the product of the creative genius of the Spanish Jesuit of the Counter-Reformation
Luis Molina (1535-1600), the doctrine of middle knowledge proposes to furnish an analysis of
divine knowledge in terms of three logical moments.15 Although whatever God knows, He has
known from eternity, so that there is no temporal succession in God's knowledge, nonetheless
there does exist a sort of logical succession in God's knowledge in that His knowledge of
certain propositions is conditionally or explanatorily prior to His knowledge of certain other
propositions. That is to say, God's knowledge of a particular set of propositions depends
asymmetrically on His knowledge of a certain other set of propositions and is in this sense
posterior to it. In the first, unconditioned moment God knows all possibilia, not only all
individual essences, but also all possible worlds. Molina calls such knowledge "natural
knowledge" because the content of such knowledge is essential to God and in no way depends
on the free decisions of His will. By means of His natural knowledge, then, God has knowledge
of every contingent state of affairs which could possibly obtain and of what the exemplification
of the individual essence of any free creature could freely choose to do in any such state of
affairs that should be actual.

In the second moment, God possesses knowledge of all true counterfactual propositions,
including counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. That is to say, He knows what contingent
states of affairs would obtain if certain antecedent states of affairs were to obtain; whereas by
His natural knowledge God knew what any free creature could do in any set of circumstances,
now in this second moment God knows what any free creature would do in any set of
circumstances. This is not because the circumstances causally determine the creature's choice,
but simply because this is how the creature would freely choose. God thus knows that were He
to actualize certain states of affairs, then certain other contingent states of affairs would
obtain. Molina calls this counterfactual knowledge "middle knowledge" because it stands in
between the first and third moment in divine knowledge. Middle knowledge is like natural
knowledge in that such knowledge does not depend on any decision of the divine will; God
does not determine which counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are true or false. Thus, if it is
true that

If some agent S were placed in circumstances C, then he would freely perform action a,

then even God in His omnipotence cannot bring it about that S would refrain from a if he were
placed in C. On the other hand, middle knowledge is unlike natural knowledge in that the
content of His middle knowledge is not essential to God. True counterfactuals of freedom are
contingently true; S could freely decide to refrain from a in C, so that different counterfactuals
could be true and be known by God than those that are. Hence, although it is essential to God
that He have middle knowledge, it is not essential to Him to have middle knowledge of those
particular propositions which He does in fact know.

Intervening between the second and third moments of divine knowledge stands God's free
decree to actualize a world known by Him to be realizable on the basis of His middle
knowledge. By His natural knowledge, God knows what is the entire range of logically possible
worlds; by His middle knowledge He knows, in effect, what is the proper subset of those
worlds which it is feasible for Him to actualize. By a free decision, God decrees to actualize one
of those worlds known to Him through His middle knowledge. According to Molina, this
decision is the result of a complete and unlimited deliberation by means of which God
considers and weighs every possible circumstance and its ramifications and decides to settle
on the particular world He desires. Hence, logically prior, if not chronologically prior, to God's
creation of the world is the divine deliberation concerning which world to actualize.

Given God's free decision to actualize a world, in the third and final moment God possesses
knowledge of all remaining propositions that are in fact true in the actual world. Such
knowledge is denominated "free knowledge" by Molina because it is logically posterior to the
decision of the divine will to actualize a world. The content of such knowledge is clearly not
essential to God, since He could have decreed to actualize a different world. Had He done so,
the content of His free knowledge would be different.

Molina saw clearly the profound implications a doctrine of middle knowledge could have for
the notions of providence and predestination. God's providence is His ordering of things to
their ends, either directly or mediately through secondary agents. Molina distinguishes
between God's absolute and conditional intentions for creatures. It is, for example, God's
absolute intention that no creature should sin and that all should reach beatitude. But it is not
within the scope of God's power to control what free creatures would do if placed in any set of
circumstances. In certain circumstances, then, creatures would freely sin, despite the fact that
God does not will this. Should God then choose to actualize precisely those circumstances, He
has no choice but to allow the creature to sin. God's absolute intentions can thus be frustrated
by free creatures. But God's conditional intentions, which are based on His middle knowledge
and thus take account of what free creatures would do, cannot be so frustrated. It is God's
conditional intention to permit many actions on the part of free creatures which He does not
absolutely will; but in His infinite wisdom God so orders which states of affairs obtain that His
purposes are achieved despite and even through the sinful, free choices of creatures. God thus
providentially arranges for everything that does happen by either willing or permitting it, and
He causes everything to happen insofar as He concurs with the decisions of free creatures in
producing their effects, yet He does so in such a way as to preserve freedom and contingency.

Middle knowledge also serves to reconcile predestination and human freedom. On Molina's
view predestination is merely that aspect of providence pertaining to eternal salvation; it is the
order and means by which God ensures that some free creature attains eternal life. Prior to
the divine decree, God knows via His middle knowledge how any possible free creature would
respond in any possible circumstances, which include the offer of certain gifts of prevenient
grace which God might provide. In choosing a certain possible world, God commits Himself,
out of His goodness, to offering various gifts of grace to every person which are sufficient for
his salvation. Such grace is not intrinsically efficacious in that it of itself produces its effect;
rather it is extrinsically efficacious in accomplishing its end in those who freely cooperate with
it. God knows that many will freely reject His sufficient grace and be lost; but He knows that
many others will assent to it, thereby rendering it efficacious in effecting their salvation. Given
God's immutable decree to actualize a certain world, those whom God knew would respond to
His grace are predestined to do so in the sense that it is absolutely certain that they will
respond to and persevere in God's grace. There is no risk of their being lost; indeed, in sensu
composito it is impossible for them to fall away. But in sensu diviso they are entirely free to
reject God's grace; but were they to do so, God would have had different middle knowledge
and they would not have been predestined.16 Similarly those who are not predestined have
no one to blame but themselves. It is up to God whether we find ourselves in a world in which
we are predestined, but it is up to us whether we are predestined in the world in which we
find ourselves.
The Soteriological Problem of Evil

Years ago when I first read Alvin Plantinga's basically Molinist formulation of the Free Will
Defense against the problem of evil, it occurred to me that his reasoning might also help to
resolve the problem of the exclusivity of salvation through Christ, and my own subsequent
study of the notion of middle knowledge has convinced me that this is in fact so.17 For the
person who objects to the exclusivity of salvation through Christ is, in effect, posing what one
might call the soteriological problem of evil, that is to say, he maintains that the proposition

1. God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent

is inconsistent with

2. Some persons do not receive Christ and are damned.

Since (1) is essential to theism, we must therefore deny (2).

The orthodox Christian will point out, however, that (1) and (2) are not explicitly contradictory,
since one is not the negation of the other, nor are they logically contradictory, since a
contradiction cannot be derived from them using first order logic. The objector, then, must
mean that (1) and (2) are inconsistent in the broadly logical sense, that is, that there is no
possible world in which both are true. Now in order to show this, the objector must supply
some further premise(s) which meets the following conditions: (it) its conjunction with (1) and
(2) formally entails a contradiction, (ii) it is either necessarily true, essential to theism, or a
logical consequence of propositions that are, and (iii) its meeting conditions (i) and (ii) could
not he rationally denied by a right-thinking person.18

I am not aware of anyone who has tried to supply the missing premise which meets these
conditions, but let us try to find some such proposition. Perhaps it might be claimed that the
following two propositions will suffice:

3. God is able to actualize a possible world in which all persons freely receive Christ.
4. God prefers a world in which no persons fail to receive Christ and are damned to a world in
which some do.

It might be claimed that anyone who accepts (1) must also accept (3) and (4), since (3) is true
in virtue of God's omniscience (which includes middle knowledge) and His omnipotence, and
(4) is true in virtue of His omnibenevolence.

But is (3) necessarily true or incumbent upon the theist who is a Molinist? This is far from
clear. For although it is logically possible that God actualize any possible world (assuming that
God exists in every possible world), it does not follow therefrom that it is feasible for God to
actualize any possible world.19 For God's ability to actualize worlds containing free creatures
will be limited by which counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are true in the moment logically
prior to the divine decree. In a world containing free creatures, God can strongly actualize only
certain segments or states of affairs in that world, and the remainder He must weakly
actualize, using His middle knowledge of what free creatures would do under any
circumstances. Hence, there will be an infinite number of possible worlds known to God by His
natural knowledge which are not realizable by Him because the counterfactuals of creaturely
freedom which must be true in order for Him to weakly actualize such worlds are in fact
false.20 His middle knowledge serves to delimit, so to speak, the range of logically possible
worlds to those which are feasible for Him to actualize. This might be thought to impugn divine
omnipotence, but in fact such a restriction poses no non-logical limit to God's power.21

So the question is whether it is necessarily true or incumbent upon the Molinist to hold that
within the range of possible worlds which are feasible to God there is at least one world in
which everyone freely receives Christ and is saved. Now within Molinism there is a school
known as Congruism which would appear to agree that such a position is mandatory for the
theist .22 According to Suarez, for any individual God might create there are gifts of prevenient
grace which would be efficacious in winning the free consent of that individual to God's offer
of salvation.23 Such grace, which Suarez calls "congruent grace" (gratia congrua), consists in
the divine gifts and aids which would be efficacious in eliciting the response desired by God,
but without coercion. No grace is intrinsically efficacious, but congruent grace is always in fact
efficacious because God knows via His middle knowledge that the creature would freely and
affirmatively respond to it, were He to offer it. Accordingly, the Congruist might claim

5. God knows for any individual S under what circumstances S would freely receive Christ.

But why is it incumbent upon us to accept (5)? Given that persons are free, might there not be
persons who would not receive Christ in any actual world in which they existed? Suarez himself
seemed to vacillate at this point. When asked whether there is a congruent grace for every
person God could create or whether some persons are so incorrigible that regardless of the
grace accorded them by God, they would not repent, Suarez wants to say that God can win the
free response of any creature He could create. But when pressed that it is logically possible
that some person should resist every grace, Suarez concedes that this is true, but adds that
God could still save such a person by over- powering his will.24 But such coercive salvation is
beside the point; so long as there might be individuals for whom no grace would be congruent,
(5) cannot be regarded as necessary or essential to theism. On the contrary, the theist might
hold that

6. For some individual S, there are no circumstances under which S would freely receive Christ.

In such a case, the theist could consistently maintain that there are no worlds feasible for God
in which S exists and is saved.
The Congruist could, however, accept (6) and still insist that there are congruent graces for
many other individuals and that God could actualize a world containing only such individuals,
so that every one would receive Christ and be saved. But the Congruist must show more than
that for certain (or even every) individual there are circumstances under which that person
would freely receive Christ. He must show that the circumstances under which various
individuals would freely receive Christ are compossible, so that all persons in some possible
world would freely receive Christ and be saved. It is not even enough to show that the various
circumstances are compossible; if he is to avoid the counterfactual fallacy of strengthening the
antecedent, he must show that in the combined circumstances the consequent still follows. It
might be that in circumstances C1, individual S1 would do action a and that in circumstances
C2 individual S2 would do b and that C1and C2 are compossible, but it does not follow that in
C1- C2, S1 would do a or that in C1 - C2, S2would do b. Hence, even if it were the case that for
any individual He might create, God could actualize a world in which that person is freely
saved, it does not follow that there are worlds which are feasible for God in which all
individuals are saved. Contrary to (3) the theist might hold that

7. There is no world feasible for God in which all persons would freely receive Christ.

Unless we have good reason to think that (7) is impossible or essentially incompatible with
Christian theism, the objector has failed to show (1) and (2) to be inconsistent.

That leads to (4), which, it is said, is incumbent upon anyone who accepts God's
omnibenevolence. Now I think that it is obvious that, all things being equal, an
omnibenevolent God prefers a world in which all persons are saved to a world containing
those same persons some of whom are lost. But (4) is stronger than this. It claims that God
prefers any world in which all persons are saved to any world in which some persons are
damned. But again, this is far from obvious. Suppose that the only worlds feasible for God in
which all persons receive Christ and are saved are worlds containing only a handful of persons.
Is it not at least possible that such a world is less preferable to God than a world in which great
multitudes come to experience His salvation and a few are damned because they freely reject
Christ? Not only does this seem to me possibly true, but I think that it probably is true. Why
should the joy and blessedness of those who would receive God's grace and love be prevented
on account of those who would freely spurn it? An omnibenevolent God might want as many
creatures as possible to share salvation; but given certain true counterfactuals of creaturely
freedom, God, in order to have a multitude in heaven, might have to accept a number in hell.
Hence, contrary to (4) the theist might well hold that

8. God prefers certain worlds in which some persons fail to receive Christ and are damned to
certain worlds in which all receive Christ and are saved.

So unless we have good reason to think that (8) is impossible or essentially incompatible with
Christian theism, the objector has again failed to show (1) and (2) to be inconsistent.

Since we have no good grounds for believing (3) and (4) to be necessary or essential to theism,
or for that matter even contingently true, the opponent of the traditional Christian view has
not succeeded in demonstrating that there is no possible world in which God is omniscient,
omnipotent, and omnibenevolent and yet in which some persons do not receive Christ and are
damned.

But, on the pattern of the Free Will Defense, we can yet go further. For I believe that we can
demonstrate not only that (1) and (2) have not been shown to be inconsistent, but also that
they are, indeed, consistent. In order to show (1) and (2) to be consistent, the orthodox
defender has to come up with a proposition which is consistent with (1) and which together
with (1) entails (2). This proposition need not be plausible or even true; it need be only a
possibly true proposition, even if it is contingently false.

Now we have seen that it is possible that God wants to maximize the number of the saved: He
wants heaven to be as full as possible. Moreover, as a loving God, He wants to minimize the
number of the lost: He wants hell to be as empty as possible. His goal, then, is to achieve an
optimal balance between these, to create no more lost than is necessary to achieve a certain
number of the saved.

But it is possible that the balance between saved and lost in the actual world is such an
optimal balance. It is possible that in order to create the actual number of persons who will be
saved, God had to create the actual number of persons who will be lost. It is possible that the
terrible price of filling heavenis also filling hell and that in any other possible world which was
feasible for God the balance between saved and lost was worse. It is possible that had God
actualized a world in which there are less persons in hell, there would also have been less
persons in heaven. It is possible that in order to achieve this much blessedness, God was
forced to accept this much loss. Even if we grant that God could have achieved a better ratio
between saved and lost, it is possible that in order to achieve such a ratio God would have had
to so drastically reduce the number of the saved as to leave heaven deficient in population
(say, by creating a world of only four people, three of whom go to heaven and one to hell). It is
possible that in order to achieve a multitude of saints, God had to accept an even greater
multitude of sinners.

It might be objected that necessarily a loving God would not create persons who He knew
would be damned as a concomitant of His creating persons who He knew would be saved.
Given His middle knowledge of such a prospect, He should have refrained from creation
altogether. But this objection does not strike me as true, much less necessarily so. It is possible
that God loves all persons and desires their salvation and furnishes sufficient grace for the
salvation of all; indeed, some of the lost may receive even greater gifts of prevenient grace
than some of the saved. It is of their own free will that people reject the grace of God and are
damned. Their damnation is the result of their own choice and is contrary to God's perfect will,
which is that all persons be saved, and their previsioned obduracy should not be allowed to
preclude God's creating persons who would freely respond to His grace and be saved.

But it might be further objected that necessarily a loving God would not create persons who
would be damned as a concomitant of His creating persons who would be saved if He knew
that the former would under other circumstances have freely responded to His grace and been
saved. Therefore, He should not have created at all. Now one might respond by denying the
necessary truth of such a proposition; one could argue that so long as people receive sufficient
grace for salvation in whatever circumstances they are, then they are responsible for their
response in such circumstances and cannot complain that had they been in different
circumstances, then their reaction would have been different. But even if we concede that the
objector's principle is necessarily true, how do we know that its antecedent is fulfilled? We
have seen that it is possible that some persons would not freely receive Christ under any
circumstances. Suppose, then, that God has so ordered the world that all persons who are
actually lost are such persons. In such a case, anyone who actually is lost would have been lost
in any world in which God had created him. It is possible, then, that although God, in order to
bring this many persons to salvation, had to pay the price of seeing this many persons lost,
nevertheless He has providentially ordered the world such that those who are lost are persons
who would not have been saved in any world feasible for God in which they exist. On the
analogy of transworld depravity,25 we may accordingly speak of the property of transworld
damnation, which is possessed by any person who freely does not respond to God's grace and
so is lost in every world feasible for God in which that person exists (this notion can, of course,
be more accurately restated in terms of individual essences and instantiations thereof).

Therefore, we are now prepared to furnish a proposition which is consistent with (1) and
entails (2):

9. God has actualized a world containing an optimal balance between saved and unsaved, and
those who are unsaved suffer from transworld damnation.

So long as (9) is even possible, one is consistent in believing both (1) and (2).

On the basis of this analysis, we now seem to be equipped to provide possible answers to the
three difficult questions which prompted our inquiry. ( i ) Why did God not create a world in
which everyone freely receives Christ and so is saved? There is no such world which is feasible
for God. He would have actualized such a world were this feasible, but in light of certain true
counterfactuals of creaturely freedom every world realizable by God is a world in which some
persons are lost. Given His will to create a world of free creatures, God must accept that some
will be lost. (ii) Why did God create this world when He knew that so many persons would not
receive Christ and would therefore be lost? God desired to incorporate as many persons as He
could into the love and joy of divine fellowship while minimizing the number of persons whose
final state is hell. He therefore chose a world having an optimal balance between the number
of the saved and the number of the damned. Given the truth of certain counterfactuals of
creaturely freedom, it was not feasible for God to actualize a world having as many saved as
but with no more damned than the actual world. The happiness of the saved should not be
precluded by the admittedly tragic circumstance that their salvation has as its concomitant the
damnation of many others, for the fate of the damned is the result of their own free choice.
(iii) Why did God not supply special revelation to persons who, while rejecting the general
revelation they do have, would have responded to the gospel of Christ if they had been
sufficiently well-informed concerning it? There are no such persons. In each world in which
they exist God loves and wills the salvation of persons who in the actual world have only
general revelation, and He graciously and preveniently solicits their response by His Holy Spirit,
but in every world feasible for God they freely reject His grace and are lost. If there were
anyone who would have responded to the gospel if he had heard it, then God in His love would
have brought the gospel to such a person. Apart from miraculous intervention, "a single
revelation to the whole earth has never in the past been possible, given the facts of geography
and technology";26 but God in His providence has so arranged the world that as the gospel
spread outward from its historical roots in first century Palestine, all who would respond to
this gospel, were they to hear it, did and do hear it. Those who have only general revelation
and do not respond to it would also not have responded to the gospel had they heard it.
Hence, no one is lost because of lack of information due to historical or geographical accident.
All who want or would want to be saved will be saved.

The above are only possible answers to the questions posed. We have been about a defense,
not a theodicy, concerning the soteriological problem of evil. What I have shown is that the
orthodox Christian is not inconsistent in affirming that an omniscient, omnipotent, and
omnibenevolent God exists and that some people do not receive Christ and are damned. It
might, of course, be countered that while the possibility of (9) shows the orthodox position to
be consistent, still (9) is highly improbable, given the world in which we live, so that (2) still
remains improbable, if not inconsistent, with regard to (1). But here the strength of the
position I have been defending emerges beyond that of Plantinga's Free Will Defense. For
while it seems fantastic to attribute all natural evil to the actions of demonic beings (e.g.,
earthquakes' being caused by the demons pushing about tectonic plates), (9) does not seem
similarly implausible. On the contrary I find the above account of the matter to be quite
plausible not only as a defense, but also as a soteriological theodicy. Indeed, I think that it
helps to put the proper perspective on Christian missions: it is our duty to proclaim the gospel
to the whole world, trusting that God has so providentially ordered things that through us the
good news will be brought to persons who God knew would respond if they heard it.
Conclusion

In conclusion, then, I think that a middle knowledge perspective on the problem of the
exclusivity of the Christian religion can be quite fruitful. Since all persons are in sin, all are in
need of salvation. Since Christ is God's unique expiatory sacrifice for sin, salvation is only
through Christ. Since Jesus and his work are historical in character, many persons as a result of
historical and geographical accident will not be sufficiently well-informed concerning him and
thus unable to respond to him in faith. Such persons who are not sufficiently well-informed
about Christ's person and work will be judged on the basis of their response to general
revelation and the light that they do have. Perhaps some will be saved through such a
response; but on the basis of Scripture we must say that such "anonymous Christians" are
relatively rare. Those who are judged and condemned on the basis of their failure to respond
to the light of general revelation cannot legitimately complain of unfairness for their not also
receiving the light of special revelation, since such persons would not have responded to
special revelation had they received it. For God in His providence has so arranged the world
that anyone who would receive Christ has the opportunity to do so. Since God loves all persons
and desires the salvation of all, He supplies sufficient grace for salvation to every individual,
and nobody who would receive Christ if he were to hear the gospel will be denied that
opportunity. As Molina puts it, our salvation is in our own hands.

Finally, I hope that no reader has been offended by what might appear to be a rather dry and
dispassionate discussionof the salvation and damnation of people apart from Christ. But with
such an emotionally explosive issue on the table, it seems to me that it is prudent to treat it
with reserve. No orthodox Christian likes the doctrine of hell or delights in anyone's
condemnation. I truly wish that universalism were true, but it is not. My compassion toward
those in other world religions is therefore expressed, not in pretending that they are not lost
and dying without Christ, but by my supporting and making every effort myself to
communicate to them the life-giving message of salvation through Christ.27

Endnotes

1 On Jesus' self-understanding, see James D. G. Dunn, Jesus and the Spirit (London: SCM Press,
1975), pp. 11 -92; Royce Gordon Gruenler, New Approaches to Jesus and the Gospels (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1982), especially pt. 1.

2 For arguments for the authenticity of this saying, see Dunn, Jesus, pp. 26-33, 371.

3 On the authenticity of this and other "Son of Man" sayings, see Seyoon Kim, The Son of Man
as the Son of God (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1985), especially pp. 88- 89, and
the literature cited there.

4 The authenticity of this saying is supported by its multiple attestation (cf. Lk. 13:22-30), its
Jewish milieu, and its coherence with Jesus's other teachings. The most plausible way to avoid
the inference would be to deny the universal scope of the saying, restricting it to the Jews of
Jesus' generation. But it hardly seems likely that Jesus believed that the majority of the Gentile
world would respond to him in repentance and faith.

5 Augustine De vera religione 3.5; 24.47; Augustine De civitate Dei 20.5; Thomas Aquinas
Summa contra gentiles 1. 6.

6 For a brief account, see my The Historical Argument for the Resurrection of Jesus during the
Deist Controversy, Texts and Studies in Religion 23 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1985),
pp. 82-92.

7 "Dogmatic Constitution on the Church" [Lumen Gentium 2.16], in The Documents of Vatican
II, ed. W. M. Abbott (New York: Guild Press, 1966), p. 34.

8 "Declaration on Non-Christian Religions," in Documents, pp. 663-66.

9 "The Church" [LG 2.16], p. 35.

10 For example, the constitution on the Church also affirms that anyone who knows that Christ
is the unique way of salvation and that the Church is his body and yet refuses to become a
Catholic cannot be saved ("The Church" [LG 2.14], in Documents, pp. 32-33). The ambiguity
and inconsistency of the documents probably reflects the struggle between traditionalists and
modernists in the Council.

11 John Hick, "Jesus and the World Religions," in The Myth of God Incarnate, ed. John Hick
(London: SCM, 1977), pp. 179-80.

12 For a defense of such a position, see Stuart C. Hackett, The Reconstruction of the Christian
Revelation Claim (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1985), pp. 242 46.

13 As we have seen, it is the testimony of Scripture that most persons who hear the gospel do
not respond with saving faith and, moreover, that most of those without the light of the gospel
do not even respond to the light of general revelation fact which sociological observations
would seem to confirm. Hence, I would agree with Hick that attempts to resolve the difficulty
by appeal to "anonymous Christians" or "implicit faith" or "the invisible church" are ultimately
unavailing, but not because they are clinging to the husk of the old theology, but precisely
because they are incompatible with it.

14 Of course, this is a controversial assumption, But for a defense of the doctrine of middle
knowledge see Alvin Plantinga, "Reply to Robert Adams, " in Alvin Plantinga, ed. James
Tomberlin and Peter Van Inwagen, Profiles 5 (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1985), pp. 372-82;
Jonathan L. Kvanvig, The Possibility of an All-Knowing God (New York: St. Martin's, 1986), pp.
121-48; Alfred J. Freddoso, "Introduction," in Luis Molina, On Divine Foreknowledge, trans.
with notes by Alfred J. Freddoso (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1988); and my
own Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990).

