The Evangelical Universalist Forum

My solution to the "grounding objection."

Molinism seems to me the only doctrine which maintains free will and also holds to a view of God as timeless, but the grounding objection always kept me from endorsing it. I think, however, I have a solution to the problem.

It seems to me that grounding counterfactuals of freedom in God’s mind as ideas solves the grounding objection and maintains creaturely freedom. Although it