15 For Molina's doctrine, see Ludovici Molina De liberi arbitrii cum gratia donis, divina
praescientia, providentia, praedestinationae et reprobatione Concordia 4. This section has
been translated by Freddoso under the title in note 14. For Suarez's doctrine, see R. P.
Francisci Suarez, Opera omnia, ed. Carolo Berton, vol. 11: Opuscula theologica sex materiam
de auxiliis gratiae absolventia quaestionesque de scientia, libertate et justitia Dei elucidantia:
Opusculum II: De scientia Dei futurorum contingentium 2. 7.
16 In a proposition taken in the composite sense, the modal operator governs the proposition
as a whole, e.g., "Necessarily, if God sees Socrates sitting, he is sitting." When the proposition
is taken in the divided sense, the modal operator governs only a component of the
proposition, e.g. "If God sees Socrates sitting, he is necessarily sitting. " The distinction is
analogous to the more familiar difference between necessity de dicto and de re. In the case at
hand, the proposition "If God via His middle knowledge and decree has foreknown and chosen
to actualize a world in which Peter will be saved, then necessarily Peter will be saved" is true in
sensu composito, but false in sensu divivo.

17 For his reasoning see Alvin Plantings, God and Other Minds (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1967), pp. 115-55; Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity, Clarendon Library of Logic
and Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), pp. 164-95; Alvin Plantinga, "Self-Profile," in
Plantinga, pp. 36-55.

18 For an explanation of why each of these conditions must be met, see Plantinga, God and
Other Minds, pp. 116-17, and Plantinga, "Self-Profile," pp. 39-40.

19 See Thomas P. Flint, "The Problem of Divine Freedom," American Philosophical Quarterly 20
(1983): 257. According to Flint, although all worlds are possible for God to actualize, a world is
feasible for God to actualize if and only if it is a member of that proper subset of all possible
worlds determined by the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom which God knows to be true.

20 See Plantinga, "Self-Profile," pp. 50-52.

21 See Thomas P. Flint and Alfred J. Freddoso, "Maximal Power," in The Existence and Nature
of God, ed. Alfred J. Freddoso (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp.
93-98.

22 On Congruism, see Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, ed. A. Vacant, E. Mangenot, E.

Amann, (Paris: Letouzey et ane, 1923), s.v. "Congruisme," by H. Quilliet, vol. 3. 1, cols. 1120-
1138; Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, s.v. "Molinism," by Aelfred Whitacre; Th.
de Régnon, Banes et Molin (Paris: H. Oudin, 1883), pp. 122-60.

23 Suarez, Opera, vol. 11: Opuscula 1: De concursu et efficaci auxilio Dei ad actus libri arbitrii
necessario 3.6, 14, 16, 17, 20; Suarez, Opera, vol. 10: Appendix prior: Tractatus de vera
intelligentia auxi ii efficacis, ejusque concordia cum libertate voluntarii consensus 1, 12, 13, 14.

24 Suarez, De concursu et aux ilio Dei 3.14, 16; Suarez, De scientia Dei 2.6.9.

25 See Plantinga, Nature of Necessity , pp. 184-99.

26 Hick, "Jesus and World Religions," p. 180.

27 I am very grateful to Thomas Flint and Robert Gundry for helpful comments on the first
draft of this paper.

Should Peter Go to the Mission Field?

In an article in Faith and Philosophy 8 (1991), pp. 380-89, William Hasker related the cases of a
veteran missionary, Paul, and a prospective missionary, Peter, who were each reflecting upon
the implications of a middle knowledge perspective on the exclusivity of salvation through
Christ for their missionary tasks. Peter, in some confusion, wrote to Paul for advice concerning
whether he should leave his successful pastorate for the foreign field. Paul's response to
Peter's letter has been obtained and is here published.

Source: "Should Peter Go To The Mission Field?", Faith and Philosophy 10 (1993): 261-265.

Dear Peter,

Thank you for your recent letter. Before directing myself to your questions, let me share with
you some of my reflections on my own situation. I asked myself two questions:

(A) Are there persons to whom I failed to preach who are going to be lost and who would have
been saved had I gone to them with the gospel?

(B) Are there persons who have been saved as a result of my preaching, who would not have
been saved had they never heard the gospel?

The answer to (A) seemed in all probability, "No." For given

1. God has actualized a world containing an optimal balance between saved and unsaved in
which not all are saved, and those who are unsaved suffer from transworld damnation

(and assuming that no one else carries the gospel to the unreached tribe in question), it
follows that those to whom I failed to preach suffer from transworld damnation and so would
probably not have been saved even if I had gone to them with the gospel. So I concluded that
had I (or even Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, and the Pope!) gone to the tribe with the gospel,
that "would have resulted in no conversions."

But then I saw that this conclusion was overly hasty. While I still think that a negative answer
to (A) is plausible, it does not therefore follow that had I carried the gospel to the unreached
tribe there would have been no conversions. For were I to have gone to them with the gospel,
God, via His middle knowledge, would have known this logically prior to His decree to create a
world and so might well have decreed to create different persons in the tribe who He knew
would respond affirmatively to my message. Hence, if I had gone to the tribe, there might well
have been conversions. It must not be forgotten that from the Molinist perspective such affairs
are a matter of God's providential planning, not mere happenstance. That's why speculations
about what would have happened in the tribe had God sent Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, and
the Pope to them are misleading. Had such people gone to the tribe, then God in His
providence would perhaps not have placed persons there who suffer from transworld
damnation, but created persons who would freely embrace the gospel.

But that leads naturally to question (B). I figured that in all likelihood the answer to (B) is "Yes."
At first I took this affirmation to mean that had I not gone to them, many of those saved
through my ministry "would otherwise have been lost." But that does not follow. Rather
perhaps God, knowing via His middle knowledge that I would not go to the tribes in question,
would not have placed there the people which He in fact has, but would have created other
people instead who He knew would not in any case respond to the gospel even if they heard it.
Thus, if I had not preached to the tribes as I did, the people who were saved under my ministry
would not have been saved, but neither would they have been lost.

Thus, I can rest comfortably in my reflections: I am sure that people were saved through my
toil, but that no one who might have been saved was lost through my slackness.

Now let's consider your situation. You ask two questions:

(C) If I were to go to the mission field and preach to those who otherwise would never hear the
gospel, are there persons who would be saved as a result of my preaching, who would
otherwise be lost?

(D) If I were to fail to go to the mission field, are there persons to whom I would in
consequence not preach who would then be lost, and who would have been saved had I gone
to them with the gospel?

But the difficulty is, Peter, that your formulation of (C) and (D) is problematic. In the first place,
the questions are malformed, combining as they do the subjunctive and indicative moods. In a
deliberative conditional, both the antecedent and the consequent should be in the subjunctive
mood. Secondly, you falsely equate "not being saved" with "being lost." The real questions you
ought to be asking yourself are:

(C') If I were to go to the mission field and preach to those who otherwise would never hear
the gospel, would there be persons who would be saved as a result of my preaching, who
would otherwise not be saved?

(D') If I were to fail to go to the mission field, would there be persons to whom I would in
consequence not preach who would then not be saved, but who would have been saved had I
gone to them with the gospel?

Now in weighing a deliberative conditional, we generally assume that its antecedent is true. So
doing, you may justifiably assume that the answer to (C') is "Yes." But what if the antecedent is
false? In that case, though the answer to (C') remains affirmative, the answer to (C) is negative.
For if the antecedent of the counterfactual expressed interrogatively in (C') is false, that is, if
you do not go to the mission field, then God via His middle knowledge knew this and so has
not placed any potential converts on your unreached field. Thus, there are no persons who are
such that if you were to go to the field and preach the gospel they would be saved.
Nevertheless, it is still true that if you were to go to the field and preach the gospel, there
would be persons awaiting you as prospective converts, since God via His middle knowledge
would then have known that you would leave on your mission and so placed potential new
believers in your path.

Similarly, assuming that the antecedent of (D') is true, you should answer (D') in the negative
because the persons to whom you would fail to preach would suffer from transworld
damnation. But if the antecedent of the counterfactual expressed interrogatively in (D') is
false, the answer to (D') will remain negative, but the answer to (D) will be "Yes." For if the
antecedent is false, then God via His middle knowledge knew this and so has placed potential
converts on your soon to be reached field. Thus, there are persons who are such that if you
were to fail to go to the field and preach the gospel, they would not be saved. Nevertheless, it
is still true that if you were to fail to go to the field and preach the gospel, there would be no
persons out there who would be potential converts, since God via His middle knowledge would
then have foreknown your failure to go and so placed only persons suffering from transworld
damnation on the field.

Thus, you needn't be any more perplexed about your situation than than I am about mine. If
the antecedent of (C') is true and of (D') is false, there are actually existing persons who will be
saved as a result of your preaching who would otherwise not be saved. On the other hand, if
the antecedent of (D') is true and of (C') is false, then there are no persons who, as a result of
your failure, will be unsaved but would have been saved had you gone to the field.

In analyzing the logical aspects of the supposed problem, you go on to formulate a pair of
difficult counterfactuals. But again your formulation is problematic. Using the third person for
the sake of logical clarity, we ought to agree that:

2.(a) There exist persons who are such that either Peter will preach to them or Peter will not
preach to them.

(b) On the assumption that Peter will preach to them, it is true that "If Peter were to preach to
them, they would accept salvation."

(c) On the assumption that Peter will not preach to them, it is true that "If Peter were to
preach to them, they would reject salvation."

Now what is the problem with (2)? Your first objection is that the transworld damnation of
these persons depends on your actions. Not at all; your preaching to these people is merely
the evidence that they do not have transworld damnation and your not preaching to them to
them is evidence that they do. What does depend, at least in part, on your decision--and is
different from the above--is whether the people to whom you go are persons who suffer from
transworld damnation or persons who do not. How can this be? Your own answer seems to me
exactly correct, in the following sense: if God knew that you would not go to the tribe, He
would have placed in the tribe only persons afflicted with transworld damnation; but if He
knew that you would go to the tribe, He would have placed other persons in the tribe who
would have accepted the gospel. You object to this possibility that counterfactuals of
creaturely freedom are not under God's control. Correct; but as I understand this possibility,
no such control is envisioned. Your error lies in thinking that the same persons are involved
whether you go or not. The reason you failed to see this point, I believe, may be because your
vision has been obscured at this juncture by theological fatalism; you didn't see that the
existence of certain persons in the world can be a soft fact dependent upon your decision to
go to the mission field. But given God's middle knowledge and providence, their existence is,
indeed, a soft fact.

You next try to show formally that your version of (2) involves a contradiction. But your
schematization illicitly substitutes counterfactual implication for material implication. The
correct schematization should be

i.P(PA) P

ii.-P(~A) P

You then introduce the assumption

iii.~P ACP
but forget to treat (iii) as the assumption for a merely conditional proof. We can now derive

iii.~P ACP

But (i) is not equivalent to P A but to

iii.~P ACP

No contradiction, however, obtains between (iv) and (v) since (iv) is true only under the
conditional assumption of (iii).

Finally, it is evident that we need not reject

3. Most of those who accept the gospel and are saved would not have been saved had the
gospel not been preached to them.

You take (1) to imply that ". . . these persons, who are in fact saved, would have suffered from
transworld damnation if no one had preached the gospel to them" (p. 386). But this is implied
neither by (1) nor by the conjunction of (1) and (3). Suppose, for example, that if the gospel
had not been preached to them, then God would have foreknown this via His middle
knowledge and so not created them in the first place; hence, they would not have been saved.
But they are obviously not damned in such a world. Nor is there any reason to think that in
such a world it would be true that were they to exist and the gospel were to be preached to
them, they would not accept it.

In conclusion, then, the proposed Molinist solution to the soteriological problem of evil seems
to be a consistent defense. Moreover, it is a solution that is worthy of God, something that He
both could and would do. By contrast, the Augustinian-Calvinist solution makes the damnation
of the lost the result of God's choice, which seems abhorrent; and the Pelagian-Arminian
solution seems to make their damnation the result of historical and geographical accident,
which seems unconscionable. So what alternative is there? A risk-taking God, who lacks both
middle and foreknowledge, seems either indifferent to or helpless with respect to the fate of
the unreached, since He is doing so relatively little to bring the gospel to them. Of course, one
could simply deny that there is any soteriological problem of evil, as religious pluralists and
universalists do; but such positions unfortunately do violence to the biblical data and make
preaching the gospel superfluous.

So, Peter, if you feel God's call upon you to go to the foreign mission field, my advice is, by all
means, go, "knowing," in the words of the first Christian missionary, "that in the Lord your
labor is not in vain" (I Cor. 15. 58).

Your fellow-servant,

Paul

Middle Knowledge and Christian Exclusivism

David Hunt has criticized a middle knowledge perspective on Christian exclusivism on

evangelistic and metaphysical grounds. He argues that from a middle knowledge perspective
attempts to evangelize another person are either futile or superfluous and that an
omnibenevolent God would have created a post-mortem state of the blessed without ever
creating any of the damned. Hunt?s evangelistic objection is unfounded because by our
evangelistic efforts we may bring it about that people are saved who otherwise would not
have been saved. Hunt?s metaphysical objection errs in thinking that God judges people on
the basis of what they would do rather than what they in fact do.

Source: "Middle Knowledge and Christian Exclusivism." Sophia 34 (1995): 120-139.

In another place, 1 I have attempted to formulate and defend a middle knowledge perspective
on the exclusivity of salvation through Christ. The difficulty posed by the doctrine of Christian
exclusivism, it seems to me, is counterfactual in nature: granted that God has accorded
sufficient grace to all persons for their salvation, still some persons who in fact freely reject
God's grace might complain that they would have responded affirmatively to His initiatives if
only they had been accorded greater or more congruent grace. If God is omnibenevolent, He
must surely, it seems, supply all persons with grace efficacious for their salvation. But then
Christian exclusivism is incompatible with the existence of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent
God.

To this challenge the Molinist may respond that it is possible that there is no world feasible for
God in which all persons freely respond to His gracious initiatives and so are saved. Given the
truth of certain counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, it is possible that God did not have it
within His power to realize a world in which all persons freely respond affirmatively to His offer
of salvation. But in His omnibenevo- lence, He has actualised a world containing an optimal
balance between saved and unsaved. If it be further objected that God would not actualise a
world in which some persons are damned as a concomitant of others' being saved, though the
former, if placed under other circumstances, would themselves have freely accepted salvation,
then the Molinist may respond that God in His omnibenevolence has chosen not to create any
such persons; He has instead elected to create only persons who would freely reject Him in
any world which is feasible for Him to actualise, persons who, accordingly, freely possess the
property of transworld damnation. God in His providence has so arranged the world that as
the Christian gospel went out from first century Palestine, all who would respond freely to it if
they heard it did hear it, and all who do not hear it are persons who would not have accepted
it if they had heard it. In this way, Christian exclusivism may be seen to be compatible with the
existence of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God.

It seems to me that this middle knowledge perspective on what I have called the soteriological
problem of evil provides a solution of extraordinary power and fecundity. As a result, however,
of a lengthy and even-handed critique by David Hunt,2 it does seem to me that this
perspective is in need of clarification and qualification.
Preliminary Remarks
Before looking at Hunt's critique proper, I should like to make two comments on preliminary
concerns. First, I wish to endorse Hunt's emphasis on what he calls the practical debate
concerning the theological fruitfulness of a Molinist model. I think it extremely dubious that
the detractors of middle knowledge will succeed in demonstrating the logical incoherence of
that doctrine. To put the point as baldly as possible, when a person with the philosophical
acumen of an Alvin Plantinga is prepared to endorse and defend the coherence of this
doctrine,3 then it is somewhat unlikely that the doctrine will turn out to be demonstrably
logically absurd. Whether we choose to adopt such a model in our theological theorising is
likely to depend, therefore, on how fecund a source of theological insight we find Molinism to
be. In my own work, therefore, I have sought not merely to refute the theoretical objections to
middle knowledge,4 but also to exhibit its truly stunning theological richness.5 It will be on the
basis of such considerations, I believe, that the doctrine of middle knowledge is apt to stand or
fall.

This leads me to my second comment, namely, I think that Hunt has skewed both the
statement of the problem as well as the proposed middle knowledge solution. With respect to
the statement of the problem, Hunt's formulation is troublesome in a couple of respects. First,
he portrays hell itself as an evil and therefore tends to think of the problem in terms of the
prolongation of suffering into eternity. He writes, "... for many people, death will only
inaugurate a condition of incalculable misery enduring for all eternity. This multipl[ies] (by
infinity) the amount of evil that must be reconciled with the existence of an omnipotent and
omnibenevolent God…"6 Or again, "... post-mortem evil, which is infinitely greater than
premortem ... evil consists of the sufferings of the damned ...".7 But this is not, as I understand
it, the soteriological problem of evil. For on the Christian view, hell is in fact good and the
suffering of the damned just. The doctrine of hell constitutes the ultimate triumph of God's
justice over evil; it assures us that we do, after all, live in a moral universe in which justice will
prevail. A world without punishment for sin would be one in which the moral order is
ultimately vacuous, justice is compromised, and God is not holy. The doctrine of hell shows us
that God's terrible holiness and hatred of sin are not to be trifled with, that we cannot sin with
impunity, that our sins shall, indeed, find us out.8 Hell is thus a good thing; what is evil (and
tragic) is the damned's freely willed rejection of God's grace by which they consign themselves
to this state. Insofar as the damned continue in their hatred and rejection of God even in hell,
evil is prolonged into the postmortem state. But the evil consists in the perverse wills of the
damned, not in their being justly punished by God. The soteriological problem of evil does not
consist in the sufferings of the lost, but the apparent irreconcilability of God's existing and His
allowing human beings to freely make everlasting ruin of their lives.

The most difficult feature of this problem, as I said, is the counterfactual aspects of it. But Hunt
again skews the problem by casting it as "a matter of comparative justice."9 Certain people
exist in circumstances which are more conducive to their receiving God's grace than are the
circumstances in which others exist. "God appears to be in the position of a casino operator
who stacks the deck in favour of the house at certain tables while stacking it in favour of the
patron at other tables.''10 Moreover, some people who are lost would have been saved if they
had existed under different cir- cumstances. "... but it seems unfair that Jack, who would have
accepted Christ under other conditions, must pay with his immortal soul the price of God's
cosmic fine-tuning."11 Furthermore, some people will be saved, even though they, like Jack,
would have rejected Christ had they existed under similar circumstances. "This certainly
appears to be a clear case of comparative injustice."12

What this presentation of the problem omits is any mention of the doctrine of sin. According
to the Christian view, the natural man exists in a state of rebellion against God, spiritually
dead, alienated from God, and morally guilty before Him. The natural man is therefore already
under the just condemnation of God, meriting only His wrath. Salvation of anybody is
therefore only by God's grace, by His unmerited favour. God's choosing one person to be
saved and leaving the remainder to their just desserts can thus never be a matter of unfairness
or comparative injustice on God's part (except in the peculiar sense that God is not just toward
the one saved, having chosen to be merciful instead). I am reminded of a riveting scene from
Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo, in which two condemned criminals, Peppino and Andrea,
are being led to the executioner's block, when a last minute pardon, secured through the
influence of the Count, arrives on behalf of Peppino:
'For Peppino!' cried Andrea, who seemed aroused from the torpor in which he had been
plunged. 'Why for him and not for me? We ought to die together. I was promised he should
die with me. You have no right to put me to death alone. I will not die alone - I will not!' And he
broke from the priests, struggling and raving like a wild beast, and striving desperately to break
the cords that bound his hands ...

'What is passing?' asked Franz of the count ...

'Do you not understand,' returned the count, 'that this human creature who is about to die is
furious that his fellow sufferer does not perish with him? And, were he able, he would tear him
to pieces with his teeth and nails rather than let him enjoy the life he himself is about to be
deprived of? ...'

All this time Andrea and the two executioners were struggling on the ground, and he kept
exclaiming, 'He ought to die! - he shall die! - I will not die alone!"

'Look! look!' cried the count ...; 'look, for, on my soul, it is curious. Here is a man who had
resigned himself to his fate, who was ... about to die without resistance ... Do you know what
consoled him? It was that another partook of his punishment, that another partook of his
anguish, that another was to die before him! Lead two sheep to the butcher's ... and make one
of them understand his companion will not die: the sheep will bleat for pleasure ... But man -
man, whom God created in His own image - ... what is his first cry when he hears his fellow-
man is saved? A blasphemy! Honour to man, this masterpiece of nature, this king of the
creation!' And the count burst into a laugh; but a terrible laugh that showed he must have
suffered horribly to be able thus to laugh ...

Franz sprang back, but the count seized his arm and held him before the window.

'What are you doing?' said he. 'Do you pity him? If you heard the cry of "Mad dog!" you would
take your gun - you would, unhesitatingly, shoot the poor beast, who, after all, was only guilty
of having been bitten by another dog. And yet you pity a man who, without being bitten by
one of his race, has yet murdered his benefactor; and who, now unable to kill any one,
because his hands are bound, wishes to see his companion in captivity perish. No, no! Look!
look!'

This recommendation was needless. Franz was fascinated by the horrible spectacle. The two
assistants had borne Andrea to the scaffold; and there, spite of his struggles, his bites, and his
cries, had forced him to his knees. During this time the executioner had raised his mace, and
signed to them to get out of the way. The criminal strove to rise, but ere he had time the mace
fell on his left temple. A dull and heavy sound was heard, and the man dropped on his face like
an ox, and then turned over on his back. The executioner let fall his mace, drew his knife, and
with one stroke opened his throat, and mounting on his stomach, stamped violently on it with
his feet. At every stroke a jet of blood sprang from the wound.

This time Franz could sustain himself no longer, but sank half fainting into a seat ... The count
was erect and triumphant, like the Avenging Angel.13
The reason we find the Count's behaviour horrifying is not because he was unjust, even
comparatively so, in securing the pardon of only one man, when he could have rescued them
both; it is rather that he was only comparatively merciful. He apparently pitied the one
criminal, but not the other.
Similarly, in God's case, His salvation of some and reprobation of others seems to call into
question, not God's justice, since all deserve condemnation, but rather His love. God is
supposed to be omnibenevolent, and it seems difficult to deny that He would be more
benevolent if He were to save all persons rather than just some, should this lie within His
power.l4 The objection posed by the soteriological problem of evil, then, challenges, not God's
justice, but His love. The middle knowledge perspective I offered seeks to preserve God's
omnibenevolence, but modifies His omnipotence in order to maintain consistency with some
people's being lost.

Turning now to Hunt's statement of the middle knowledge perspective under discussion, we
again find that some correction is in order. First, according to Hunt, my favoured version of
Christian exclusivism is that "everyone is given an adequate chance in some possible life"
rather than that "everyone is given an adequate chance in this life."15 But this is a misun-
derstanding, since I repeatedly endorsed in my article Molina's view that "In choosing a certain
possible world, God commits Himself, out of His goodness, to offering various gifts of grace to
every person which are sufficient for his salvation."l6 Everyone in this life is given an adequate
chance of salvation; indeed, many of the lost may actually receive greater gifts of prevenient
grace and, thus, better chances of salvation than many of the saved. And I certainly do not
think that exclusivism is defensible by maintaining that everyone is given an adequate chance
of salvation in some possible world if they are denied it in the actual world.

Second, neither do I "note with approval"17 the solution to the question of the salvific status
of infants according to which God judges them on the basis of what they would have done had
they grown up and been confronted with the gospel. I give this as one among several
illustrations of "how often ordinary Christian believers naturally assume that God has middle
knowledge" and comment that "accepting the doctrine of middle knowledge does not
necessarily commit a person to holding such views," although "these views cannot be held
without assuming divine middle knowledge."18 It is also noteworthy that the illustration about
the salvation/damnation of infants is followed by a solution to the problem of those not
reached with the gospel which is not the solution to that problem which I defend. In fact, my
reason for rejecting both of these doctrinal employments of middle knowledge is very much
the same as the argument which Hunt will use against my position; namely, it would be unjust
to judge a person on the basis of what he would have done rather than on the basis of what he
actually did.
Hunt's Evangelistic Objection
With these emendations in mind, let us turn to Hunt's two-pronged critique. His first objection
is that my middle knowledge perspective involves "evangelical fatalism."19 This label is rather
puzzling. Rather than "evangelical," Hunt evidently means "evangelistic." The word "fatalism"
seems even more inappropriate, since fatalism is the doctrine that it is not within one's power
to do anything other than what one will do, and Hunt is not arguing that one does not have the
power to refrain from evangelising those whom one does. Rather his argument is aimed at
showing that it is somehow futile (or superfluous) to engage in evangelisation. Accordingly, his
accusation might be better expressed as "evangelistic futility."

In a nutshell, his argument is that if any person, say, Jack, suffers from transworld damnation,
then efforts to evangelise him are futile. If he suffers from transworld salvation, then efforts to
evangelise him are superfluous. If he is only contingently saved, then his salvation may well
depend on my sharing the gospel with him; but since he will be damned only if he suffers from
transworld damnation, I can be certain that had I failed to share the gospel with him, he would
still have been saved by some other means. Thus, my evangelistic efforts make no difference
to anyone's salvation; it is not possible for my efforts to result in someone's being saved who
would not otherwise have been saved.
Now even if this line of reasoning is correct, its conclusion does not strike me as very serious. It
certainly does not prove that Molinism is impossible or even contingently false. At best all it
proves is that my claim is false that the middle knowledge perspective I defended "helps to put
the proper perspective on Christian missions."20 Suppose, then, this claim is wrong. Nothing
whatsoever follows concerning the Molinist solution to the soteriological problem of evil, nor
does it follow that we have no motive for evangelisation. Our motivation for evangelisation
should perhaps instead be the privilege and joy of being God's instruments in bringing another
human being to salvation or, if nothing else, at least our moral duty to obey the Lord's
command to "make disciples of all nations" (Mt. 28.17).

But it does not seem to me that Hunt's argument succeeds in establishing even the modest
conclusion that my above missiological claim is wrong. For what is the "proper perspective on
Christian missions" of which I spoke? I explained, "... it is our duty to proclaim the gospel to the
whole world, trusting that God has so providentially ordered things that through us the good
news will be brought to persons who God knew would respond to it if they heard it."21 And
again, "Thus the motivation for the missionary enterprise is to be God's ambassadors in
bringing the gospel to those whom God has arranged to freely receive it when they hear it."22
The point of the middle knowledge perspective is that we engage in evangelisation, not
because if we fail to do so, people will go to hell who would otherwise have been saved - a
negative perspective which makes the damnation/salvation of the unreached hang on the
contingencies of our personal obedience and leads to a guilt-ridden conscience -, but rather
because we can be confident that God, knowing via His middle knowledge that we would
engage in certain activities, has so providentially arranged the world in advance that as we go
out sharing the gospel there will be people whom He has placed in our paths who will be ready
and willing to receive the good news we bring and to trust in Christ for salvation - a positive
perspective on missions which leads to joyous and victorious service for God.

The problem with Hunt's argument is that he seems to be operating under the presupposition
that a proper perspective on evangelism entails the notion that our activities must somehow
make a difference between someone's salvation and damnation. But this is not a
presupposition which I accept, nor has he given any justification for it.

In fact, however, we can show that on a middle knowledge perspective Hunt's desideratum
that "... my evangelical efforts might make a difference to someone's salvation - i.e. that it is
possible for these efforts to result in someone being saved who would not otherwise have
been saved" is fulfilled.23 Consider first the case of someone who is transworldly damned.
Here, a mea culpa: my intention in broaching this doctrine was to formulate a notion which is
in fact broader than transworld damnation as I defined it. What I really meant was what we
may call transcircumstantial damnation, which is a contingent property possessed by an
individual essence if the exemplification of that essence would, if offered salvation, freely
reject God's grace and be lost no matter what freedom-permitting circumstances God should
create him in. (I thus accept what Hunt calls the "Broad Interpretation.") I agree that attempts
to evangelise him will be futile, for no matter what we do he would freely reject God's grace.
But it does not follow that "Evangelism, on this account, is clearly futile."24 What follows is
that evangelisation of a transcircumstantially damned person is futile. But on a middle
knowledge perspective, some other person might exist in place of that person were we to
engage in evangelistic activities. Suppose a missionary decides to preach the gospel to an
unreached people group or, closer to home, that we decide to share our Christian faith with a
neighbour down the street. God, knowing via His middle knowledge that such outreaches
would be made, may have providentially arranged for people to be in the tribe or to be our
neighbours who He knew would respond to the gospel under those circumstances, people
whom He otherwise would not have created. Thus, as a result of our evangelistic efforts, there
might well be people in the world who will be saved through those efforts who otherwise
would not have been saved (because they would not have been created). Thus, our
evangelistic efforts do make the sort of difference Hunt desires: these efforts may result in
someone's being saved who would not otherwise have been saved. This, again, puts a very
positive perspective on Christian missions: by our obedience to our Lord's Great Commission
we can help to maximise the number of the saved, but we need not worry that through our
disobedience people who would have been saved will instead be lost. We need only note that
since we, of course, do not know who is transcircumstantially damned and who is not, we
should proclaim the gospel to all peoples indiscriminately, trusting that as we sow the seed of
the gospel some of it will fall on fertile ground, which God has prepared, and grow and bear
fruit.

The case of persons possessing the property of transworld or even transcircumstantial

salvation is similar. It seems obviously possible that, given God's decree in every possible world
to provide sufficient grace for salvation to every creature, some persons respond affirmatively
to God's grace and so are saved in any set of circumstances in which God creates them. Of
course, we do not know if any such persons exist in the actual world. If any do, then, as Hunt
says, they will accept Christ even if I fail to share the gospel with them. But from that it does
not follow that "there is no particular urgency to my doing so."25 For as in the case of the
transcircumstantially damned, it might be the case that if I were not to engage in certain
evangelistic activities, then God would not have created the transcircumstantially saved
individual. For a world in which I do not share the gospel with that individual but somebody
else does might be deficient in other respects. By my obedience to our Lord's command, I
could help to bring it about that such an individual have been created, thereby increasing the
number of the saved. That lends urgency enough to the task of evangelisation, without our
having to hold that such an individual would have been lost had I failed to share the gospel.

Finally, consider the case of the contingently, or better, cir- cumstantially, saved, persons who
are in fact saved but who would have been lost had they been placed in other
circmnstances.26 Hunt seems to think we have "little incentive" for sharing the gospel with
such persons, since they will fail to be saved only if they are transworldly damned, which they
are not. Thus, "... I can be certain that the effect I actually had in this case would have been
brought about in some other way if I had not acted as I did."27 Again, this conclusion does not
follow. For although it is true that if I do not evangelise such persons, they will still be saved, it
may equally be true that were I not to evangelise such persons, they would not be saved
(either because they would be damned or because God would have refrained from creating
them). The Christian who refrains from evangelisation excuses himself on the basis of
indicative conditionals; but the evangelist draws incentive from counterfactual conditionals.
The latter finds in these counterfactual conditionals sufficient motivation for sharing the
gospel, knowing that if he were to fail to act as he does, the effect he actually has might well
not be brought about in some other way.

In sum, Hunt's charge of evangelistic futility is both unfounded and insignificant. It is

insignificant because it undercuts neither the possibility nor the truth of the middle knowledge
perspective and because other motivations and incentives for evangelisation are readily
available. It is unfounded because whether people are transcircumstantially damned,
transcircumstantially saved, or circumstantially saved, we still have motives for engaging in
evangelistic activities. By sharing the gospel we can help to bring it about that people are
saved who would otherwise not have been saved. By neglecting evangelisation, we contribute
to bringing it about that there are not persons saved who otherwise would have been saved.
The one thing we cannot do is bring it about that people are damned who, if not for our
negligence, would otherwise have been saved (thank God!). We can thus help to maximise the
number of people in heaven and minimise the number of people in hell - a worthy incentive if
ever there was one!
Hunt's Metaphysical Objection
In a nutshell, Hunt's metaphysical objection is that it is possible that God create a full post-
mortem state of the blessed without ever creating any damned and that an omnibenevolent
God would prefer such an alternative to creating a world containing persons who are damned.
Hence, the Molinist alternative is untenable.28 Hunt reasons that since God judges people on
the basis of what they would do in various circumstances, there is no need to create a pre-
mortem world at all; rather He could simply create the blessed in heaven and never create any
of the damned. This objection is, however, based on the incorrect presupposition that
according to the middle knowledge perspective God judges people on the grounds of what
they would do rather than what they actually do. Hunt writes,

On the Molinist soteriology, ... God's assignment of souls to a post-mortem destiny is based
entirely on the truth of certain subjunctive conditionals about how those souls would have
responded under various pre-mortem conditions. These subjunctive conditionals, in turn, are
true independently of which pre-mortem world is actual ... But then the postmortem fate of
any soul can be determined independently of which world is actual; indeed, since this fate is
fixed logically prior to the actualization of a pre-mortem world, it is fixed whether or not a pre-
mortem world ever exists.29
B ut neither Molinism nor the middle knowledge perspective I defended implies that God
judges people on any basis other than their actual acceptance or rejection of God's grace. It
would be crazy to condemn someone who actually did not sin because he would have sinned
under other circumstances. People who are damned are so because they willingly reject God's
grace and ignore the solicitation of His Spirit. But what I suggested was that, if we are
concerned that it would be unloving on God's part to condemn someone for rejecting His grace
who would under other circumstances have accepted it, then we can hold that God in His
mercy would not create such persons, but would only create individuals who would have
rejected His grace under any circumstances. Thus, God is not unloving to condemn such
individuals on the basis of their rejection of God's sufficient grace for salvation in the actual
world. As I said before, this business about transworld or transcircumstantial damnation has
nothing to do with comparative injustice on God's part; it is all about His love. It states that
God is too loving to condemn someone who is only circumstantially damned - even though he
deserves damnation for his free rejection of God's sufficient grace -, and so He creates among
the lost only persons who would have rejected Him under any circumstances. But those who
are lost are judged only on the basis of what they have actually done. And, of course, the
doctrine of transcircumstantial damnation is merely an auxiliary doctrine proposed in response
to an objection based on what I regard as the very dubious assumption that necessarily, an
omnibenevolent God would not create persons who actually reject His grace and are lost, but
who would have been saved under other circumstances.

Contrary to Hunt's initial version of the metaphysical objection, therefore, a holy God could
not simply create persons in heaven (or hell) on the basis of what they would have done, but
never in fact did.30

Hunt now raises a second problem. Even if the post-mortem existence of the blessed entails
the pre-mortem existence of the blessed and the post-mortem existence of the damned
entails the pre-mortem existence of the damned, nevertheless the pre-mortem existence of
the blessed does not entail the pre-mortem existence of the damned.31 Since it is not God's
unconditional desire to create the damned but only His conditional will that they exist as the
necessary concomitant of the pre-mortem existence of the blessed, God would have no
reasons to create the damned if some other way could be devised to facilitate the appropriate
pre-mortem environment for the blessed. The other way proposed by Hunt is that in the place
of the damned God create soulless simulacra. Since these simulacra do things in the world like
give birth to real people, start wars, and run governments, it is evident that Hunt takes them to
be not mere phenomenal percepts of the blessed, but physical, mindless automata. He states,

It seems that each of us could have exactly the experiences we actually have even though
(unbeknown to us) none of the other bodies in our experience is itself a center of experiences.
Why then could not God arrange things so that only the elect have a psychological 'inside' - a
mind or soul - while the role of the damned (which is solely to elicit experiences in the elect) is
played by perfect simulacra?32
H unt anticipates the objection that such a strategy would involve deception on God's part
and is therefore unacceptable. He responds that ( i ) it is not clear that such a strategy involves
deception and (ii) the avoidance of people in hell constitutes a morally sufficient reason for
God's engaging in deception of this sort.

But to my mind, Hunt's proposal is so morally abhorrent and unworthy of God that He could
not entertain it. After all, we are not talking here of the sort of mild deception involved by, say,
Berkeleian idealism. We are talking about a world filled with automata with which the elect
enter into significant human relations, a scenario which constitutes a moral offence to the
elect of unspeakable proportions. Can one imagine being married to an automaton, giving
oneself to that thing in love, trust, and sexual surrender? Or giving birth to and loving an
automaton? Or having a mother and father or trusted friends who are automata? I cannot
convince myself that God would create such a world. And though the fate of the lost is tragic,
their creation involves no moral failure on God's part as does Hunt's proposal. It must always
be remembered that God loves the lost, desires their salvation, and provides sufficient grace
for them to be saved; their ability to reject God's love is testimony to their status as morally
significant persons whom God treats with due respect. By contrast Hunt's proposal involves
God's treating real persons without the moral respect they deserve.
Conclusion
The area of soteriology is one of the loci of dogmatic theology where a Molinist perspective
can be very helpful, especially when contrasted with its alternatives. We have seen that the
doctrine of hell poses a significant challenge, not to God's justice and holiness, but to His
omnibenevolence. Hell is a demonstration of God's justice, but it is difficult to understand why
an omnibinevolent God does not do more to prevent persons from going there. The middle
knowledge perspective I proposed holds that it may not be feasible for God to create a world
of free creatures in which more are saved and fewer are lost than in the actual world and that
God in His mercy providentially arranges the world such that any person who would receive
the gospel if he heard it does hear it.

Hunt's objection that this perspective leads to evangelistic futility is both insignificant and
false, insignificant because there are other cogent motivations for evangelisation and false
because, by helping to spread the gospel throughout the world, we can bring it about that
people will be saved who would not have been saved, had we remained silent.

Hunt's metaphysical objection that God could have created a plenitude of the saved without
creating any lost is based on a false assumption and an apparently impossible supposition. He
falsely assumes that Molinism holds that God judges people on the basis of subjunctive
conditionals concerning them rather than on the basis of their actual response to God's grace.
And his supposition that God might have created a world in which the lost are mindless
automata is morally unworthy of God and a violation of human personhood which does not
characterise the Molinist alternative.
For his own part, Hunt honestly admits that a biblical theist cannot be a universalist, but he
seems to be attracted to a risk-taking God who lacks middle knowledge and tries His best to
defeat and redeem evil. But such a God is the epitome of moral recklessness, since logically
prior His decree to create the world, He had no idea whatsoever whether anyone would enter
into divine fellowship or whether all might be lost forever in hell. Moreover, such a God seems
peculiarly indifferent to the fate of the billions of people who have never heard the gospel and
most of whom are therefore lost, but who, for all He knows, might receive Christ were they
only to hear of him, and yet whom He passes over in relative neglect, content to provide them
only inefficacious general revelation and to let His Church, plodding and uncertain, advance
the vacillating frontiers of the kingdom of light. Compared to that, Molinism seems a welcome
alternative.

Endnotes

1 William Lane Craig, "'No Other Name': A Middle Knowledge Perspective on the Exclusivity of
Salvation through Christ," Faith and Philosophy 6 (1989): 172-88.

2 David P. Hunt, "Middle Knowledge and the Soteriological Problem of Evil," Religious Studies
27 (1991): 3-26.

3 Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity, Clarendon Library of Logic and Philosophy (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1974), pp 169-89; idem, "Reply to Robert Adams," in Alvin Plantinga, ed. J.A.
Tomberlin and P. Van Inwagen, Profiles 5 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1985), pp. 372-82.

4 See William Lane Craig, Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom: The Coherence of
Theism I: Omniscience, Brill's Studies in Intellectual History 19 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991), pp. 246-
78.

5 In addition to the article mentioned in note 1, see William Lane Craig, "Middle Knowledge: a
Calvinist-Arminian Rapprochement?" in The Grace of God, the Will of Man, ed. C. Pinnock
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1989), pp. 141-64; idem, "'Lest Anyone Should Fall': A Middle
Knowledge Perspective on Perseverance and Apostolic Warnings, International Journal for
Philosophy of Religion 29 (1991): 65-74; idem, "Theism and Big Bang Cosmology," Australasian
Journal of Philosophy 69 (1991): 492-503.

6 Hunt, "Middle Knowledge," p. 5.

7 Ibid., p. 19. Hunt overreaches his bounds, however, when he speaks of "innumerable" and
"countless" souls in hell (Ibid., pp. 19, 22), for the number of the lost will be finite.

8 Of course, the good news of the gospel is that Christ has borne the punishment for our sins,
so that those who accept his pardon are no longer under God's condemnation.

9 Hunt, "Middle Knowledge," p. 6.

10 Ibid., p. 7.

11 Ibid., p.8.

12 Ibid.,
13 Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1946), pp. 430-
32.

14 This is, however, a moot point. Nevertheless, the New Testament teaches that God desires
the salvation of all persons (II Pet. 3.9; I Tim. 2.4), so that for the biblical theist a conflict arises
between God's desire and His failure to fulfill that desire.

15 Hunt, "Middle Knowledge," p. 24. He also errs in asserting that I cite Mt. 11.21-24 as a proof
text for middle knowledge. On the contrary, I explicitly state, "The passage in Matthew 11 is
probably religious hyperbole meant to underscore the depth of the depravity of the cities in
which Jesus preached (William Lane Craig, The Only Wise God [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker,
1987], p. 137).

16 Craig, "'No Other Name'," p. 179; cf. pp. 184, 186.

17 Hunt, "Middle Knowledge," p. 21.

18 Craig, Only Wise God, p. 188.

19 Hunt, "Middle Knowledge," p. 12.

20 Craig, "'No Other Name'," p. 186.

21 Ibid.

22 Craig, Only Wise God, p. 151

23 Hunt, "Middle Knowledge," p. 17.

24 Ibid., p. 14.

25 Ibid., p. 17.

26 It might be doubted whether there are any circumstantially saved people. One can
entertain a couple of arguments for a negative conclusion. Suppose
i. Jack is only circumstantially saved.
ii. Therefore, there are circumstances under which Jack would be damned.
iii. Necessarily, Jack would be damned if any of these circumstances were actual.
iv. Necessarily, God would not create any circumstances under which Jack is circumstantially
damned.

From these four premisses, the first argument continues:

v. Therefore, if any of these circumstances were actual, Jack would be transcircumstantially
damned.
vi. If Jack were transcircumstantially damned, then he would be damned in a.
vii. Therefore, if any of these circumstances were actual, Jack would be damned in a.
viii. If those circumstances sufficiently close to a were actual, it would be the case that were
the circumstances in a to be actual, Jack would be circumstantially saved.

But premisses (vii) and (viii) are incompatible, and therefore (i), (iii), or (iv) must be false. The
most dubious of these is (i). But why should we regard (viii) as true? It needs to be kept in
mind that counterfactuals are (on the possible worlds analysis of their truth conditions) true or
false relative to a world. In the possible world in which the envisioned circumstances exist,
different counterfactuals might be true of Jack, so that in that world it would be true that he
would not be saved under the circumstances in a, though if a is actual he would. Thus, (vii) may
be true rather than (viii). It might be rejoined that (viii) is plausible since Jack is saved under
the circumstances in a, and so if worlds were to obtain having circumstances which are fairly
close to those in a but under which Jack is damned, then the differences are not sufficient to
make us think that if the circumstances in a were to be actual instead, Jack would not still be
saved under such circumstances. It does not seem to me that our intuitions are firm here. But
the Molinist could concede the point, adding merely that in such a case God would necessarily
not have actualised those circumstances under which Jack is damned, since Jack would then be
only circumstantially damned, which we have assumed for the sake of argument to be
impossible. In other words, (viii) has an impossible antecedent and so describes no possible
world. Thus, if Jack is circumstantially saved, there is no possible world in which he is
circumstantially damned. That does not imply that Jack is saved in all worlds in which he exists,
for he is damned in all those worlds in which it is not true that if he were in the circumstances
in a, he would be saved.

These reflections lead to a second argument which proceeds from (i)-(iv) to

v'. Therefore, it is not possible that any of these circumstances be actual.
vi'. Therefore, it is not possible that Jack be damned.
vii'. If Jack is circumstantially saved, then it is possible that Jack be damned.
viii'. Therefore, Jack is not circumstantially saved.

Instead of inferring from (i)-(iv) that Jack would be transcircumstantially damned, (v') infers
that worlds in which he is damned are impossible, that is to say, there are no such worlds,
because he would be circumstantially damned in such worlds, which is impossible. It could be
responded that worlds containing some of the envisioned circumstances are possible if the
circumstances are quite different from those in the actual world, so that the counterfactual
would be true in those worlds that if Jack were in the circumstances in a, he would he damned.
But the Molinist could actually concede (v') and (vi'), but deny (vii') This strange position
results from the fact that the existence of an Anselmian God plays havoc with our modal
intuitions of what constitute possible worlds. Worlds which seem quite imaginable turn out to
be impossible because God would necessarily not permit them to be actual. In order for Jack to
be circumstantially saved, there need not exist any worlds in which he is damned, only
circumstances in which he is damned. This points up a deficiency in the currently fashionable
possible worlds analysis of counterfactuals, viz., its inability to deal with counterfactuals having
impossible antecedents. What we want is an account of counterfactuals which permits us to
say, "If God had actualised certain circumstances, then Jack, who is in fact saved, would have
been damned," which, assuming (v'), the possible worlds account does not permit us to say.
What we want to say is that the foregoing counterfactual is true, that Jack is only
circumstantially saved, and that God would not let him be damned. (For more on this problem,
see my "'Lest Any Should Fall'.") Of course, all our discussion is predicated on the truth of (iv),
which I regard as dubious.

27 Hunt, "Middle Knowledge," p. 17.

28 It is not altogether clear to me whether Hunt takes this objection to defeat a middle
knowledge perspective in its role as a defense or as a theodicy. He tends to speak in terms of
theodicy, in which case the proposed solution will continue to function successfully as a
defense, even if his objection is sound.
29 Hunt, "Middle Knowledge," p. 18.

30 A second misunderstanding evident in the above quotation is that counterfactuals of

creaturely freedom are true or false independently of which pre-mortem world is actual. As I
point out in response to Anthony Kenny's objection about counterfactuals' being true or false
"too late" for God to make use of them in actualising a world, the actual world is already
instantiated in certain respects logically prior to the divine decree, so that which
counterfactuals are true or false is based on which world is thus far actual. What is correct to
say is that counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are true or false logically prior to the
existence of the physical universe.

31 "Entails" is really too strong a word; I am saying that it is possible that there is no feasible
world involving a more optimal balance between saved and unsaved than the actual world, not
that there is no possible world having such a balance. The pre-mortem existence of the saved
does not entail the pre-mortem existence of the lost, since there is a possible world in which
billions of people freely receive salvation and no one is lost. But Hunt's argument requires only
feasible worlds anyway.

32 Hunt, "Middle Knowledge," p. 22.

Politically Incorrect Salvation

Contemporary religious pluralism regards the traditional Christian doctrine of salvation

through Christ alone as unconscionable. The problem seems to be that the existence of an all-
loving and all-powerful God seems incompatible with the claim that persons who do not hear
and embrace the gospel of salvation through Christ will be damned. Closer analysis reveals the
problem to be counterfactual in nature: God could not condemn persons who, though freely
rejecting God's sufficient grace for salvation revealed through nature and conscience, would
have received His salvific grace mediated through the gospel. In response, it may be pointed
out that God's being all-powerful does not guarantee that He can create a world in which all
persons freely embrace His salvation and that His being all-loving does not entail that, even if
such a world were feasible for Him, God would prefer such a world over a world in which some
persons freely reject His salvation. Furthermore, it is possible that God has created a world
having an optimal balance between saved and lost and that God has so providentially ordered
the world that those who fail to hear the gospel and be saved would not have freely
responded affirmatively to it even if they had heard it.

"Politically Incorrect Salvation." In Christian Apologetics in the Post-Modern World, pp. 75-97.
Ed. T. P. Phillips and D. Ockholm. Downer's Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity, 1995.

Introduction: The Problem of Religious Diversity

"Diversity" is the shibboleth of the post-modern age. Nowhere is this more so than in the
realm of theology or religious studies. The Harvard theologian Gordon Kaufman, observing
that throughout most of Christian church history "the fundamental truth of the basic Christian
claim was taken for granted, as was the untruth . . . of the claims of the church's opponents,"
says that by contrast today there has been "a striking change" among many Christian
theologians:
Instead of continuing the traditional attempts to make definitive normative claims about
'Christian truth' or 'the Christian revelation,' many now see the plurality among religious
traditions . . . as [itself] of profound human meaning and importance: what seems required
now, therefore, rather than polemical pronouncements, is careful and appreciative study,
together with an attitude of openness to what can be learned from this great diversity . . . .1

According to Kaufman, religious diversity calls for a response of openness, and openness is
incompatible with normative truth claims and polemical pronouncements (that is,
apologetics). Why is this so? Alan Bloom, I think, puts his finger on the answer when he
observes that there is a pervasive conviction in our culture that "Relativism is necessary to
openness; and this is the virtue, the only virtue, which all primary education for more than fifty
years has dedicated itself to inculcating. Openness--and the relativism that makes it the only
plausible stance in the face of various claims to truth . . .--is the great insight of our times."2
Religious diversity thus calls for a response of openness, and a necessary condition of
openness is relativism. Since religious relativism is obviously incompatible with the objective
truth of Christianity, religious diversity therefore implies that normative Christian truth claims
can be neither made nor defended.

Thus, we are led to the paradoxical result that in the name of religious diversity traditional
Christianity is de-legitimated and marginalized.
Religious Diversity and Objective Truth

But why think that the alleged links between religious diversity and openness on the one hand
and between openness and relativism on the other are so firmly forged? Why cannot someone
who believes in the normative truth of the Christian world view, as it comes to expression in
the catholic creeds, for instance, be open to seeing truth in and learning from other world
religions? Arthur Holmes has taught generations of Wheaton students that "all truth is God's
truth," regardless of where it is to be found. The orthodox Christian has no reason to think that
all the truth claims made by other world religions are false, but only those that are
incompatible with Christian truth claims. So why must one be a relativist in order to be open to
truth in other world religions?

No doubt the post-modernist answer to that question will be that the openness I contemplate
here is insufficient; it opens the door only a crack. But religious diversity beckons us to throw
open the doors of our minds to the legitimacy of religious truth claims logically incompatible
with those of the Christian faith. Religious diversity requires us to view these supposedly
competing claims as equally true as, or no less true than, or as equally efficacious as, Christian
truth claims.

But why does religious diversity imply this sort of openness? The post-modernist is advocating
much more than mere intellectual humility here. The post-modernist is not merely saying that
we cannot know with certainty which religious world view is true and we therefore must be
open-minded; rather he maintains that none of the religious world views is objectively true,
and therefore none can be excluded in deference to the allegedly one true religion.

But why think such a thing? Why could not the Christian world view be objectively true? How
does the mere presence of religious world views incompatible with Christianity show that
distinctively Christian claims are not true? Logically, the existence of multiple, incompatible
truth claims only implies that all of them cannot be (objectively) true; but it would be
obviously fallacious to infer that not one of them is (objectively) true. So why could it not be
the case that a personal God exists and has revealed Himself decisively in Jesus Christ, just as
biblical Christianity affirms?

More than that, it needs to be seriously questioned whether the post-modernist, pluralistic
position even makes sense. Here we need to ask ourselves what it means to say that an
assertion is true and how we may test for truth. A statement or proposition is (objectively) true
if and only if it corresponds to reality, that is to say, reality is just as the statement says that it
is. Thus, the statement "The Cubs won the 1994 World Series" is true if and only if the Cubs
won the 1994 World Series. In order to show a proposition to be true, we present evidence in
the form of either deductive or inductive arguments which have that proposition as the
conclusion. In both sorts of reasoning, logic and factual evidence are the keys to showing
soundly that a conclusion is true. Since a proposition that is logically contradictory is
necessarily false and so cannot be the conclusion of a sound argument, and since a proposition
validly inferred from factually true premisses ought to be regarded as factually true, one may
generalize these notions to say that a world view ought to be regarded as true just in case it is
logically consistent and fits all the facts known in our experience. Such a test for truth has been
called systematic consistency: "consistency" meaning obedience to the laws of logic and
"systematic" meaning fitting all the facts known by experience.3 Although such a test
precludes the truth of any world view which fails it, it does not guarantee the truth of a world
view which passes it. For more than one view could be consistent and fit all the facts yet
known by experience; or again, a view which is systematically consistent with all that we now
know could turn out to be falsified by future discoveries. Systematic consistency thus
underdetermines world views, and so (as in the case of all inductive reasoning) we must be
content with plausibility or likelihood, rather than rational certainty.

Now under the influence of Eastern mysticism, many people today would deny that systematic
consistency is a test for truth. They affirm that reality is ultimately illogical or that logical
contradictions correspond to reality. They assert that in Eastern thought the Absolute or God
or the Real transcends the logical categories of human thought. They are apt to interpret the
demand for logical consistency as a piece of Western imperialism which ought to be rejected
along with other vestiges of colonialism.

What such people seem to be saying is that the classical law of thought known as the Law of
Excluded Middle is not necessarily true, that is to say, they deny that of a proposition and its
negation, necessarily, one is true and the other is false. Such a denial could take two different
forms. (1) It could be interpreted on the one hand to mean that a proposition and its negation
both can be true (or both false). Thus, it is true both that God is love and, in the same sense,
that God is not love. Since both are true, the Law of Contradiction, that a proposition and its
negation cannot both be true (or both false) at the same time, is also denied. (2) On the other
hand, the original denial could be interpreted to mean that of a proposition and its negation
neither may be true (or neither false). Thus, it is not true that God is good and it is not true
that God is not good; there is just no truth value at all for such propositions. In this case it is
the classical Principle of Bivalence, that for any proposition, necessarily that proposition is
either true or false, that is denied along with the Law of Excluded Middle.

Now I am inclined to say frankly that such positions are crazy and unintelligible. To say that
God is both good and not good in the same sense or that God neither exists nor does not exist
is just incomprehensible to me. In our politically correct age, there is a tendency to vilify all
that is Western and to exalt Eastern modes of thinking as at least equally valid if not superior
to Western modes of thought. To assert that Eastern thought is seriously deficient in making
such claims is to be a sort of epistemological bigot, blinkered by the constraints of the logic-
chopping Western mind. But this judgement is far too simplistic. In the first place, there are
thinkers within the tradition of Western thought alone who have held the mystical views in
question (Plotinus would be a good example), so that there is no warrant for playing off East
against West in this matter. Secondly, the extent to which such thinking represents "the
Eastern mind" has been greatly exaggerated. In the East the common man--and the
philosopher, too--lives by the Laws of Contradiction and Excluded Middle in his everyday life;
he affirms them every time he walks through a doorway rather than into the wall. It is only at
an extremely theoretical level of philosophical speculation that such laws are denied. And even
at that level, the situation is not monochromatic: Confucianism, Hinayana Buddhism, pluralistic
Hinduism as exemplified in Sankhya-Yoga, Vaishesika-Nyaya, and Mimasa schools of thought,
and even Jainism do not deny the application of the classical laws of thought to ultimate
reality.4 Thus, a critique of Eastern thought from within Eastern thought itself can be--and has
been--made. We in the West should not therefore be embarrassed or apologetic about our
heritage; on the contrary it is one of the glories of ancient Greece that her thinkers came to
enunciate clearly the principles of logical reasoning, and the triumph of logical reasoning over
competing modes of thought in the West has been one of the West's greatest strengths and
proudest achievements.

Why think then that such self-evident truths as the principles of logic are in fact invalid for
ultimate reality? Such a claim seems to be both self-refuting and arbitrary. For consider a claim
like "God cannot be described by propositions governed by the Principle of Bivalence." If such
a claim is true, then it is not true, since it itself is a proposition describing God and so has no
truth value. Thus, such a claim refutes itself. Of course, if it is not true, then it is not true, as
the Eastern mystic alleged, that God cannot be described by propositions governed by the
Principle of Bivalence. Thus, if the claim is not true, it is not true, and if it is true, it is not true,
so that in either case the claim turns out to be not true. Or consider the claim that "God
cannot be described by propositions governed by the Law of Contradiction." If this proposition
is true, then, since it describes God, it is not itself governed by the Law of Contradiction.
Therefore, it is equally true that "God can be described by propositions governed by the Law of
Contradiction." But then which propositions are these? There must be some, for the Eastern
mystic is committed to the truth of this claim. But if he produces any, then they immediately
refute his original claim that there are no such propositions. His claim thus commits him to the
existence of counter-examples which serve to refute that very claim.5

Furthermore, apart from the issue of self-refutation, the mystic's claim is wholly arbitrary.
Indeed, no reason can ever be given to justify denying the validity of logical principles for
propositions about God. For the very statement of such reasons, such as "God is too great to
be captured by categories of human thought" or "God is wholly other," involves the
affirmation of certain propositions about God which are governed by the principles in
question. In short, the denial of such principles for propositions about ultimate reality is
completely and essentially arbitrary.

Some Eastern thinkers realize that their position, as a position, is ultimately self-refuting and
arbitrary, and so they are driven to deny that their position really is a position! They claim
rather than their position is just a technique pointing to the transcendent Real beyond all
positions. But if this claim is not flatly self-contradictory, as it would appear, if such thinkers
literally have no position, then there just is nothing here to assess and they have nothing to
say. This stupefied silence is perhaps the most eloquent testimony for the bankruptcy of the
denial of the principles of logical reasoning.

This same debate between certain Eastern mystical modes of thought and classical logical
thinking is being re-played in the debate between modernism and radical post-modernism. I
want to say clearly that I carry no brief for Enlightenment theological rationalism. According to
this modernist viewpoint, religious beliefs are rational if and only if one has evidence on which
those beliefs are based. While I am convinced that there is sufficient evidence to make
Christian belief rational, I do not believe that such evidence is necessary for Christian belief to
be rational.6 Not only is theological rationalism predicated on an epistemological
foundationalism which is overly restrictive and finally self-refuting, but the Christian belief
system itself teaches that the ground of our knowledge of the truth of the Christian faith is the
self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8. 15-16; I Jn. 5. 7-9). Argumentation and
evidence may serve as confirmations of Christian beliefs and as means of showing to others
the truth of those beliefs, but they are not properly the foundation of those beliefs. In a sense,
then, my own religious epistemology could be called post-modern, and the provisional
character of systematic consistency accords with intellectual humility advocated by post-
modernism. But radical post-modernists would scorn these sops. They would regard me
(perhaps justifiably!) as hopelessly pre-modern. They reject altogether Western rationality and
metaphysics, claiming that there is no objective truth about reality. "The truth," as John
Caputo says, "is that there is no truth."7 But such a claim falls prey to precisely the same
objections that I raised above8--indeed, the post-modernist claim is not really distinguishable
from certain Buddhist philosophies. To assert that "The truth is that there is no truth" is both
self-refuting and arbitrary. For if this statement is true, it is not true, since there is no truth. So-
called deconstructionism thus cannot be halted from deconstructing itself. Moreover, there is
just no reason that can be given for adopting the post-modern perspective rather than, say,
the outlooks of Western capitalism, male chauvinism, white racism, and so forth, since post-
modernism has no more truth to it than these perspectives. Caught in this self-defeating trap,
some post-modernists have been forced to the same recourse as Buddhist mystics: denying
that post-modernism is really a view or position at all. But then, once again, why do they
continue to write books and talk about it? They are obviously making some cognitive claims--
and if not, then they literally have nothing to say and no objection to our employment of the
classical canons of logic.
The Offense of Christian Particularism

So I ask again: Why could not the Christian world view be objectively true? Here we come to
the nub of the issue. The problem seen by post-modernists in the objective truth of the
Christian religion is that if that religion is objectively true, then multitudes of people, most of
whom belong to other religious traditions, find themselves excluded from salvation, often
through no fault of their own, due simply to historical and geographical accident, and
therefore destined to hell or annihilation.9 Many theologians find this situation morally
unconscionable and have therefore abandoned the objective truth of Christianity in favor of
various forms of religious relativism.

My own doctoral mentor John Hick is illustrative. Hick began his career as a fairly conservative
Christian theologian. One of his first books was entitled Christianity at the Centre. Then he
began to study more closely the other world religions. Though he had always had, of course,
an awareness of these competing world views, he had not come to know and appreciate their
adherents personally. As he learned to know some of the selfless, saintly persons in these
other traditions, it became unthinkable to him that they should all be condemned to hell.
These religions must be as equally valid channels of salvation as the Christian faith. But Hick
realized that this meant denying the uniqueness of Jesus; somehow he and his exclusivistic
claims must be got out of the way. He therefore came to regard the deity and incarnation of
Christ as a myth or metaphor.10 Today Hick is no longer even a theist, since what he calls "the
Real," which is apprehended in the various world religions under culturally conditioned and
objectively false religious paradigms, has objectively none of the distinctive properties of the
God of theism.
Universalism is thus the raison d'être for the response of openness to religious diversity
thought to be required by post-modernist thinkers.11 Total openness and religious relativism
spring from an abhorrence of Christian particularism.

The situation is not, however, so simple as it might seem at first. There are a number of
distinctions that need to be made here which are often blurred. On the one hand there is the
distinction between universalism and particularism of which I have spoken. Universalism is the
doctrine that all human persons will partake of God's salvation; particularism holds that only
some, but not all, human persons will partake of God's salvation. Particularism ranges between
broad and narrow versions, one extreme being that scarcely any shall be lost in comparison
with the saved and the other extreme that scarcely any shall be saved in comparison with the
lost.

A second set of distinctions needs to be made between pluralism, inclusivism, and exclusivism.
Christian exclusivism is the doctrine that salvation is appropriated only on the basis of Christ's
work and through faith in him. Although exclusivism is most naturally associated with
particularism, this is not necessary: Thomas Talbott, for example, would be one who is both a
Christian exclusivist and universalist, holding that hell is at worst a purgatory through which
people pass until they freely place their faith in Christ and are saved.12

Christian inclusivism is the doctrine that salvation is appropriated only on the basis of Christ's
work, but not necessarily through explicit faith in him. The term "inclusivism" has been
misused to denominate the doctrine that salvation is available to all persons on the basis of
Christ's work, but not necessarily through explicit faith in him.13 Analogously, "exclusivism"
has been misused to refer to the doctrine that salvation is available only on the basis of Christ's
work and through faith in him. These represent a misuse of terms because on these definitions
those who are saved could be extensionally equivalent--that is, the very same persons--
whether inclusivism or exclusivism is true.14 For clearly, just because salvation is available to
more people under inclusivism than exclusivism, so defined, that does not imply that more
people actually avail themselves of salvation under inclusivism than under exclusivism. But it
seems perverse to call a view inclusivistic if it does not actually include any more people in
salvation than so-called exclusivism.

Rather the distinction which has been mislabeled here is between what may be more
appropriately dubbed accessibilism and restrictivism. Restrictivists typically maintain that
salvation is accessible only through the hearing of the gospel and faith in Christ. Accessibilists
maintain that persons who never hear the gospel can avail themselves of salvation through
their response to God's general revelation alone.

Genuine inclusivists believe that salvation is not merely accessible to, but is actually accessed
by persons who never hear the gospel. Inclusivism may be broad or narrow, ranging all the
way from universalism to narrow particularism.

Although a broad inclusivism has become increasingly popular among Christian theologians
who want to maintain the truth of Christianity in the face of religious diversity, the view faces
severe biblical and missiological objections. Biblically, the teaching of the New Testament and
of our Lord himself seems to be that while the harvest of redeemed persons will be
multitudinous, the number of the lost will be also and perhaps even more multitudinous (Matt.
7.13-14; 24.9-12; Lk. 18.8b). In particular the fate of those who have not placed their faith
explicitly in Christ for salvation seems bleak, indeed (Rom. 1.18-32; Eph. 2.12; 4.17-19).
Missiologically, a broad inclusivism undermines the task of world mission. Since vast numbers
of persons in non-Christian religions are in fact already included in salvation, they need not be
evangelized. Instead missions are reinterpreted along the lines of social engagement--a sort of
Christian peace corps, if you will. Nowhere is this reinterpretation of missions better illustrated
than in the documents of the Second Vatican Council. In its Dogmatic Constitution on the
Church, the Council declared that those who have not yet received the gospel are related in
various ways to the people of God.15 Jews, in particular, remain dear to God, but the plan of
salvation also includes all who acknowledge the Creator, such as Muslims. The Council
therefore declared that Catholics now pray for the Jews, not for the conversion of the Jews
and also declares that the Church looks with esteem upon Muslims.16 Missionary work seems
to be directed only toward those who "serve the creature rather than the Creator" or are
utterly hopeless. The Council thus implies that vast multitudes of persons who consciously
reject Christ are in fact saved and therefore not appropriate targets for evangelization.

Unfortunately, this same perspective has begun to make inroads into evangelical theology. At
a meeting of the Evangelical Theology Group at the American Academy of Religion convention
in San Francisco in November of 1992, Clark Pinnock declared, "I am appealing to evangelicals
to make the shift to a more inclusive outlook, much the way the Catholics did at Vatican II."17
Pinnock expresses optimism that great numbers of the unevangelized will be saved. "God will
find faith in people without the persons even realizing he/she had it." He even entertains the
possibility of people's being given another chance after death, once they have been freed from
"whatever obscured the love of God and prevented them from receiving it in life." This move
leads immediately to universalism, as Talbott recognizes, since once a person is free of
everything that prevented his receiving salvation then, of course, he will receive salvation!
Pinnock poses the question whether his inclusivism does not undermine the rationale and
urgency of world mission. No, he answers, for (1) God has called us to engage in mission work
and we should obey. But this provides no rationale for why God commanded such a thing and
so amounts to just blind obedience to a command without rationale. (2) Missions is broader
than just securing people's eternal destiny. True enough; but with that central rationale
removed we are back to the Christian peace corps. (3) Missions should be positive; it is not an
ultimatum "Believe or be damned." Of course; but it is difficult to see what urgency is left to
world missions, since the people to whom one goes are already saved. I must confess that I
find it tragically ironic that as the church stands on the verge of completing the task of world
evangelization, it should be her own theologians who would threaten to trip her at the finish
line.

Finally, pluralism is the doctrine that salvation, or what passes for salvation, is appropriated by
persons through a multiplicity of conditions and means in various religions. One would
naturally associate pluralism with universalism, but that is not strictly necessary, for a religious
pluralist could regard some religions--say, those that focus on human sacrifice or cultic
prostitution--as not furnishing legitimate avenues of salvation, if salvation is defined solely in
"this-worldly" terms (for example, the production of a saintly character). If the pluralist is
motivated to solve the problem of persons' being excluded from salvation by historical or
geographical accident, however, then he must hold that salvation is accessible through every
religion. Otherwise the unfortunates who languish in degenerate religions would be excluded
from salvation.
The Problem with Christian Particularism

Now with those distinctions in mind, let us examine the problem before us more closely. What
exactly is the problem with Christian particularism supposed to be?
Is it simply that a loving God would not consign people to hell? It does not seem to be. For the
New Testament makes it quite clear that God's will and desire is that all persons should be
saved and come to a knowledge of the truth (2 Pet. 3.9; I Tim. 2.4). He therefore draws all
people to Himself by His prevenient grace. Anyone who makes a free and well-informed
decision to reject Christ thus seals his own fate: he is self-condemned. In a sense, then, God
does not send anybody to hell; rather people send themselves.

In response to these considerations, Marilyn Adams complains that damnation is so

inconceivable a horror that human beings cannot fully understand the consequences of
choosing for or against God.18 She infers that they cannot exercise their free choice in this
matter "with fully open eyes" and intimates that they should not be held fully responsible for
such a choice. She goes on to argue that the consequences of sin (namely, hell) are so
disproportionate to the sinful acts themselves that to make a person's eternal destiny hinge on
refraining from such acts is to place unreasonable expectations on that person. God's
punishing people with hell would be both cruel and unusual punishment: cruel because the
conditions placed on them are unreasonable and unusual because any sin, small or great,
consigns one to hell.

A great deal could be said about Adams's reservations; but a little reflection shows most of
them to be simply inapplicable to the situation as I envision it. First of all, Adams seems to
assume that the consequences of sin are optional for God, that He could have simply chosen to
absolve and sanctify everyone if He pleased. But for God simply to pardon all sin regardless of
the response of the perpetrator would be for God merely to blink at moral evil. If God left the
impenitent sinner unpunished, His holiness would be compromised and He would not be just.
And even if God determined to absolve everyone, how could He sanctify the impenitent
without violating their free will? So long as God respects the human freedom He has
bestowed, He cannot guarantee that everyone can be made willing and fit for heaven. Thus,
the consequences of sin are not arbitrarily up to God. They follow from the necessity of His
moral nature and the character of human agency. The question, then, is really whether God
was being cruel in creating significantly free creatures at all.

I do not think that Adams's argument shows that He was. Her argument concerns the undue
burden laid on people by God's placing them in a situation in which they will go to hell unless
they refrain from every single sin, no matter how small. But this is not our situation as I
understand it. The orthodox Christian need not hold that every sin merits hell or has hell as its
consequence; rather hell is the final consequence (and even just punishment) for those who
irrevocably refuse to seek and accept God's forgiveness of their sins. By refusing God's
forgiveness they freely separate themselves from God forever. The issue, then, is whether the
necessity of making this fundamental decision is too much to ask of man.

We may agree with Adams that no one fully comprehends the horror of hell--or, for that
matter, the bliss of heaven--and therefore fully grasps the consequences of his decision to
accept or reject God's salvation. But it does not follow that God's giving people the freedom to
determine their eternal destiny is therefore placing too heavy a responsibility on them. One
need not understand the full consequences of heaven and hell in order to be able to choose
responsibly between them. It is not unreasonable to expect of people that they should be able
to decide a fortiori between infinite loss and infinite gain simply on the basis of their
comprehension of the choice of enormous loss versus enormous gain. To deny to man the
freedom to make this decision would be to side with Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor in holding
that God ought to have given men earthly bread and circuses rather than the Bread of Heaven
because men cannot bear so dread a freedom.19
Moreover, Adams has left wholly out of account what I conceive to be an absolutely crucial
element in this story: the prevenient grace of God mediated by the Holy Spirit. God has not left
us to make this momentous choice on our own; rather it is the work of the Holy Spirit to
convict people of sin and righteousness and judgement (Jn. 16.8) and to draw them to Himself
(Jn. 6.44). God lovingly solicits and enables the human will to place one's faith in Christ. The
exercise of saving faith is not a work we perform for salvation, but merely the allowing of the
Holy Spirit to do His work in us. Far from making unreasonable expectations, God is ready to
equip anyone for salvation. We have only not to resist. When someone refuses to come to
Christ and be saved, therefore, it is only because he has willfully ignored and rejected the
drawing of God's Spirit on his heart. Therefore, I cannot see that in providing us with the
freedom to determine our destiny by deciding for or against Christ, God has placed an
unreasonable demand upon us.

Well, then, could the problem with Christian particularism be that God would not consign
people to hell because they were uninformed or misinformed about Christ? Again, this does
not seem to me to be the problem. For here the Christian may advocate some form of
accessibilism. We can maintain that God does not judge those who have not clearly heard of
Christ on the same basis as those who have. Rather we can, on the basis of Rom. 1-2, maintain
that God judges persons who have not heard the gospel on the basis of God's general
revelation in nature and conscience. Were they to respond to the much lower demands placed
on them by general revelation, God would give them eternal life (Rom. 2.7). Salvation is thus
universally accessible. Unfortunately the testimony of Scripture is that people do not in
general live up to even these meager demands and are therefore lost. No one is unjustly
condemned, however, since God has provided sufficient grace to all persons for salvation.
Perhaps some do access salvation by means of general revelation, but if we take Scripture
seriously we must admit that these are relatively few. In such a case, at most a narrow version
of inclusivism would be true. Thus, given accessibilism, I do not see that Christian particularism
is undermined simply by God's condemnation of persons who are not clearly informed about
Christ.

Rather the real problem with Christian particularism is much more subtle. If God is all-knowing,
then presumably He knew the conditions under which people would freely place their faith in
Christ for salvation and those under which they would not.20 But then a very difficult question
arises: why does God not bring the gospel to people who He knew would accept it if they
heard it, even though they reject the general revelation that they do have? Imagine, for
example, a North American Indian--let us call him "Walking Bear"--who lived prior to the
arrival of Christian missionaries. Suppose Walking Bear sees from the order and beauty of
nature around him that a Creator of the universe exists and that he senses in his heart the
demands of God's moral law implanted there. Unfortunately, like those described by Paul in
Rom. 1, Walking Bear chooses to spurn the Creator and to ignore the demands of the moral
law, plunging himself into spiritism and immorality. Thus suppressing the knowledge of God
and flouting His moral law, Walking Bear stands under God's just condemnation and is
destined for hell. But suppose that if only Walking Bear were to hear the gospel, if only the
Christian missionaries had come earlier, then he would have believed in the gospel and been
saved. His damnation then appears to be the result of bad luck; through no fault of his own he
was born at the wrong place or time in history; his salvation or damnation thus seem to be the
result of historical and geographical accident. Granted that his condemnation is not unjust
(since he has freely spurned God's sufficient grace for salvation), nonetheless is it not unloving
of God to condemn him? Would not an all-loving God have given him the same advantage that
is enjoyed by that lucky individual who lives at a place and time such that he hears the gospel?
Now Walking Bear's situation is essentially no different from the billions of people living today
who have yet to hear a clear presentation of the gospel. Is not God cruel and unloving to
condemn them?

It will be no good trying to answer this problem by any form of Christian inclusivism short of
virtual universalism. The difficulty with Christian inclusivism is not simply that it goes too far in
its unscriptural optimism that vast numbers of persons in non-Christian religions will be saved.
Rather in truth it does not go far enough: for inclusivism makes no provision for those who do
reject God's general revelation and so are condemned, but who would have accepted God's
special revelation and been saved, if only they had heard it. Because inclusivism deals only in
the indicative mood, so to speak, it is impotent to resolve a problem framed in the subjunctive
mood.
A Solution to the Problem of Particularism

Let us therefore make a fresh start on this problem. What is the logical structure of the
objection to Christian particularism? The claim seems to be that Christian particularism is
internally inconsistent in affirming on the one hand that God is all-powerful and all-loving and
on the other that some people never hear the gospel and are lost. But why think that these
two affirmations are inconsistent? After all, there's no explicit contradiction between them. So
the post-modernist or universalist must think that these two statements are implicitly
contradictory. But in that case there must be some hidden assumptions which need to be
surfaced in order to show that these two statements are in fact inconsistent. But what are
these hidden assumptions?

The detractor of Christian particularism seems to be making two hidden assumptions:

1. If God is all-powerful, then He can create a world in which everybody hears the gospel and is
freely saved.
2. If God is all loving, then He prefers a world in which everybody hears the gospel and is freely
saved.

Both of these assumptions must be necessarily true if Christian particularism is to be shown to

be inconsistent.

But are they necessarily true? I think not. Consider assumption (1). I think we should agree that
an all-powerful God can create a world in which everybody hears the gospel. But so long as
people are free, there's simply no guarantee that everybody in that world would be freely
saved. Sure, God could force everyone to repent and be saved by overpowering their wills, but
that would be a sort of divine rape, not their being freely saved. It's logically impossible to
make someone do something freely. So long as God desires free creatures, then, even He
cannot guarantee that all will freely embrace His salvation. In fact, when you think about it,
there is not even any guarantee that the balance between saved and lost in that totally
evangelized world would be any better that it is in the actual world! It certainly seems possible
that in any world of free creatures which God could create, some people would freely reject
His salvation and be lost. Thus, assumption (1) is not necessarily true.

The possibility that assumption (1) is false already invalidates the argument against Christian
particularism. But there is more: assumption (2) does not seem necessarily true either. Let us
concede that there are in fact possible worlds in which everyone hears the gospel and is freely
saved. Does God's being all-loving compel Him to prefer one of these worlds to be actual
world? Not necessarily; for these worlds might have over-riding deficiencies in other respects.
Suppose, for example, that the only worlds in which everybody hears and believes the gospel
are worlds with only a handful of people in them. In any world in which God creates more
people, at least one person refuses to receive God's salvation. Now I ask you: must God prefer
one of these radically underpopulated worlds to a world in which multitudes do freely receive
His salvation, even though others freely reject it? I think not. So long as God provides sufficient
grace for salvation to every person in any world He creates, He is no less loving for preferring
one of the more populous worlds, even though that implies that some people would freely
reject Him and be lost.

Thus, neither of the assumptions underlying the objection to Christian particularism is

necessarily true. It follows that no inconsistency has been shown in affirming both that God is
all-powerful and all-loving and that some people never hear the gospel and are lost.

But we can go one step further. We can actually show that it is entirely consistent to affirm
that God is all-powerful and all-loving and yet that many persons do not hear the gospel and
are lost. Since God is good and loving, He wants as many people as possible to be saved and as
few as possible to be lost. His goal, then, is to achieve an optimal balance between these, to
create no more of the lost than is necessary to attain a certain number of the saved. But it is
possible that the actual world (speaking here of the whole history of the world, past, present,
and future) has such an optimal balance! It is possible that in order to create this many people
who are saved, God also had to create this many people who are lost. It is possible that had
God created a world in which fewer people go to hell, then even fewer people would have
gone to heaven. It is possible that in order to create a multitude to saints, God had to create
an even greater multitude of sinners.

But then what about persons who will in fact be lost because they never hear the gospel, but
who would have been freely saved if only they had heard it? The solution proposed thus far
preserves God's goodness and love on a global scale, but on an individual level surely an all-
loving God would have done more to achieve such a person's salvation by ensuring that the
gospel reaches him. But how do we know that there are any such persons? It is reasonable to
assume that many people who never hear the gospel would not have believed it even if they
had heard it. Suppose, then, that God has so providentially ordered the world that all persons
who never hear the gospel are precisely such people. In that case, anybody who never hears
the gospel and is lost would have rejected the gospel and been lost even if he had heard it. In
supplying such persons with sufficient grace for salvation, even though He knows they will
reject it, God is already exhibiting extraordinary love toward them, and bringing the gospel
would be of no additional material benefit to them. Hence, no one could stand before God on
the judgement day and complain, "Sure, God, I didn't respond to your revelation in nature and
conscience. All right. But if only I had heard the gospel, then I would have believed!" God will
say to them, "No, I knew that even if you had heard the gospel, you still would not have
believed. Therefore, my judgement of you on the basis of my revelation in nature and
conscience is neither unloving nor unfair."

Thus, it is possible that God has created a world which has an optimal balance between saved
and lost and that those who never hear the gospel and are lost would not have believed in
Christ even if they had heard of him. So long as this scenario is even possible, it proves that it is
entirely consistent to affirm that God is all-powerful and all-loving and yet that some people
never hear the gospel and are lost.

Again Adams objects to this solution that human beings are so burdened with psychological
baggage from their childhoods that their freedom as adults is so impaired that they are no
more competent to be entrusted with their eternal destiny than a two year old is to be allowed
choices that could result in his death or serious injury.21 If God allowed people to consign
themselves to hell, then He would be cruel to create people in a world with the combination of
obstacles and opportunities found in the actual world and He would bear the primary
responsibility for their damnation.

It seems to me, however, that Adams has a deficient conception of divine providence. God in
HIs providence can so arrange the world that the myriad of obstacles and opportunities in the
actual world conspire to bring about an optimal balance between saved and lost. Certainly
these obstacles and opportunities are not equally distributed among persons in the actual
world, but as a just God who judges fairly God does not require that all persons must measure
up to the same standards, but judges them according to the obstacles and opportunities which
He has apportioned them. Moreover, as a loving God who wills and works for the salvation of
all persons, He ensures that sufficient grace is given to every person for salvation. With respect
to persons who do not respond to His grace under especially disadvantageous circumstances,
God can so order the world that such persons are exclusively people who would still not have
believed even had they been created under more advantageous circumstances. Far from being
cruel, God is so loving that He arranges the world such that anyone who would respond to His
saving grace under certain sets of circumstances is created precisely in one such set of
circumstances, and He even provides sufficient grace for salvation to those who He knows
would spurn it under any circumstances. In a certain sense, then, God is responsible for who is
saved and who is lost, for it is He who decrees which circumstances to create and what
persons to place in them. But this is simply a description of divine sovereignty, and I take it to
be a positive, biblical feature of this account that it affirms a strong doctrine of divine
sovereignty. At the same time, it affirms that in whatever circumstances people find
themselves, God wills their salvation, and by the Holy Spirit He supplies sufficient grace for
their salvation, and those persons are entirely free to embrace this salvation. Should they
reject God's every effort to save them, it is they, not God, who are responsible in the sense of
being culpable.

In the end Adams seems to recognize that the problems she raises are soluble for one who
advocates a robust doctrine of providence and prevenient grace, according to which God
arranges the world such that those who are lost would have been lost regardless of the
circumstances under which they were created. But she claims that even if every world of free
creatures which is feasible for God to create involved such impenitent persons, that still does
not imply that the impenitent need be damned: they could simply be annihilated or
maintained in a world like this one.22 But this riposte strikes me as very weak. The precise
form of damnation is an in-house debate among Christian particularists; the salient point is
that under Adams's two proposed scenarios not everyone enjoys salvation. Moreover, she
again seems to presuppose that the consequences of rejecting God's grace are to some degree
arbitrary rather than necessitated by divine justice, the demands of which could well rule out
scenarios like annihilation or maintenance in a world so suffused with God's common grace as
this one.

Finally, I, too, must deal with a missiological objection against my proposed solution.23 It
might be said, "Why, then, should we engage in the enterprise of world mission, if all the
people who are unreached would not believe the gospel even if they heard it?" But this
question is based on a misunderstanding. It forgets that we are talking only about people who
never hear the gospel. On the proposed view, God in His providence can so arrange the world
that as the gospel spread out from first century Palestine, He placed people in its path who
would believe it if they heard it. In His love and mercy, God ensures that no one who would
believe the gospel if he heard it remains ultimately unreached. Once the gospel reaches a
people, God providentially places there persons who He knew would respond to it if they
heard it. He ensures that those who never hear it are only those who would not accept it if
they did hear it. Hence, no one is lost because of a lack of information or due to historical and
geographical accident. Anyone who wants or even would want to be saved will be saved.

The solution I have proposed to the problem of Christian particularism is only a possible
solution. But I find it attractive because certain biblical passages also suggest something very
close. For example, Paul in his Aereopagus address declared,

The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not
live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything,
because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made
every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times
set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek
him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us (Acts
17.24-27).

This passage seems very consonant with the version of Christian particularism defended here.
Conclusion

In conclusion, then, salvation through faith in Christ alone may be and will no doubt remain
politically incorrect salvation in a day and age which celebrates religious diversity. But that
doctrine is not for all that therefore false. No inconsistency has been shown to exist in
Christian particularism and exclusivism; on the contrary, we have seen that it is entirely
consistent to maintain that God is both all-powerful and all-loving and yet that some people
never hear the gospel and are lost, since it is possible that God has so providentially ordered
the world as to achieve the optimal balance feasible between saved and lost in a world of free
creatures and that He supplies sufficient grace to every person for salvation, ensuring that
anyone who would respond to the gospel and be saved if he heard it lives at a time and place
in history where he does hear it. Hence, while the Christian may be open to elements of truth
found in non-Christian religions, his mind need not be agape to every religious truth claim,
since he is under no obligation to embrace religious relativism, having rejected its raison d'être
universalism. The proper response of the Christian to religious diversity is not merely to garner
the elements of truth from the world's religions, but, far more importantly, to share with their
adherents, in a spirit of love, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Endnotes

1 Gordon D. Kaufman, "Evidentialism: A Theologian's Response," Faith and Philosophy 6

(1989): 40. For an incisive response to Kaufman see Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann,
"Theologically Unfashionable Philosophy," Faith and Philosophy 7 (1990): 329-339. (The reader
should be aware that the original Stump-Kretzmann article has a page missing between 329-
330, which was supplied with a later issue of the journal.) They point that that Kaufman's
religious agnosticism is in fact less open than Christianity, since he must reject virtually all
religions truth claims as (objectively) false.

2 Alan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), p. 26.
Calling the conflict between relativism and objectivism "the central cultural opposition of our
time," Bernstein reports that as a result of this conflict "There is an uneasiness that has spread
throughout intellectual and cultural life. It affects almost every discipline and every aspect of
culture" (Richard J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism [Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1983], pp. 7, 1).
3 Edward John Carnell, having borrowed this notion from Edgar Sheffield Brightman,
popularized it among evangelical apologists (Edward John Carnell, An Introduction to Christian
Apologetics [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1948], pp. 56-64). My explication of this
notion is, however, different than Carnell's.

4 For a good discussion, see Stuart C. Hackett, Oriental Philosophy (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1979).

5 It might be said that when one denies the validity of such logical principles for propositions
about God, one is talking in a higher-level meta-language about propositions expressed in
another lower-level language, much as one could talk in German, for example, about the rules
for English grammar, and that since the principles of the lower-level language don't apply to
the meta-language, no self-refuting situations arise. But the futility of this response is evident
in the fact that one could then use the meta-language itself to describe God, since the
restrictions only apply to the lower-level language.

6 For support for both these claims, see my apologetics text Reasonable Faith (Wheaton, Ill.:
Crossways, 1994).

7 John D. Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1987), p.
156.

8 For a trenchant critique of post-modern (ir)rationality, as well as attempted responses, see

the discussion in James L. Marsh, John D. Caputo, and Merold Westphal, Modernity and its
Discontents (New York: Fordham University Press, 1992), pp. 18-19, 89-92, 168-74, 199-201.
See also the entertaining discussion in Plantinga, Twin Pillars, pp. 17-23.

9 I include annihilation here, not because I consider it a biblical alternative to hell, but to
underline the fact that adoption of annihilationism does nothing to solve the problem
occasioned by religious diversity of less than universal salvation.

10 John H. Hick, ed., The Myth of God Incarnate (London: SCM, 1977); idem, The Metaphor of
God Incarnate (London: SCM, 1993).

11 --As illustrated by Robert Müller's call for "a new universalism" in his plenary address
"Interfaith Understanding" at the 1993 Parliament of the World's Religions, August 28-
September 4, 1993, in Chicago, a veritable orgy of religious diversity.

12 Thomas Talbott, "The Doctrine of Everlasting Punishment," Faith and Philosophy 7 (1990):
19-42; idem, "Providence, Freedom, and Human Destiny," Religious Studies 26 (1990): 227-
245. For discussion see William Lane Craig, "Talbott's Universalism," Religious Studies 27
(1991): 297-308; Thomas Talbott, "Craig on the Possibility of Eternal Damnation," Religious
Studies 28 (1992): 495-510; William Lane Craig "Talbott's Universalism Once More," Religious
Studies 29 (1993): 497-518.

13 See John W. Sanders, No Other Name: an Investigation into the Destiny of the
Unevangelized, with a Foreword by Clark Pinnock (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans,
1992).

14 For example, Francis Schaeffer held that salvation is available to all persons through general
revelation but that no one avails himself of it (Francis Schaeffer, Death in the City, in The
Complete Works of Francis Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview, 2d ed.; vol. 4: A Christian View of
the Church [Westchester, Ill.: Crossways, 1982], p. 278).

15 "Dogmatic Constitution on the Church," in The Documents of Vatican II, ed. W.M. Abbott
(New York: Guild Press, 1960), p. 34.

16 "Declaration Non-Christian Religions," in Documents, pp. 663-666.

17 Clark Pinnock, "The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions," paper delivered at the
Evangelical Theology Group, American Academy of Religion, November 22, 1992.

18 Marilyn McCord Adams, "The Problem of Hell: A Problem of Evil for Christians," in Reasoned
Faith, ed. Eleonore Stump (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 308-311. For a
defense of the doctrine of hell, see Jonathan L. Kvanvig, The Problem of Hell (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1993).

19 Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance Garnett, ed. with a
Foreword by Manuel Komroff, Signet Classics (New York: New American Library, 1957), Book V,
Chap. 5, pp. 233-240.

20 Even if one denies that God has such knowledge, the problem still remains that some of the
unreached who are condemned might respond to the gospel if they heard it. So how could a
loving God fail to bring the gospel to them? Inclusivism offers nothing to solve this problem.

21 Adams, "Problem of Hell," pp. 313-314; cf. p. 319.

22 Ibid., pp. 315-316. She also alludes to Robert Adams's argument that there is no truth
concerning what people would do under different circumstances. But neither she nor her
husband has responded to the refutations of his argument by Alvin Plantinga, "Reply to Robert
M. Adams," in Alvin Plantinga, ed. James E. Tomberlin and Peter Van Inwagen, Profiles 5
(Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1985), pp. 371-382; Alfred J. Freddoso, "Introduction," to On Divine
Foreknowledge, by Luis de Molina, trans. with Notes by A.J. Freddoso (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1988), pp. 68-75; William Lane Craig, Divine Foreknowledge and Human
Freedom, Studies in Intellectual History 19 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1990), pp. 247-269. See further
Robert M. Adams, "An Anti-Molinist Argument," in Philosophy of Religion, ed. James E.
Tomberlin, Philosophical Perspectives 5 (Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeway Publishing, 1991), pp.
343-353, and my response, "Robert Adams's New Anti-Molinist Argument," Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research (forthcoming).

23 See the critiques of William Hasker, "Middle Knowledge and the Damnation of the Heathen:
a Response to William Craig," Faith and Philosophy 8 (1991): 380-389; David P. Hunt, "Middle
Knowledge and the Soteriological Problem of Evil," Religious Studies 27 (1991): 3-26. For
discussion see William Lane Craig, "Should Peter Go to the Mission Field?" Faith and
Philosophy 10 (1993): 261-265.

Talbott's Universalism

Thomas Talbott rejects the Free Will Defense against the soteriological problem of evil because
(i) it is incoherent to claim that someone could freely and irrevocably reject God, and (ii) in any
case, God would not permit such a choice to be made because it would pain the saved. I argue
that a Molinist account escapes Talbott's objections. It is possible both that in no world
realizable by God do all persons freely accept salvation and that God alone will endure the pain
of knowledge of the lost.

"Talbott's Universalism." Religious Studies 27 (1991): 297-308.

Introduction

In a pair of recently published articles,1 Thomas Talbott has presented a carefully constructed
case for universalism. He contends that from the principle
(P3) Necessarily, God loves a person S (with a perfect form of love) at a time t only if God's
intention at t and every moment subsequent to t is to do everything within his power to
promote supremely worthwhile happiness in S, provided that the actions taken are consistent
with his promoting the same kind of happiness in all others whom he also loves

and the propositions

1. God exists
2. God is both omniscient and omnipotent
3. God loves every created person
4. God will irrevocably reject some persons and subject those persons to everlasting
punishment

a contradiction may be deduced. For given (P3), (3) entails

5. For any created person S and time t subsequent to the creation of S, God's intention at t is
to do all that he properly can to promote supremely worthwhile happiness in S.

But (4) appears to entail

6. There is a person S and a time t subsequent to the creation of S such that it is not God's
intention at t to do all that be properly can to promote supremely worthwhile happiness in S.

But (5) and (6) are flatly contradictory.

Talbott considers three responses to this argument, which he calls "hard-hearted theism,"
"moderately conservative theism," and "biblical theism." I take it that these labels are
intended to be somewhat facetious. For according to Talbott, "biblical theism" is universalism,
which rejects (4) or any variant thereof. "So far as I can tell," he asserts, "not a single passage
in the Bible would require a believer to accept such a doctrine [as hell] and the whole thrust of
the New Testament is inconsistent with it . . . ."2 Although the New Testament contains
frequent references to hell, Talbott apparently takes such passages to refer to a merely
temporary state of the unrighteous in the afterlife, not to a permanent state. In essence, he
maintains that biblical theism teaches some version of the doctrine of purgatory, rather than
the doctrine of hell. But such a claim seems preposterous. What will Talbott do with the
assertion of Paul, for example, that God deems it just to inflict "vengeance upon those who do
not know God and upon those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They shall suffer
the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from
the glory of his might" (II Thess. 1.6-9)?3 Although one might perhaps dispute whether
permanent punishment or permanent annihilation of unbelievers is here contemplated,4 there
can be no reasonable doubt that the fate of the wicked is everlasting. If Talbott's argument is
cogent, therefore, it is not merely conservative theism which is inconsistent: it is biblical
theism itself which involves a self-contradiction. Talbott's argument is one more version of
what I have elsewhere called the soteriological problem of evil.5
Now what Talbott labels "moderately conservative theism"--but which I prefer to call "the Free
Will Defense"--would escape the contradiction by asserting that what Talbott calls "the
Rejection Hypothesis" is at least possibly true:
(RH) Some persons will, despite God's best efforts to save them, freely and irrevocably reject
God and thus separate themselves from God forever.

In response to this rejoinder, Talbott argues that (RH) is not possibly true. He provides two
reasons for this conviction: (i) the choice specified in (RH) is incoherent, and (ii) even if such a
choice were coherent, necessarily God would not permit it. In his defense of these two claims,
Talbott rejects the Molinist position on these issues as necessarily false, and it is on his
arguments against the Molinist version of the Free Will Defense that I wish to focus.
Is irrevocable rejection of salvation logically coherent?

Talbott contends that given

(D1) For any sinner S and time t, S finally rejects God forever at t if, and only if, (a) S freely
resolves at t never to be reconciled to God and (b) there is nothing both within God's power to
do and consistent with the interest of all other created persons that would (weakly) bring it
about, either at t or subsequent to t, that S freely repents of S's sin and is thereby reconciled to
God,

(RH) entails
7. There exists at least one sinner S such that nothing God can properly do would bring it about
that S freely repents of S's sin.

In passing it is perhaps worthwhile to note that (D1) seems a bit too strong: S need not resolve
at t never to be reconciled to God in order for his rejection to be in fact final. On the contrary,
he may kid himself into thinking that his rejection is merely for the present, that later he shall
appropriate God's salvation, unaware that because (b) is true he has forfeited his salvation
forever. Fortunately nothing in Talbott's argument depends on this point.

Rather Talbott regards (7) as logically impossible. He interprets (7) to mean that ". . . no action
God might perform, no punishment he might administer, no revelation he might impart . . .
would bring about repentance in S."6 But such an interpretation of (7) is mistaken. For (7)
specifies that God's options are limited to what He can properly do, and from (D1) we learn
that this entails that such actions be consistent with the interest of all other created persons.
But as I have attempted to explain in the piece referred to above,7 it is possible that even if for
every created person S there is a set of circumstances C in which S affirmatively responds to
God's grace and is saved, it does not follow that there is a compossible set of circumstances in
which all created persons are saved. It may be a tragic fact of the matter, for example, that
Joe, Jr. will freely respond to God's grace and be saved only if his father Joe, Sr. failed to do so.
The matter is even more difficult than that, however: for even if S1 would in C1 freely accept
God's offer of salvation and S2 would in C2 freely accept God's offer of salvation and C1 and C2
are compossible, it still does not follow that in (C1-C2) S1 would freely accept God's offer of
salvation nor that in (C1-C2) S2 would freely accept it. Hence, it is simply irrelevant whether it
seems intuitively possible that God could in some possible world or other win a free
affirmative response to His grace on the part of any person. It is possible that in every world
realizable by God, some persons irrevocably reject God. Hence, Talbott's task of proving that
(7) is broadly logically impossible seems hopeless.

This consideration alone undercuts Talbott's argument for point (i), for we see that even if the
sort of choice he envisions (to be explained below) is logically incoherent, that fact is
irrelevant, since neither (RH) nor (7) depends upon the possibility of any such choice being
made. It is possible that those who are lost would have responded to God's salvific grace had
they been in other circumstances (such as receiving greater punishment or revelation), but
these may not have been circumstances which God could properly bring about. Of course, in
any circumstances in which an individual finds himself, the Molinist holds that God imparts
sufficient grace for salvation and wills that such a person respond affirmatively to it, so that
God is neither unjust nor unloving toward those who reject His grace and are lost.

In the interest of theodicy, however, I cannot resist saying a bit more. Not only is the above
view obviously possible, but it also seems quite plausible to me as well. When one reflects on
all the complexities involved in a world, it does not seem surprising that there should be no
feasible worlds available to God in which all persons are freely saved (unless, perhaps, those
worlds are radically deficient in other respects, say, by having only a handful of people in
them). It may well be the case that for some people the degree of revelation that would have
to be imparted to them in order to secure their salvation would have to be so stunning that
their freedom to disobey would be effectively removed (cf. Talbott's own remark that ". . . a
degree of ambiguity, separation, and blindness is an essential element in the process by which
God creates a free, independent, and rational agent"8). The notion that some sinners shall
finally repent under the prolonged rigors of purgatory smacks of recantation under torture,
and we all know how likely it is that such professions are voluntary or sincere. It seems more
likely that sinners under God's punishment will grow even harder in their hearts and more
determined in their hatred of Him for treating them thus. The idea that God "jumps starts"
sinners by repeatedly removing them from their bondage and setting them on their course
again until they go right might well strike us as manipulative and disrespectful of their
freedom.9 Thus, I think it is not at all obvious that there are significant, feasible worlds in
which all persons freely come to know God's salvation.

Let us proceed, however, to examine why Talbott thinks that no one can irrevocably reject
God's grace despite God's best efforts to save them. To make a clear-sighted rejection of
salvation is to freely choose eternal misery for oneself. But this raises the question: "What
could possibly qualify as a motive for such a choice? As long as any ignorance, or deception, or
bondage to desire remains, it is open to God to transform a sinner without interfering with
human freedom; but once all ignorance and deception and bondage to desire is removed, so
that a person is 'free' to choose, there can no longer be any motive for choosing eternal misery
for oneself."10

Now the question being raised here by Talbott is whether it is broadly logically possible that
some creaturely individual essences suffer from what I have, in the article mentioned above,
called transworld damnation, that is to say, the property possessed by an essence if and only if
the exemplification of that essence freely rejects God's grace and so is lost in every world
feasible for God in which that exemplification exists.11 Talbott rejects this idea as "deeply
incoherent" because for any person S there are feasible worlds "in which God undermines
(over time) every possible motive that S might have for rejecting him."12

But is it not at least possible that the motive for rejecting God is the will to self-autonomy, the
stubborn refusal to submit one's will to that of another? Thus Milton's Satan, vanquished from
heaven into the abyss of hell, rages against God:
What though the field be lost?
All is not lost--the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
And what is else not to be overcome?
That glory never shall his wrath or might
Extort from me.

. . . . Farewell, happy fields,

Where joy forever dwells! hail, horrors! hail
Infernal world! and though profoundest Hell,
Receive thy new possessor--one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure; and, in my choice,
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.13

Is it not possible that some human persons will similarly insist with William Ernest Henley:
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.14

Even omnipotent love can be spurned if that love requires worship and submission of one's
will. Talbott might insist that such a motivation is irrational--but so what? Is it not possible that
the will to self-autonomy be so strong in some persons that they will act irrationally in
preferring self-rule to God's rule?

Indeed, does there need to be any motivation for such rebellion at all? Is it not possible that
some persons would deliberately choose evil for its own sake? In his short story "The Black
Cat," Poe describes the springs of a man's brutality to the family pet:
And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of PERVERSENESS. Of
this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that my soul loves, than I am
that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart--one of the indivisible
primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a
hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than
because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best
judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such? This spirit
of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable longing of the
soul to vex itself--to offer violence to its own nature--to do wrong for the wrong's sake only--
that urged me to continue and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the
unoffending brute. One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to
the limb of a tree;--hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest
remorse at my heart;--hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had
given me no reason of offense; hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin--
a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it--if such a thing were
possible--even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible
God.15
It seems to me quite clear that the above two accounts of human rebellion against God are
logically possible, and that short of a freedom-removing revelation of Himself, God may
therefore be unable to win the free response of some persons regardless of the circumstances
they are in. Of course, a person suffering from transworld damnation need not be a fiend; in
some worlds he may be a very good person, perhaps very close to receiving God's grace, but
nonetheless he fails to do so under even these circumstances. His motivations for not
responding to God's offer of salvation may be numerous and diverse in the various worlds in
which he exists; but even under the most favorable of circumstances such as Talbott envisions
it is possible that human self-will and perversity are such that even then he will not bow the
knee to God and be saved. Nor need God repeatedly "jump start" sinners or continually punish
them in order to discover this fact. Via His middle knowledge God could have so providentially
arranged the world that persons who do not accept His offer of salvation in this life are only
those who also would not accept it if given a second chance or more. It is possible that only
irremediably unbelieving persons are in hell; its door is thus locked, as Sartre opined, from the
inside. In fact it is possible that after offering sufficient grace for salvation to someone for a
time, there comes a point in a person's life after which God no longer pursues him but gives
him up to his fate, knowing that further prevenient grace would be futile. What we come to
see, therefore, is that (P3) is not true after all and that (3) does not therefore entail (5). On the
contrary because (RH) is possibly true, so is (4) and therefore (6).

This seems to me once more to settle the matter; but in the interest of theodicy I wish to add
that such an account strikes me as entirely plausible. Human evil and rebellion are so severe
that it seems quite plausible to me that some persons should freely and irrevocably reject God
despite His best efforts to save them. It is at this point that one of the greatest weaknesses in
Talbott's theological outlook emerges: it seems to me that he really does not have a serious
doctrine of sin. I should say that he greatly underestimates both human depravity and human
capacity to sin. Admittedly, it is insane that some people should resist every solicitation of the
Holy Spirit and every offer of God's grace and perhaps even prefer damnation to submission to
God's will, but that is the mystery of iniquity, a measure of the depth of human depravity. That
Talbott does not fully appreciate the Christian doctrine of sin is evident from his comments on
the self-collapse of evil:
. . . over a long period of time, moral evil inevitably destroys itself. On this picture, the root of
all moral evil as well as the ultimate source of human misery is separation from God (and from
others); and the motive for moral evil is the illusion that we can benefit ourselves at the
expense of others. So the more we separate ourselves from God, the more miserable we
become, and the more miserable we become, the more likely we are to shatter the illusion
that makes moral evil possible. Many of us can, of course, continue to deceive ourselves for
many years, perhaps even for the duration of our short seventy years or so in this life . . . . But
in the end, according to the New Testament picture, moral evil will always destroy itself and
thus becomes its own corrective.16

This is the picture of the New Testament? What has become of Christus Victor? It is God in
Christ who has entered our hopeless estate to conquer sin, death, and the devil. Without God's
supernatural grace, our separation from God would never be bridged; we should go from bad
to worse. But on Talbott's view, Satan himself must eventually be saved. I am not saying that it
is impossible to integrate the cross into Talbott's theology, and perhaps he has expressed
himself poorly here; but the very fact that he can speak of moral evil as self-destructive and
self-corrective rather than as divinely destroyed and corrected suggests that he lacks any
profound appreciation of human sin and willful estrangement from God.
In summary, Talbott's first argument for the logical impossibility of (RH) fails because (i) he has
not demonstrated that it is logically incoherent that some persons would freely reject God
regardless of what freedom-preserving circumstances they were in, and (ii) he has not
demonstrated that it is logically necessary that such persons exist in every feasible world of
free creatures in order that all worlds of free creatures which are feasible for God are worlds in
which some people freely reject God's grace and are lost.
Is it logically necessary that God prevent irrevocable rejection of salvation?

Talbott argues that even if the choice specified in (RH) were coherent, God would necessarily
prevent anyone from making such a choice. In particular, if God could not have populated a
universe with free agents none of whom are irredeemable (in the sense that they freely reject
Him forever) and God knew this fact via His middle knowledge, then He would have faced a
catastrophe of such proportions that He would have had no choice but to prevent it.

Talbott begins by asking whether it is possible that God was powerless to create a universe of
free agents all of whom are, of their own free will, eventually reconciled to Him. We have seen
that the Molinist could respond that no such world is feasible for God. Even if there are
circumstances in which each person would freely be reconciled to God and even if various sets
of such are compossible, it still does not follow that in such composite sets of circumstances,
all of the persons would freely be reconciled to God. It is possible that there is no world
feasible for God in which all persons are freely reconciled to Him. Talbott unfortunately
misexpresses this position in the following way:
Some created persons will freely enter into everlasting fellowship with God only if others
experience everlasting damnation and therefore everlasting separation from God. For it is at
least possible . . . that God faces this dreadful reality: He must bring about (weakly) the
damnation of some in order that he might bring about (weakly) the salvation of others; it is
possible, in other words, that the company of the redeemed in heaven will remain faithful only
because they have seen what happens to those who do not remain faithful.17

This last statement is completely erroneous, giving the impression that the reprobate are the
instrumentality by which God secures the perseverance of the redeemed. But the theory
implies no such thing; the redeemed could be completely unaware that there even are any
reprobate, but it jut happens to be the case that in all feasible worlds a number of people
freely reject God's grace and are lost. Thus, the Molinist could agree with Talbott that ". . . a
loving God would never engineer the damnation of some of those he could have saved . . . in
order to save others."18 The fact that some people freely reject God's grace and are lost could
be simply the unfortunate concomitant of many people's freely accepting God's grace and
being saved.

Now Talbott does not deny that God, in actualizing such a world, is neither unjust nor unloving
toward those who are lost in such a world (since He supplies sufficient grace for salvation to all
persons). But, Talbott argues, this defense of the compatibility of God's existence and
particularism "has neglected one all-important point: that the lost, simply by being lost
forever, would bring intolerable suffering, not only into their own lives, but into the lives of
others as well."19 What Talbott has in mind here is the "irreparable harm" done to the
redeemed who must suffer the agony of seeing their loved ones who have rejected God's
grace eternally damned.20 They cannot be supremely happy in heaven so long as they know
that those whom they love are eternally tormented in hell. Moreover, if God could have saved
their loved ones but did not, then the redeemed cannot truly love and worship God, since they
must disapprove of what God has done. Talbott draws three conclusions: (i) ". . . blessedness in
one person requires blessedness in others, and one person's ruin implies the ruin of others;"
(ii) ". . . the misery of those in hell would inevitably undermine the blessedness of those in
heaven;" and (iii) ". . . neither the salvation of one person, nor that of a given combination of
persons, could possibly require, in virtue of certain true 'counterfactuals of freedom,' the
damnation of other persons."21

Point (iii), admits Talbott, depends on what we mean by salvation. So he proposes as a partial
definition:
(D3) God brings salvation to a sinner S only if, among other things, God brings it about (weakly)
that the following conditions obtain: (a) that S is reconciled to God and in a state of supreme
happiness, (b) that S is filled with love for others and therefore desires the good for all other
created persons, and (c) that there is no fact F such that (i) S is ignorant of F and (ii) were S not
ignorant of F, then S would have been unable to experience supreme happiness.22

On the basis of (D3) Talbott maintains that a Molinist position like

8. God has actualized a world containing an optimal balance between saved and unsaved, and
those who are unsaved suffer from transworld damnation

is not even possibly true. For ". . . the eternal damnation of a single person would undermine
the salvation of all others; so an optimal balance between saved and unsaved could not
possibly include any who are unsaved."23 In point of fact, continues Talbott, nothing of
substance really hangs on (D3):
In a nutshell, the argument is this. God necessarily wills that each created person should
eventually achieve a special kind of blessedness: a kind that (a) exists only when one is filled
with love for others and (b) would survive even a full disclosure of facts about the world. But
such blessedness is simply not possible in a world in which some persons are eternally damned
and therefore eternally miserable.24

The bottom line is that if God, via His middle knowledge, knows logically prior to His creative
decree which persons or combinations thereof are irredeemable, then He would simply refrain
from creating those persons. Instead He would restrict Himself to those feasible worlds in
which all persons freely find salvation. If there are no such feasible worlds, then God would
either refrain from creating any persons at all or He would interfere with human freedom and
set his sights on goods that do not require free will."25 But in no case would He create worlds
in which even a single person rejects Him and is lost, lest the supreme happiness of the
redeemed be thereby undermined.

Now when one recalls that Talbott has set himself the heavy task of proving that the Molinist
position is not even broadly logically possible, then I think it is evident that he has fallen short
of his goal. For one could agree that knowledge of loved ones' damnation would undermine
the supreme happiness of the redeemed, but maintain that it is possible that the redeemed in
heaven have no such knowledge. Perhaps God obliterates from their minds any knowledge of
lost persons so that they experience no pangs of remorse for them. Talbott objects, "He could,
of course, always deceive me concerning the fate of my child, producing within me a kind of
blissful ignorance; but on the Christian view, God is incapable of such immoral deception."26
But I see no reason to think such shielding of His redeemed people from this painful
knowledge is immoral deception. We can all think of cases in which we shield persons from
knowledge which would be painful for them and which they do not need to have, and, far from
doing something immoral, we are, in so sparing them, exemplifying the virtue of mercy. In fact,
I see God's taking on Himself alone the suffering of knowing the state of the lost as a beautiful
extension of Christ's suffering on the cross. Alvin Plantinga has written,
Some theologians claim that God cannot suffer. I believe they are wrong. God's capacity for
suffering, I believe, is proportional to his greatness; it exceeds our capacity for suffering in the
same measure as his capacity for knowledge exceeds ours. Christ was prepared to endure the
agonies of hell itself; and God, the Lord of the universe, was prepared to endure the suffering
consequent upon his son's humiliation and death. He was prepared to accept this suffering in
order to overcome sin, and death, and the evils that afflict our world, and to confer on us a life
more glorious than we can imagine.27

In shielding His redeemed people from the painful knowledge of the estate of the damned and
bearing it Himself alone, God extends the suffering of the cross into eternity. The terrible
secret of the condition of the lost is buried for eternity deep within the breast of God, a
burden whose gravity only He can fully feel and yet which He willingly takes upon Himself in
order that He might bring free creatures into the supreme and unalloyed joy of fellowship with
Himself.

In any case, we need not appeal to God's action in expunging such knowledge from the minds
of the redeemed. It is possible that the very experience itself of being in the immediate
presence of Christ (cf. the beatific vision) will simply drive from the minds of His redeemed any
awareness of the lost in hell. So overwhelming will be His presence and the love and joy which
it inspires that the knowledge of the damned will be banished from the consciousness of God's
people. In such a case, the redeemed would still have such knowledge, but they would never
be conscious of it and so never pained by it. Such a solution seems obviously possible; indeed, I
should go so far as to say that it is quite plausible as well. Thus, contrary to Talbott, (i)
blessedness in the redeemed does not require blessedness in all persons; (ii) the misery of the
lost would not inevitably undermine the blessedness of the saved; and (iii) the salvation of any
combination of persons may, in virtue of certain true counterfactuals of freedom, only be
feasible if there are a number of persons who are lost.

But what, then, of (D3)? If we adopt as our possible solution to Talbott's dilemma the view that
Christ's immediate presence drives from consciousness the knowledge of the condition of the
lost, then all the conditions of salvation specified in (D3) are fulfilled. For the redeemed may
know that their loved ones are lost, but may not be conscious of it. Hence, the Molinist
solution specified in (8) is possible. Of course, Talbott could amend clause (c) of (D3) by
substituting for "ignorant" something like "unaware" or "unconscious." But then we are surely
justified in doubting that clause (c) is a necessary condition of salvation. So long as S is
supremely happy, how is his salvation annulled by the fact that if he were aware of F, then he
would not be supremely happy? Nothing seems to justify this condition either philosophically
or biblically. How then is it incumbent on the Christian theist? Although Talbott thinks (D3) is
inessential to his argument, the misgivings I have expressed about (c) also apply to clause (b) in
his nutshell statement of the argument. I see no reason, biblical or philosophical, to think that
God necessarily wills the special kind of blessedness which Talbott's argument requires.

In sum, it is possible that in the moment logically prior to His decree to create, God knew via
His middle knowledge either that there were no feasible worlds in which all persons are freely
saved or that any such feasible worlds possessed other outweighing deficiencies. In choosing
to actualize a world, God determined to offer sufficient grace for salvation, not only to those
who He knew would accept it, but even to those who He knew would reject it. Since He knew
that due to the light of His presence to the redeemed in heaven, the misery of the lost would
not undermine the blessedness of the redeemed, He was not obliged to refrain from creation
nor to set His sights on lesser goods that do not require free will, but could create a world in
which a great multitude from every tongue and tribe and people and nation should freely
come to receive His grace and so enter into the boundless joy of His fellowship forever. The
pain of the awareness of the state of the damned, persons for whom Christ died and who
stubbornly resisted the drawing of the Holy Spirit, remains known to God alone.
Conclusion

A Molinist version of the Free Will Defense certainly seems to be logically consistent and
therefore escapes Talbott's statement of the soteriological problem of evil. It is possible that in
no realizable world do all persons freely accept salvation, since it is possible that either the
circumstances in which each person would be saved are not compossible or that if they are, in
the composite circumstances not every person would freely accept salvation. Moreover, it is
possible that some persons out of self-will or perversity would freely reject God no matter
what the circumstances He placed them in. The tragic fact that every world feasible for God is
one involving persons who are lost would not force Him to refrain from creation or to annul
creaturely freedom lest the blessedness of the saved be undermined, for it is possible that the
reality of lost persons is a fact which He alone shall endure for eternity.28

Endnotes

1 Thomas Talbott, "The Doctrine of Everlasting Punishment," Faith and Philosophy 7 (1990):
19-42; idem, "Providence, Freedom, and Human Destiny," Religious Studies 26 (1990): 227-45.

2 Talbott, "Everlasting Punishment," pp. 19-20.

3 It is not open to Talbott to respond here as he does to Swinburne's citation of Matt. 25.45
that the word for punishment (kolasiV) always refers in Greek secular literature to remedial
punishment and that one may not derive doctrine from the incidentals of a parable. For Paul is
teaching doctrine, and his words for vengeance and punishment are edikhsiVand dikh, which
carry the sense of divine retribution and revenge. Moreover, Talbott's claim about the
meaning of kolasiV is false and in any case somewhat irrelevant, since kolasiV is used in
Judaeo-Christian literature for punishment which is non-remedial, e.g. IV Macc. 8:9 concerning
severe punishments preceding execution, II Cl. 6.7 concerning eternal punishment from which
there is no salvation, Dg. 9.2 concerning punishment and death as the reward of the
unrighteous (Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel, s.v. "kolazw,
kolasiV" by Johannes Schneider). One need not be a Greek scholar to recognize that the
"eternal punishment" (kolasiV aiwnioV ) spoken of by Jesus cannot be remedial, since taking
eternity to be purged of one's sin does not differ from never being purged of it! As for Talbott's
hermeneutical point, the contrast between eternal punishment and eternal life features
prominently in the parable and fits the context of divine judgement in the whole discourse,
echoes Old Testament teaching (Dan. 12.2), and is straightforwardly affirmed by Jesus
elsewhere (John 5.28-29; Mark 9.48).

4 See brief discussion and references in John Wenham, The Enigma of Evil: Can We Believe in
the Goodness of God? (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan: 1985).

5 William Lane Craig, "'No Other Name': A Middle Knowledge Perspective on the Exclusivity of
Salvation through Christ," Faith and Philosophy 6 (1989): 172-88.

6 Talbott, "Everlasting Punishment," pp. 36-37.

7 Craig, "'No Other Name'," pp. 172-88.

8 Talbott, "Human Destiny," p. 236.

9 A point made effectively by Larry Lacy, "John Hick on Universal Salvation," paper presented
at the Eastern Division meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers, University of Dayton,
April 7-9, 1988.

10 Talbott, "Everlasting Punishment," p. 37; cf. idem, "Human Destiny," p. 228: "If God is the
ultimate source of human happiness and separation from God can bring only greater and
greater misery into one's life, as Christians have traditionally believed, then why should
anyone want to reject God?"

11 Craig, "'No Other Name'," p. 184. Talbott cannot mean by God's best efforts what He can
properly do in the actual world, for we have already seen that what God can properly do to
win some sinner's repentance may be far less than the sort of optimal circumstances which
Talbott envisions. What Talbott is speaking of is a choice to reject God's grace irrevocably
under the most conducive of circumstances for repentance. The question is whether there is
what Molinists call "congruent grace" for every free creature God could possibly create.

12 Talbott, "Human Destiny," p. 237.

13 John Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. with an Introduction by Northrup Frye (New York: Holt,
Rinehart, and Winston, 1962), Bk. I. 105-111, 249-263; pp. 8, 12.

14 William Ernest Henley, "Invictus," in Modern Verse, rev. ed., ed. Oscar Williams (New York:
Pocket Books, 1958), p. 111.

15 Edgar Allan Poe, "The Black Cat," in Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Garden
City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966), p. 65.

16 Talbott, "Human Destiny," p. 244. Cf. idem, "Everlasting Punishment," p. 39.

"The more one freely rebels against God, the more miserable and tormented one becomes;
and the more miserable and tormented one becomes, the more incentive one has to repent of
one's sin and to give up one's rebellious attitudes. But more than that, the consequences of sin
are themselves a means of revelation; they reveal the true meaning of separation and enable
us to see through the very self-deception that makes evil choices possible in the first place. We
may think we can promote our own interest at the expense of others and that our selfish
attitudes are compatible with enduring happiness, but we cannot act upon such an illusion, at
least not for a long period of time, without shattering it to pieces. So in a sense, all roads have
the same destination, the end of reconciliation, but some are longer and windier than others."

The view expressed here is clearly Pelagian and obviates the need for any gracious action of
God at all in drawing sinners to Himself. It grossly underestimates the lostness and
hopelessness of sinners apart from God.

17 Talbott, "Human Destiny," p. 235.

18 Ibid., p. 238.

19 Ibid., p. 237.

20 Ibid., p. 238; cf. idem, "Everlasting Punishment," pp. 38-39.

21 Talbott, "Human Destiny," p. 239.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid., p. 240.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid., p. 241; cf. p. 245.

26 Talbott, "Human destiny," pp. 237-38.

27 Alvin Plantinga, "Self-Profile," in Alvin Plantinga, ed. James Tomberlin and Peter Van
Inwagen, Profiles 5 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1985), p. 36.

28 I am indebted to Thomas Talbott for his remarks on the first draft of this article.

Talbott's Universalism Once More

In the debate between universalism and particularism, three questions need to be addressed:
(I) Has it been shown that it is inconsistent to affirm both that God is omniscient, omnipotent,
and omnibenevolent and that some persons do not receive Christ and are damned? (II) Can
these two affirmations be shown to be consistent? (III) Is it plausible that both affirmations are
true? In this on-going debate with Thomas Talbott, I argue that Talbott has failed to show the
above affirmations to be inconsistent, that while one cannot prove them to be consistent, it is
plausible that they are, and that it is also plausible that both affirmations are in fact true.

"Talbott's Universalism Once More." Religious Studies 29 (1993): 297-308.

Introduction

In my No Other Name,1 I asserted that detractors of Christian exclusivism are, in effect, posing
a soteriological problem of evil, to wit, that the proposition

1. God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent

is inconsistent with the proposition

2. Some persons do not receive Christ and are damned.

Following the strategy of the Free Will Defense, I pointed out that if (1) and (2) are to be
shown to be broadly logically inconsistent, then the anti-exclusivist must furnish some
additional premiss(es) which meets the following conditions: (i) its conjunction with (1) and (2)
formally entails a contradiction, (ii) it is either necessarily true, essential to theism, or a logical
consequence of propositions that are, and (iii) its meeting conditions (i) and (ii) could not be
rationally denied by a right-thinking person. These are very exigent conditions, and I confessed
that I was "not aware of anyone who has tried to supply the missing premise which meets
these conditions."2

Within a year, Thomas Talbott published his independently developed critique of Christian
exclusivism in which he attempted to do just that.3 The missing premiss is
(P3) Necessarily, God loves a person S (with a perfect form of love) at a time t only if God's
intention at t and every moment subsequent to t is to do everything within his power to
promote supremely worthwhile happiness in S, provided that the actions taken are consistent
with his promoting the same kind of happiness in all others whom he also loves.

(P3) in conjunction with (1) entails

3. For any created person S and time t subsequent to the creation of S, God's intention at t is
to do all he properly can to promote supremely worthwhile happiness in S,

and (3) is contradictory to

4. There is a person S and a time t subsequent to the creation of S such that it is not God's
intention at t to do all that he properly can to promote supremely worthwhile happiness in S,

which is entailed by Talbott's

5. God will irrevocably reject some persons and subject those persons to everlasting
punishment,

which Talbott would say is entailed by my (2). In accordance with condition (iii) above, Talbott
must regard the truth of (P3) as rationally undeniable by a right-thinking person, and so also
the entailment of (4) by (5) and (5) by (2).

Now in my response to Talbott,4 I denied that Talbott had proven that the conjunction of (1),
(P3), and (5) formally entails a contradiction, and I questioned the truth of (P3). More than
that, I recalled arguments from my original piece intended to show that (1) and (5) are
consistent and, moreover, even plausibly true.

This brief review is necessary because in his most recent contribution to the debate5 Talbott
subtly shifts the burden of proof from his own shoulders to those of the Christian exclusivist.
There are two moves in the Free Will Defense: (I) to deny that the objector has shown (1) and
the evil in question to be broadly logically inconsistent, and (II) to suggest a possibly true
proposition that together with (1) entails the existence of the particular evil, thereby showing
the co-existence of God and that evil to be broadly logically possible. The Theodicist will go on
to argue that (III) the proposed proposition is not merely possible but plausible. By focusing in
his most recent contribution almost exclusively on task (II), Talbott turns the spotlight away
from (I) and from the extraordinarily difficult task with which he is confronted in meeting
conditions (i), (ii), and (iii) above. Let us in the interest of clarity therefore address separately
the three questions raised by the Free Will Defense and theodicy.
(I) Has Talbott Shown (1) and (2) to be Inconsistent?

Depending on how the terms in Talbott's premisses are defined, it is open to the Free Will
Defender to point to lacunae at various places in Talbott's argument. For example, one might
deny that Talbott has shown (P3) to be true, since God's omnibenevolence does not entail that
He intends to do everything He properly can to promote a person's salvation (even in hell) if
He has already offered that person sufficient grace for salvation and knows that further efforts
would be futile. If Talbott amends (P3) such that omnibenevolence requires merely that God
always wills the salvation of every person, then the Free Will Defender may deny that (5)
entails a suitably amended (4), since God's judicial rejection of a person who has freely
spurned His offer of salvation is consistent with God's willing that that person instead accept
His offer. If Talbott should define "rejection" in such a way that it entails "not intending the
rejected person's salvation," then the Free Will Defender will deny that (2) entails (5). All of
these moves derive from the Free Will Defender's belief that what Talbott calls the Rejection
Hypothesis is possibly true:

(RH) Some persons will, despite God's best efforts to save them, freely and irrevocably reject
God and thus separate themselves from God forever.

If Talbott is to carry his argument, he must show that (RH) is broadly logically impossible.

With that in mind, consider now the opening section to Talbott's most recent contribution.
Here Talbott distinguishes between broadly logical possibility and merely epistemic possibility,
observing that a proposition's epistemic possibility does not suffice to establish its broadly
logical possibility. He rightly points out that questions about the latter "are sometimes
exceedingly difficult and, and as a practical matter, impossible to answer in a definitive way."6
Talbott complains that I set out "a bewildering number of unsupported assertions to the effect
that this or that is logically possible"7 in an effort to deduce the possibility of what he calls the
"Damnation Thesis":

(DT) There exists at least one sinner S such that S will never be reconciled to God and thus
never be saved.

He charges that I confuse what it would take to demonstrate that, for all we know, (DT) is true
and what is would take to demonstrate that (DT) is possible in the broadly logical sense.
Talbott argues that I fail both to establish that (DT) is broadly logically possible and to
undermine Talbott's argument that (DT) is broadly logically impossible.

The distinction to which Talbott draws our attention, namely, epistemic versus broadly logical
possibility, is an important one, and one which I failed to delineate clearly in my critique of
Talbott's universalism. Nonetheless, it does seem to me that Talbott is trying to foist upon me
a project which I did not undertake in that critique, for I neither enunciated (DT) nor tried to
provide a deductive proof of it, as Talbott represents. Rather my principal strategy was to
attack Talbott's demonstration that (RH) is impossible. He argued that (RH) is not broadly
logically possible because (i) the choice specified in (RH) is incoherent and (ii) even if such a
choice were coherent, necessarily God would not permit it. I in turn tried to show that his
arguments for (i) and (ii) fail.8 My primary purpose was thus not to establish the possibility of
(DT), but to deny that Talbott had shown (RH) to be impossible.

It is important to understand that at this stage of the argument the Free Will Defender is not
obliged even to establish the broadly logical possibility of (RH); all he has to do is undercut the
universalist's attempts to prove its impossibility. And the crucial point here is that in order for
the Free Will Defender to accomplish that purely negative and defensive task, the epistemic
possibility of (RH) is sufficient. Thus I am under no obligation to establish the broadly logical
possibility of the Molinist hypotheses I set forth; all that is required to defeat Talbott's
arguments against (RH) is that some of the "bewildering number" of suggestions I made be
epistemically possible.
I.1. Is the Choice Specified in (RH) Incoherent or even Relevant?

Let us consider Talbott's first argument against (RH), that the choice involved is incoherent.
Here two issues arise.
I.1.i. Has Talbott Proved that Transcircumstantial Damnation is Incoherent?
The debate here mirrors the seventeenth century Jesuit discussions concerning whether God
has congruent grace for every possible person, that is, grace that is extrinsically efficacious but
infallible in winning the free consent of the person to whom it is extended. According to the
Congruist, God has congruent grace for every person He could possibly create. Now Talbott is a
sort of modern day Congruist; nay, more than that, he is a hyper-Congruist. For he holds not
merely that God has congruent grace for every possible person, but that, necessarily, God
extends such grace to every person He creates, that it is logically impossible for any person to
finally reject God's salvation. Congruism is a radical and traditionally controversial doctrine; its
falsity certainly seems epistemically possible. But Talbott contends that hyper-Congruism can
be shown to be true. His argument is that in every possible world God does His best to save
every person and that there can be no motivation for any person to reject irrevocably God's
best efforts to save him. I responded with two questions: (i) Is it not possible that the
motivation for rejecting God is the will to self-autonomy? (ii) Is it not possible that rejection of
God is due to a perversity which lacks any further motivation? So long as an affirmative answer
to these questions is even epistemically possible, Talbott has failed to prove that (RH) is
logically impossible and, hence, that (1) and (2) are inconsistent.

In response to my first suggestion, Talbott emphasizes that the decision to reject God must be
"fully informed," which notion Talbott defines as a decision which "does not rest upon
ignorance, or misinformation, or deception of any kind."9 Given that God wills for me exactly
what I at the most fundamental level will for myself--supreme happiness--, it follows that
anyone in a position to make a fully informed decision would have the strongest conceivable
motive not to reject God. Talbott's view is that in every possible world containing persons in
need of salvation, God eventually places every person in circumstances in which he can make a
fully informed decision about salvation and that that decision is always affirmative.

Persuasive as this argument may appear at first blush, a little reflection will show, I think, that
it is question-begging. For suppose that the Free Will Defender responds that someone may be
fully informed of God's intentions toward him, but out of a desire for self-autonomy refuses
even supreme happiness because its price--bowing the knee to God--is too high. Why could
not someone's hatred of God be so implacable that he chooses to reject God rather than be
supremely happy? Talbott responds that such a case--Milton's Satan being a paradigm
example--"hardly illustrates a fully informed decision to reject God."10 Such a person still
labors under so many illusions that his decision is less than fully informed.

This response raises the suspicion that in Talbott's view any decision to reject God is by
definition not "fully informed," since a person who rejects God is by the nature of the case
deceived and no "fully informed" decision rests upon "deception of any kind." We are then
surely justified in questioning whether those who reject God must make "fully informed"
decisions in this idiosyncratic sense. For such persons may be justifiably regarded as self-
deceived, and it may not be within God's power to destroy such self-deceptions without
destroying such persons' freedom. For self-deception, being rooted in the free will of the
creature, may be as impenetrable to God's grace as the free will itself. Indeed, in the
traditional Christian doctrine of sin the notion of self-deception lay at the heart of all man's
sinful acts and especially his sinful rejection of God. God's removal of the deception in some
persons could require abrogation of the freedom of the will itself, the freedom to deceive
oneself. Talbott's argument is therefore either question-begging (because it rules out a fully
informed rejection of God by definition) or unsound (because nothing requires that sinners'
rejection of God be free of deception of any sort). Because Talbott's argument is not cogent, it
remains epistemically possible that the will to self-autonomy may motivate rejection of God
even under the best of circumstances.
What then of my second suggestion, the human perversity being what it is, perhaps no
motivation is necessary for the decision to reject God? Talbott's response is that such an
irrational decision cannot be characterized as free. Only a rational agent can act freely, so that
someone who acts contrary to his own interest without any motive for doing so is not a
rational agent and so is not capable of performing free actions. Again, however, this line of
argument seems question-begging. We should not think of a decision sprung from
perverseness as like a drug addiction or a quantum leap, but as something which issues out of
one's own twisted moral character. Persons who just are evil may do wrong for its own sake
and spurn God just to spurn Him. Since the decision arises from agent causation--albeit an evil,
perverse agent--, I do not see why it cannot be described as free unless we simply define
"free" to exclude such irrational acts. But if we adopt this idiosyncratic view of freedom, then
why think that sinners must be free in that sense? There is a strong Christian tradition rooted
in the New Testament that sinners are in fact not free, that they are slaves of sin and self. In
this sense, those who reject God are not truly free. But because theirs is a self-bondage,
rooted in their own will, which is capable of receiving God's grace, but, perversely, refuses to
do so, they are culpable for that bondage. So, again, if Talbott's argument is not question-
begging, it is still unsound because nothing has been shown to require that the decision to
reject God be "free" in his peculiar sense. Hence, he has failed to show (RH) to be logically
impossible.

Remarkably, Talbott in the end concedes, "at least for the sake of argument," that

(A) There exists at least one creaturely essence E such that, for any circumstances C in which
the instantiation of E would be free in the matter of being reconciled to God, the instantiation
of E would in fact freely refuse to be reconciled to God in C

is possibly true.11 If (A) turns out to be true, then there are creaturely essences which have
the property of transcircumstantial damnation, and not only hyper-Congruism but even
ordinary Congruism is false. Talbott observes that (A), however, does not entail (DT), since God
need not instantiate any of these creaturely essences. But here Talbott is shifting the burden
of proof. For no one has claimed that (A) entails (DT). What is claimed is that no cogent
argument has been given to show that (RH) is logically impossible. By conceding the possibility
of (A), Talbott gives up one of his principal arguments against (RH), namely, that the choice
specified in (RH) is incoherent.12 That means that he shall have to rely on other arguments to
prove the logical impossibility of (RH).
I.1.ii. Has Talbott Proved that (RH) Entails Transcircumstantial Damnation?

In my critique of Talbott's universalism, I made a sort of concession of my own, namely, I

pointed out that even if Congruism were true, so that for any creaturely essence E there is a
set of circumstances in which God can win the free, affirmative response of the instantiation of
E to His salvific grace, (RH) is still epistemically possible because (RH) does not entail that (A) is
true. I pointed out that even if for every created person S, there is a set of circumstances C in
which S affirmatively responds to God's grace and is saved, it does not follow that there is a
compossible set of circumstances in which all created persons freely embrace salvation. More
than that, even if S1 would in C1 freely accept salvation and S2 would in C2 freely accept
salvation and C1 and C2 are compossible, to claim that in C1 & C2, S1 would freely accept
salvation or that in C1 & C2, S2 would freely accept salvation would be to commit the
counterfactual fallacy of strengthening the antecedent. Thus the Free Will Defender could
embrace Congruism, but maintain that it is (epistemically) possible that there are no feasible
worlds in which all free persons accept salvation.
Talbott counters that without transcircumstantial damnation it is logically impossible that all
feasible worlds should be such that in each of them some person rejects salvation. There is no
feasible world in which every person freely accepts salvation only if every creaturely essence
suffers from transcircumstantial damnation. So long as some essences lack this property, there
is a world feasible to God in which all persons are freely saved. Talbott thus regards

B. There are feasible worlds in which some persons are freely reconciled to God; but for any
feasible world W, if in W some persons are freely reconciled to God, then in W some persons
irrevocably reject God

as "quite impossible".13

In opposition to (B) Talbott proclaims his "Glorious Feasibility Thesis"

(GFT) Necessarily, for any collection C of persons who do not suffer from transworld
reprobation, there is a feasible world in which every member of C is freely reconciled to God.

In defense of (GFT), he argues, "For any two persons, S and S, if there is a feasible set of
circumstances in which S is freely reconciled to God and there is a feasible set of circumstances
in which S' is freely reconciled to God, then there is also a feasible set of circumstances in
which S and S' are both freely reconciled to God."14

Notice, however, that even if sound, this argument does not establish (GFT); a "feasible set of
circumstances" is not synonymous with a "feasible world," the latter differing from the former
in maximality. The Free Will Defender could admit that there are circumstances in which S and
S' are both freely reconciled to God without conceding that there is a feasible world in which
all persons are freely reconciled to God.15

But is Talbott's argument in any case sound? In support of it, he explains that in C1, S would
encounter a set of appearances such that, if God were to provide him with just those
appearances, S would freely be reconciled to God; similarly in C2, S' would encounter a set of
appearances such that, if God would provide him with just those appearances, S' would freely
be reconciled to God. These two sets of appearances need not cohere with each other, and
God can vary how things appear to S' without varying how things appear to S. So even if C1
and C2 are logically inconsistent, there would still be a feasible set of circumstances C3
consisting of God's providing S and S' respectively with the appearances conducive to their
each being freely reconciled to God.

Talbott recognizes that this account might require God to engage in deception. Indeed, it
might involve deception on a massive scale, with each person hermetically sealed in his own
illusory world. Talbott contemplates "spiritual realms which have no ordinary physical
connection with our universe"--assuming, indeed, that there exists such a common universe--
and which are tailor-made, complete with "misleading appearances concerning the existence
or the fate of other persons," for winning the free, affirmative response of its real, non-illusory
denizen(s) to God's grace.16 Talbott envisions for each person, if need be, "a billion lifetimes, a
billion different realms and universes and sets of appearances, a billion ways (including a
billion different forms of deception)" to secure a person's salvation.17

He admits that this defense of (GFT) might lead one to question whether God could engage in
such deception and whether, therefore, C3 is really possible. In defense of the possibility of the
envisioned scenario, Talbott offers the justification that God would have a morally sufficient
reason for deceiving people (presumably, their salvation) and that such deception is merely
temporary.

A number of things can be said in response to this argument. First, I think we must say at the
very least that we have no firm moral intuitions for thinking a world involving states of affairs
like C3 to be broadly logically possible. But without such a basis, we have no good grounds for
thinking (RH) to be impossible. For my part, worlds based on systematic deception by God of
human persons seem morally unconscionable and therefore impossible. As worthy an end as
universal salvation is, God could not utilize immoral means for achieving such an end. And in
deceiving human persons in the way Talbott envisions, God would be violating their
personhood and so acting immorally. For God would be placing persons in situations in which,
for example, their spouses, children, and friends, with whom they enter into supposedly
meaningful and intimate relationships, turn out to be mere illusions. One's life struggles, the
expressions of tenderness, the confessions of fears to a trusted companion, the sacrifices for
persons one loved, one's apologies and extensions of forgiveness, the myriad emotions of
sympathy, anger, shame, bitterness, compassion--all were an interaction with illusion, a world
of maya. This constitutes a profound violation of human dignity. Talbott criticizes one of my
proposals because God, in expunging from a person's memory the knowledge of lost family
members, would not be providing that person with a supremely worthwhile happiness: "No
loving father, for example--not even one whose daughter endures a brutal rape and murder
and not even one whose son commits suicide--would want to remain blissfully ignorant about
what happened . . . . and the idea that he might want to have all memory of a son or daughter
obliterated from his mind--that he might prefer this over his anguish--is simply
preposterous."18 But consider: on Talbott's view, a loving father may find out that in fact he
had no son or daughter at all, that he was in love with a chimaera; his family has been truly
lost to him, for in fact he has no family--only the delusions caused by God. Such a one has been
violated in the deepest core of his person by being thus deceived. Indeed, one is compelled to
wonder whether such persons, when confronted by God with the truth about their illusory
pasts, will continue to accept the salvation won by their delusion--which makes the difference
between feasible circumstances and feasible worlds acute for Talbott's case. Talbott might say
that so great a deception would not be required by God to bring all created persons to
salvation--but then how do we know? Is it not epistemically possible that in order to achieve a
significant number of saved without any lost, the deception would have to be that great, at
least for one person? To even so deceive one person would implicate God in sin, and so any
such world would be impossible. I find it a telling weakness of the responses to my Molinist
perspective on Christian exclusivism that in the end they inevitably have recourse to
systematic deception on God's part19--an expedient which is at the very least dubious and
consequently no proof in any sense of the impossibility of (RH).

Second, even if there are feasible worlds involving states of affairs like C3, so that (GFT) is true,
that fact does not imply the impossibility of (RH). For even if some such world is feasible for
God, God may prefer not to create such a world based on deception, but to create instead a
world in which people find themselves in real circumstances and are offered by God sufficient
grace for salvation, people whose choices are respected by God. In order to provide grounds
for thinking (RH) to be impossible, Talbott must show that God is morally obligated to choose
C3-worlds rather than non-deceptive worlds. Again, we have no firm basis for thinking that
God is so obligated. As I pointed out in my original article, C3-worlds could involve drawbacks
that would influence God not to prefer them over non-deceptive worlds, even though in the
latter some people freely reject His salvation. So long as it is (epistemically) possible that God
prefer a straightforward world in which not all are saved over a deceptive world in which all
are saved through delusion, then (RH) is also (epistemically) possible.
Third, it is not evident that Talbott has succeeded in averting logical invalidity in his argument.
In order to avoid the fallacy of strengthening the antecedent, Talbott argues that if in C1 S
would be freely saved and in C2 S' would be freely saved, then in C3 S and S' would both be
freely saved. Let, then, Cn = "Circumstances n obtain," Sn = "Sn will freely accept salvation,"
and ACn = "The appearance of Cn obtains." In order to avoid the fallacy of strengthening the
antecedent, Talbott infers from

6. C1 S1

7. C2 S2,

that

8. C3 S1 · S2.

He justifies this inference by supposing that

9. (AC1 · AC2) = C3.

We thus infer (8) from

10. (AC1 · AC2) S1 · S2.

But how do we know that (10) is true? The answer is that to S1, C1 and AC1 are
indistinguishable; similarly for S2 and C2 and AC2. So we may affirm

11. (C1 S1) É (AC1 S1),

12. (C2 S2) É (AC2 S2).

From (6), (11) and (7), (12), it follows that

13.(AC1 S1),

14.(AC2 S2).

But how do we move from (13), (14), to (10)? The answer seems to be: by strengthening the
antecedent of (13) or (14), which is logically invalid. Hence, the argument for (8) is unsound.

It seems to me, then, that even if we were to concede Congruism, Talbott still has not shown
(RH) to be logically impossible, since his refutation of the hypothesis that worlds in which all
persons freely accept salvation are infeasible for God involves the dubious claim that God
might deceive people in order to win their salvation, fails to show that God is morally obligated
to prefer a deceptive world to a straightforward one in which not all are saved, and seems to
be logically invalid.

It seems to me, therefore, that we can conclude that Talbott's first argument for the logical
impossibility of (RH) fails, for he has not shown either that the choice allegedly envisioned in
(RH) is logically incoherent nor that such a choice is required if all feasible worlds are to be
such that in none of them are all free persons saved. I think we can safely conclude that
Talbott has not met so far condition (iii) of a successful presentation of the soteriological
problem of evil, not to mention conditions (i) and (ii).
I. 2. Could God Create Worlds in which Not All Persons are Saved?

It will be recalled that Talbott had a second major argument against (RH), namely, that even if
there are no feasible worlds in which all persons are freely saved, necessarily God would not
create a world in which some persons are damned.20 Rather, if He created at all, He would
create a world in which free will is sacrificed to achieve universal salvation. Talbott's argument
for this contention was a curious one to the effect that God must choose a world in which all
are saved because otherwise, the supreme happiness of the blessed would be undermined by
their knowledge of the existence of the damned. It seemed to me that this problem could be
averted by denying that the blessed have any such knowledge. It seems possible, for example,
that God could expunge from their minds any knowledge of the damned or, better, that the
overwhelming presence of Christ would drive from the minds of the blessed the consciousness
of the damned. Again, the Free Will Defender need not prove that these hypotheses are any
more than epistemically possible, but Talbott, if he is to defeat (RH), must prove them broadly
logically impossible.

Talbott argues that my hypotheses are broadly logically impossible because in neither case
would the blessed enjoy "supremely worthwhile happiness," which is essential to salvation.
Supremely worthwhile happiness is, first, "the kind of happiness that could survive a complete
disclosure of truth about the universe; and second, it is the kind that one possesses only when
one is filled with love for others."21 Before we look at Talbott's detailed argumentation, we
should do well to reflect for a moment on this peculiar sort of happiness. I think it does make
sense to speak of different degrees of worth of happiness. For example, the happiness of the
sadist is not as worthwhile as the happiness of the care-giver. Here the worth of the happiness
is related to the moral value of the action which gives rise to it. But it seems to me dubious and
even false that supremely worthwhile happiness entails the ability to survive a full disclosure
of the truth. For a happiness which would, ceteris paribus, be diminished by the disclosure of a
tragic truth about a loved one seems more worthwhile than one which would survive
undiminished. Indeed, on Talbott's own reasoning the happiness of a person who is filled with
love for others must be diminished on learning the truth of a loved one's misfortune;
otherwise, we could maintain that the blessed do love the damned, but that their happiness
remains nonetheless undiminished by the knowledge of their terrible estate. Thus, supremely
worthwhile happiness does not entail the ability to survive a full disclosure of the truth; if the
truth is tragic, quite the opposite is the case.

The problem is that Talbott has conflated supreme happiness with supremely worthwhile
happiness. A happiness which is supremely worthwhile need not, indeed, in some cases,
cannot be supreme happiness, that is, happiness untinged by sadness. Aware of the fate of the
lost, the blessed in heaven could have supremely worthwhile happiness without being
supremely happy.

Talbott would perhaps contend that salvation entails supreme happiness which is supremely
worthwhile. If the happiness of the blessed is to be both, then there must be no damned;
otherwise, if the truth of their existence were disclosed, the supreme happiness of the blessed,
precisely because it is supremely worthwhile, would be undermined. But such reasoning would
be modally fallacious. The blessed's happiness being both supreme and supremely worthwhile
does not entail being able to survive complete disclosure of the truth. If the blessed are
unaware that the damned exist, their happiness can be supreme, but it can also be supremely
worth-while because it would be diminished if this truth were known.

In order to make his argument stick, Talbott must maintain that happiness which is both
supreme and supremely worthwhile entails one's being conscious of the full truth and yet
one's happiness remaining undiminished by it. But I do not see any basis to think the happiness
of a person who has a complete knowledge of the truth is any more worthwhile for that
reason than that of a person who lacks such knowledge. If my son is listed MIA in Vietnam
would my happiness be made more worthwhile by the discovery that he was executed by the
North Vietnamese? No doubt, as Talbott says, I would want to know that painful truth and in a
sense would even welcome it, despite the pain it would bring. But that does not entail that
such knowledge makes my happiness more worthwhile than it would have been without it.
The mere possession of more information seems irrelevant to the worth of one's happiness.
What is relevant is how one's happiness would be affected by the disclosure of such painful
knowledge. Happiness which, ceteris paribus, increases with news of a loved one's good
fortune or decreases with the news of his misfortune is more worthwhile than a happiness
which survives indifferent the disclosure of such information. But the mere lack or possession
of information does not decrease or increase the worthwhileness of the happiness one
experiences. Thus I do not see why supremely worthwhile happiness entails complete
knowledge of the truth. Unaware of the existence of the lost, the happiness of the saved in
heaven, could be both supreme (because it is untinged by sadness) and supremely worthwhile
(because it would be diminished were they aware of the fate of the lost).

Talbott therefore needs to prove that it is logically impossible that the blessed should be
unaware of the existence of the damned. Consider then my first hypothesis, that God removes
or withholds from the blessed any knowledge of the existence of the damned. Talbott agrees
that it is sometimes right to withhold painful information from someone, but he insists that
this is always a concession to that person's poor health or psychological/spiritual immaturity.
Since the blessed are presumably not characterized by such conditions, it would be immoral of
God to withhold from them knowledge of the damned. Moreover, Talbott argues, the
deception contemplated in the present hypothesis is immoral because it is an eternal, not
merely temporary, deception.

To deal with Talbott's second point first, I think we are justified in resisting his characterization
of the hypothesis as "deception." It would be deceptive of God to make the blessed believe
that the lost were saved when in fact they are not. But that is not the proposal. God's merely
erasing any memory of the lost does not involve God's deceiving the blessed about the state of
the lost. The blessed entertain no false beliefs about the lost; they simply have no beliefs
about them at all. The doctrine of progressive revelation teaches us that while God is morally
bound to reveal to us nothing but the truth, He is not bound to reveal to us the whole truth or,
for that matter, even the truth about some thing. Hence, I do not see that Talbott has proven
that God's removing or withholding knowledge of the lost from the minds of the blessed in
order to secure their supreme happiness is either deceptive or immoral.

As for Talbott's first point, it seems to me very mootable that appropriate withholding of
needless, painful information is in every case a concession to poor health and immaturity. Is it
due to poor health or immaturity that we hold closed coffin funerals, for example? Or why we
do not convey to a friend a secret insult uttered by someone in the past? Or why we do not ask
forgiveness of someone for having once despised him because we thought him ugly? It seems
to me that there are plenty of occasions on which we withhold information from healthy,
mature people simply because we love them and know that the disclosure of such information
would do absolutely no good, but only hurt them. In any case, I fail to see why God is morally
obligated to permit the saved to have knowledge of the damned.

What then of the second hypothesis, that the blessed know of the state of the lost, but are not
conscious of it because of the overwhelming joy inspired by Christ's presence? Talbott rejoins
that if the beatific vision drives from the mind of the blessed the consciousness of the lost,
then those experiencing such a vision become less loving (presumably because they no longer
love the lost). The beatific vision would "make the redeemed less loving and thus more
calloused," which is incompatible with supremely worthwhile happiness.22

This objection seems a clear non sequitur. A person is less loving and more callous only if he
fails to love all those persons of whom he is aware; but it would be fatuous to so describe
someone for failing to love a person of whose existence he is completely unaware. Supremely
worthwhile happiness only entails loving unconditionally every person of whom one is aware
and is therefore compatible with the hypothesis in question.

Up to this point I have argued that Talbott has not shown that it is logically impossible for the
damned to exist and the blessed to experience supreme happiness which is supremely
worthwhile. But suppose I am wrong about this. It still does not follow that (RH) is false. For if,
given certain counterfactuals of freedom, it is not feasible for God to actualize a world in which
the blessed, despite the existence of the damned, experience supreme happiness which is
supremely worthwhile, it does not follow that universalism is true. For happiness that is
achieved at the expense of abrogating the free will of creatures is not supremely worthwhile
either. Indeed, it seems to be plausible that this forced happiness is less worthwhile that the
happiness achieved by the blessed's lack of awareness of the damned. So God may not be able
to actualize in the blessed both supreme happiness and supremely worthwhile happiness.
Perhaps Talbott would say that God would therefore be morally obligated to refrain from the
creation of persons altogether. But I think such a response is obviously false: if God can
achieve supreme happiness in the blessed, even if that happiness is not supremely worthwhile,
His creating that enormously worthwhile supreme happiness is a lot better than creating no
happiness at all! Hence, Talbott has not proved that it is logically impossible for God to bestow
on the blessed a supreme happiness which involves their unawareness of the damned.

It seems to me, therefore, that Talbott has failed to show that it is logically necessary that God
refrain from creating a world in which some persons freely reject His saving grace. It is
epistemically possible that God erase from the minds of the redeemed any knowledge of the
lost or that the presence of Christ and the happiness he brings should drive such knowledge
from their consciousness. Therefore, Talbott's second argument for the logical impossibility of
(RH) fails.

In summary, neither of Talbott's two arguments succeeds in showing (RH) to be broadly

logically impossible. Therefore, no inconsistency has been shown to exist between (1) and (2).
(II) Can (1) and (2) Be Shown to be Consistent?

In any original piece, I asserted that the Free Will Defender can not only rebut attempts such
as Talbott's to prove that (1) and (2) are broadly logically inconsistent, but that he can prove
them to be consistent by specifying a proposition which is consistent with (1) and entails (2).
Unfortunately, as Talbott emphasizes, the difficulty with this approach is that the universalist
who denies the possibility of (2) will inevitably also deny the possibility of the new, proposed
proposition. In the face of such modal scepticism, I must confess that I do not know how to
construct a proof that (1) and (2) are consistent in the broadly logical sense.

Perhaps the best that the Free Will Defender can do at this point is to emphasize how modest
his claim is, to hope that his proposed third proposition both is more perspicuously consistent
with (1) than is (2) and is explanatorily superior to the bald assertion of (2), so that the
consistency of (2) with (1) becomes more evident, and to refute any attempts to cast doubt on
the possibility of the new, proposed proposition.
Consider, then, the proposition

C. Since there is no world (without over-riding deficiencies) feasible for God in which all
persons are freely saved, God has chosen a world having an optimal balance between those
who freely accept His grace for salvation and those who freely reject His grace for salvation.

The Free Will Defender is not claiming that (C) is true. In the actual world, there may be
suitable feasible worlds in which all persons are freely saved; indeed, maybe the actual world
is one of these and universalism is correct! Whatever true counterfactuals of creaturely
freedom confront God in the actual world, in other possible worlds different sets of such
counterfactuals (or world-types for God23) obtain. The claim of the Free Will Defender is that
in at least one possible world W the world-type which confronts God logically prior to His
creative decree in W is such that in no suitable feasible world is every free creature saved. The
modesty of this claim is evident from the fact that the Free Will Defender can also freely grant
the possibility of the claim

D. In every world of free creatures feasible for God, God wins the free, affirmative response to
His saving grace on the part of every person.

That is to say, in at least one possible world W* the world-type confronting God in W* is such
that in every world of free creatures feasible for Him all persons are freely saved. One can also
admit the possibility of the opposite claim

E. In every world of free creatures feasible for God, no persons freely accept His saving grace.

That is to say, in at least one possible world W' the world-type confronting God in W' is such
that in every world of free creatures feasible for Him He is unable to win a free response to His
saving grace on the part of anyone (a hyper-Calvinist might hold the actual world to be such a
world). The possibilities are endless. To assert that in some possible world or other God is
confronted with a range of feasible worlds which does not include a suitable world in which
everyone is freely saved is modest, indeed.

Moreover, (C) seems to be more perspicuously consistent with (1) than does (2). (C) seems
consistent with God's omnipotence, since counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are outside of
God's control and yet place no non-logical limit on His omnipotence.24 It also seems consistent
with God's omniscience, since God's decree to create a particular world is based on His middle
knowledge, which includes knowledge of all counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. Finally, the
claim seems consistent with His omnibenevolence, since God is said to choose the world with
the optimal balance of saved and unsaved and to accord sufficient grace for salvation even to
the unsaved, who He knew would reject Him. Furthermore, (1) makes the possibility of (2)
more evident by giving some explanation of how a state of affairs like that described in (2)
could obtain. We see that (2) could obtain when there is no suitable world available to God in
which all persons are freely saved. What would damn people would be their own free rejection
of God's saving grace. Despite this unhappy situation, God, possessing middle knowledge and
omnibenevolence, could still be counted on to pick a world with an optimal balance of saved
and unsaved. Thus, (C) helps to make (2) more evidently possible by making sense of how (2) is
consistent with (1).

Consider now, by contrast, Talbott's position. Talbott is not asserting merely that in the actual
world, all persons are saved, nor is he even asserting merely (D), that in every world feasible
for God all persons are saved. He is not even claiming merely that in every possible world,
every world feasible for God is one in which all persons are saved. Rather he is claiming that in
no possible world whatsoever does a person freely reject God's offer of salvation. This is a
radically immodest claim in contrast to (C) and is certainly in need of justification.

Of course, Talbott need not establish so radical a claim in order to neutralize this step in the
Free Will Defense. He need do no more than give some reason why we should not think (C) to
be logically possible. Here Talbott's arguments against the broadly logical possibility of (A)
become relevant. He argues first, as we have seen, that there is no reason to think that it is
possible that a person would make a fully informed and free decision to reject God, and,
second, that there is no reason to think that it is possible that a fully-informed decision to
accept God would not be free.

We have already looked at the first of these allegations, and what I suggested there certainly
seems logically possible: that in some world or other the creaturely will to self-autonomy and
the bent to self-deception is so strong that some persons irrevocably resist God; or again, that
in some possible world people are so evil that they reject God for its own sake. Even if these
are not the case in the actual world, are they not at least possible?

The only way in which God could save such people would be by a freedom-removing revelation
of Himself. That brings us to Talbott's second point: he thinks the notion of a freedom-
removing revelation is incoherent. He writes, "I fail to see how a knowledge of the truth, even
where it renders certain actions psychologically impossible, in any way restricts one's freedom
to perform such actions--as if those in possession of the beatific vision are no longer free
agents."25 Talbott's claim is problematic. The revelation of which we speak is less like the
communication of knowledge than the presentation of an irresistible lure that overpowers the
will. The notion of "psychological impossibility" needs clarification; in the case in which sinners
are drawn irresistibly to God as iron filings to a magnet, it does seem to be freedom-removing.
Indeed, I do not find it objectionable to affirm that the blessed in heaven in the presence of
Christ no longer have the freedom to reject him, since the epistemic distance necessary for
such freedom has been removed.

In the end Talbott admits that this is a "difficult and controversial" matter and is willing to
concede that (A) is logically possible. But he is still not prepared to concede the logical
possibility of (C). Talbott argues that we have no reason to suppose that it is possible that God
values the free will of His creatures above their salvation. "If a knowledge of the truth, the
ability to see things as they are, is incompatible with free agency, as some conceive of it, then
so much the worse for the free agency so conceived," declares Talbott. ". . . we have no reason
to believe it even possible that God would withhold a revelation of truth from some persons,
or keep them in perpetual bondage to ignorance and illusion, merely to maintain forever the
artificial kind of free agency that Craig imagines."26

This consideration has, I think, a strong emotional appeal. Those of us who have unbelieving
family and friends no doubt often feel that if they will not freely give their lives to Christ, it
would be worth it if God would simply overpower their wills and save them in spite of
themselves; do doubt, too, we feel that if we had not freely yielded our lives to God, then we
wish that God would have overpowered our wills and saved us anyway. But as strong as such
feelings are, they do not change the fact that such an action on God's part amounts to
salvation by divine rape. For God to subvert the will of someone who chooses to reject His
grace would be to violate their personhood, and that God necessarily will not do. More than
our own, God's heart also breaks for those of our family and friends who reject His love and
salvation, but God will not force them to repent. Hence, I regard Talbott's conjecture as
logically impossible; at the very least we must say that in some possible world in which God
faces such a situation He chooses not to overpower sinners' wills, and that is all the Free Will
Defense needs.

We come now to Talbott's attacks on the possibility of (B), which also have relevance to the
possibility of (C). His opening move is to enunciate a proposition as equally plausible as (B) and
yet incompatible with it, thereby removing any grounds for our thinking (B) to be logically
possible. Suppose, says Talbott, we say that God's victory over sin is complete iff God manages
to repair all of the damage that sinners do (both to themselves and others). In accord with this
notion, Talbott proclaims the "Victorious God Thesis:"

(VGT) Necessarily, God would have created persons whom He knew would sin only if He also
knew that He could achieve a complete victory over sin.

If all feasible worlds in which persons sin are worlds in which not all are freely saved, then
(VGT) entails that either God desists from creating worlds in which He knew people would sin
or else He removes their freedom with respect to salvation to the extent necessary to ensure
universal salvation.

Once again, however, Talbott's argument seems question-begging, based on an idiosyncratic

definition of terms. As Christian thinkers we certainly affirm that God shall have a complete
victory over sin, and we will probably concur that God would not have created a sinful world
unless He knew His victory over sin would be complete. But the notion of a complete victory
over sin according to the New Testament is that every wrong ever committed is either
efficaciously expiated by the blood of Christ or punished with its just dessert. In the end
injustice will not prevail; the scales of God's justice will be balanced. Just as heaven is the
triumph of God's grace and love, so hell is the triumph of His holiness and justice. God's
complete victory over sin does not entail that He repair the damage sinners do to themselves;
on the contrary it entails that unexpiated sin receive its just recompense in the sinner. Since
Talbott's definition of "complete victory over sin" is not that of the New Testament, and
Talbott gives no philosophical argument in support of (VGT), the Christian thinker ought to
reject (VGT) as Talbott understands it. Thus, the mere enunciation of (VGT) does nothing to
undermine the logical possibility of (B) or (C).

As for Talbott's attempt to oppose (GFT) to (B) or (C), I have already commented on what
seems to me the logical impossibility of so profound and massive a divine deception.

Finally, as we have seen, Talbott tries to undermine (C) by trying to show that it is incompatible
with the supremely worthwhile happiness of the blessed, which attempt, I have argued, is a
singular failure.

So in answer to the question of this section, we must admit that we have no proof of the
consistency of (C) with (1) and therefore of the consistency of (2) with (1). But (C) does seem
prima facie to be consistent with (1) and can help us to see how (2) can also be consistent with
(1). Moreover, no good reason exists to reject the logical possibility of (C). Modal scepticism is
in any case a two-edged sword: to the extent that it undermines our confidence of the logical
possibility of (C) it also makes Talbott's attempt to prove that (1) and (2) are not true in any
possible world a virtual impossibility.
III. Are (1) and (2) Plausibly True?

We come at last to the Theodicist's question concerning, not what is true in some possible
world, but what is true in the actual world. I suggested that not only are (1) and (C) possibly
true, but they may very well be in fact true and therefore (2) true as well. Notice that like the
case of the Free Will Defender, the Theodicist's case involves a negative and a positive aspect:
he asserts first, that his interlocutor has not shown the co-existence of God and the evil in
question to be implausible and, second, that their co-existence is plausible. In order to
undercut his opponent's argument, he need only succeed in the first, defensive move; success
in the second move would be the coup de grâce. Notice, too, that the Theodicist also makes a
modest claim: he does not assert that (C), for example, is true or can be proved to be true, but
merely that it may well be true. The Theodicist does not claim to know the actual reason why
the evil in question exists, but he offers suggestions which are not mere possibilities, but
plausible explanations.

In confronting the soteriological problem of evil, the Theodicist can make the same moves that
Plantinga makes concerning the probabilistic problem of evil, such as noting the fogginess of
the notion of probability, the relativity of probabilities to background information, and so
forth.27 But I should like to confront the problem more directly; namely, I do not think that
Talbott has shown (C) to be implausible at all--indeed, I think this proposition could very well
be true.

What is implausible about (C)? Consider its assertion that in no world (without overriding
deficiencies) feasible for God do all people freely accept His salvation. Even if we conceded
that Congruism were true, that would not undercut the plausibility of (C), since it may well be
the case that the con-creation of all the optimally conducive circumstances for salvation for all
persons is not feasible for God. I think we must say that Talbott's objection to this thesis, which
appeals to God's deceiving people into salvation, is, if not invalid, very implausible. Given that
God must work with feasible worlds which are less than ideal, it seems not at all implausible
that some people in every world which is significantly populated would reject Him, despite
their being accorded sufficient grace for salvation.

On behalf of the plausibility of this aspect of (C), certain background doctrines revealed in
Scripture can be adduced. On the Christian world view, man is regarded as significantly free vis
à vis God.28 He is able to rebel against God and is held accountable for it. Man in his fallen
state is, as Luther put it, bent in upon himself, and this will to self-autonomy is so strong that
man would rather plunge into self-destruction than bend the knee to God. We learn from
Scripture that sin has a hardening effect upon man's heart: the longer and more determinedly
he resists God's grace and the drawing of the Holy Spirit, the more likely he is to continue in
such a state of rebellion against God (Heb. 3.7-13; cf. Ex. 7-9, Rev. 16.9, 11, 21; 22.11). In my
critique of Talbott's views, I charged that he lacked a serious doctrine of sin, and I reiterate
that charge here. Contrary to Talbott, the New Testament picture of sin is that those who
choose it in opposition to God go from bad to worse. A biblical doctrine of sin therefore lends
credibility to the possibility that some persons can freely reject God forever. So do the New
Testament warnings against apostasy, which indicate that a person who has received salvific
grace can reject it and that if he does so, he will be irretrievably lost (Heb. 6.4-8; 10.26-31). If a
person who has known God's salvation can irrevocably reject it, a fortiori so can a person who
has never known it irrevocably reject God's gracious initiatives for salvation. I have already
rejected as impossible the idea that God might deceive or "jump start" sinners repeatedly in
order to win their acceptance of salvation, since so to act would not treat their personhood
with the respect it deserves. Moreover, it seems quite plausible, in view of the mind-boggling
complexity of providentially ordering a world of free creatures, that if there are feasible worlds
in which all persons freely accept God's saving grace then such worlds are deficient in other
respects (for example, by having only a few persons in them). When one contemplates the
incalculable difficulty of getting a significant number of free creatures to give themselves freely
to God and without deception, then it seems quite plausible that in any world feasible for God
involving a large number of free persons, some persons would choose to reject Him.
Consider, then, (C)'s second affirmation, that God has chosen a world with an optimal balance
between those who freely accept and those who freely reject salvation. Given His
omnibenevolence, it seems that God, in the moment logically prior to His creative decree,
would choose a world from among those feasible worlds having such a balance.29 Therefore,
the actual world is such a world. Talbott, of course, argues that there are no feasible worlds in
which persons are allowed to reject God. But his argument on this score, based on the
supremely worthwhile happiness of the saved, is not very compelling. Even if the first option I
suggested strikes one as implausible, the second, based on the overwhelming joy inspired by
Christ's presence, seems to me very plausible. The Scriptural descriptions of theophanies and
epiphanies (Ex. 33.17-23; Rev. 1.12-17; 21.3-4), as well as the mystical experiences of
Christians down through church history, make it entirely believable that the presence of God
should drive from consciousness an awareness of the state of the damned. Nor has Talbott
given us any good reason to question the worthwhileness of this divinely inspired happiness or
to think that it is less worthwhile than a happiness achieved by the abrogation of creaturely
freedom.

In sum, once Talbott's arguments against the logical possibility of (C) are seen to be unsound,
not much remains of them to render (C) implausible though possible. On the contrary,
background considerations from a biblical world view make it altogether believable that
although God is desirous of saving all human persons, God was limited in His choice of worlds
to those in which universal salvation did not obtain and that He accordingly created a world in
which the balance between saved and lost is as favorable as He could achieve.
Conclusion

Once the differing projects of defense and theodicy are properly delineated, it can be seen
that Talbott's endeavor to prove the logical impossibility of Christian particularism does not
succeed. While he is correct that a positive demonstration of the consistency of (1) and (2) by
the Free Will Defender has not been forthcoming, the mere epistemic possibility of (RH)
undercuts Talbott's own claim that they are inconsistent. Neither of Talbott's major thrusts to
demonstrate the broadly logical and, hence, epistemic impossibility of (RH) can be deemed
successful. Moreover, the Molinist Free Will Defender's (C) appears prima facie to be
consistent with (1) and entails (2), and Talbott's attempts to show its broadly logical
impossibility are no more successful than his objections to (RH). Finally, the Theodicist seems
justified in regarding (C) as a plausible explanation of how it is that universalism does not
obtain in the actual world.

Endnotes

1 William Lane Craig, "'No Other Name': a Middle Knowledge Perspective on the Exclusivity of
Salvation through Christ," Faith and Philosophy 6 (1989): 172-188.

2 Ibid., p. 180.

3 Thomas Talbott, "The Doctrine of Everlasting Punishment," Faith and Philosophy 7 (1990):
19-42; idem, "Providence, Freedom, and Human Destiny," Religious Studies 26 (1990): 227-
245.

4 William Lane Craig, "Talbott's Universalism," Religious Studies 27 (1991): 297-308.

5 Thomas Talbott, "Craig on the Possibility of Eternal Damnation," Religious Studies 28 (1992):
495-510.

6 Ibid., p. 497.

7 Ibid.

8 With respect to (i) see my summation on p. 304 of Craig, "Talbott's Universalism"; with
respect to (ii) see my prospective statement on p. 306.

9 Talbott, "Eternal Damnation," p. 500.

10 Ibid.

11 Talbott's admission of the possibility of (A) is problematic in an interesting way. He cannot

consistently affirm that (A) is possible in the broadly logical sense because he also holds that it
is broadly logically impossible that God permit any person to irrevocably refuse to be
reconciled with God, so that (A) involves what Thomas Flint calls a "collapsing counterfactual,"
i.e., a counterfactual which entails that its antecedent is false (Thomas P. Flint, "Middle
Knowledge and the Doctrine of Infallibility," in Philosophical Perspectives, vol. 5: Philosophy of
Religion, ed. James Tomberlin [Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeway Publishing, 199], pp. 373-393). For
if in no world does God permit persons to refuse reconciliation with Him, then necessarily if it
is true that the instantiation of E were to refuse reconciliation under any freedom permitting
circumstances he were in, then God does not instantiate E in such circumstances. A collapsing
counterfactual cannot be true, and so Talbott cannot consistently admit the logical possibility
of (A). If he does admit it, then he must reject his claim that necessarily God does not permit
persons to refuse reconciliation with God. If Talbott holds (A) to be merely epistemically
possible, then he is admitting that for all we know (A) is in fact true. Such an admission nullifies
his first argument against (RH).

Talbott cannot adopt Flint's solution of asserting that the counterfactual only counterfactually
implies the falsity of its antecedent, but does not entail it, for then there are possible worlds in
which God permits people to refuse reconciliation with God. Nor can Talbott adopt Flint's
second solution of replacing (A) with something like

(A') There exists at least one creaturely essence E such that, for any circumstances C in which
the instantiation of E would be free in the matter of being reconciled to God, the instantiation
of E would not in fact freely consent to be reconciled to God in C.

because (A') still involves a collapsing counterfactual. Rather he must affirm something like

(A") There exists at least one creaturely essence E such that, for any circumstances C, if the
instantiation of E were to be created in C, the instantiation of E would not freely consent to be
reconciled to God.

(A") does not imply that E's instantiation would be damned, but that, on Talbott's view, he
would be saved without his free consent in some C. Such a position still gives away Talbott's
first argument against the coherence of a choice to reject God.

12 Perhaps Talbott would say that he concedes the possibility of (A) only under an artificial and
false conception of "freedom," according to which a stunning revelation might be freedom-
removing. But under a correct understanding of freedom, (A), or better, (A") is false. According
to this interpretation the instantiation of E would not freely consent to reconciliation in the
artificial sense, but he would in the correct sense. Such an interpretation of Talbott's position,
however, still undercuts his argument for the broadly logical impossibility of (RH), since he
admits that his understanding of "freedom" is "a difficult and controversial-controversial
matter" which he does not try to settle (Talbott, "Eternal Damnation," p. 502). Therefore, it is
epistemically possible that his understanding of "freedom" is incorrect, thereby undermining
his argument that (RH) is not logically possible.

13 Talbott, "Eternal Damnation," p.504.

14 Ibid., p. 505.

15 The difference between the envisioned circumstances C3 and a possible world is evident
not only from Talbott's belief that even God could not create rational agents ex nihilo with
perfect understanding and clarity of vision, but more importantly from the fact that God's
deception, to be moral, must be merely temporary, so that those who freely accepted
salvation in C3 are freed from their illusions. This latter circumstance is very important, since it
is not at all evident on Talbott's view that persons who freely accept salvation in C3 could not,
upon being confronted with the fact of their deception, including the illusory existence of
those they loved, rebel against God and reject His salvation.

16 Talbott, "Eternal Damnation," p. 507.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid., p. 509.

19 See also David P. Hunt, "Middle Knowledge and the Soteriological Problem of Evil,"
Religious Studies 27 (1991): 3-26, who envisions the elect interacting with a world populated
by soulless automata.

20 I have tried to state this in such a way that it does not involve a collapsing counterfactual, as
does Talbott's statement, "If every creaturely essence suffered from transworld reprobation
and God . . . knew this, they either He would refuse to instantiate any essences at all or, if he
did instantiate some of them, he would have a morally sufficient reason not to leave created
persons entirely free with respect to salvation . . ." (Talbott, "Eternal Damnation," p. 504).

21 Talbott, "Eternal Damnation," p. 507.

22 Ibid., p. 510.

23 On the notion of a world-type, see Thomas P. Flint, "The Problem of Divine Freedom,"
American Philosophical Quarterly 20 (1983): 255-264.

24 See Thomas P. Flint and Alfred J. Freddoso, "Maximal Power," in The Existence and Nature
of God, ed. Alfred J. Freddoso (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp.
81-113.

25 Talbott, "Eternal Damnation," p. 502.

26 Ibid., pp. 502-503.

27 Alvin Plantinga, "The Probabilistic Argument from Evil," Philosophical Studies 35 (1979): 1-
53.

28 See helpful discussion in D. A. Carson, Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility, New
Foundations Theological Library (Atlanta: John Knox, 1981), pp. 18-35.

29 I assume that an optimal balance exists. If there does not, then God is no more obliged to
create such a balance than He is to create the "best of all possible worlds."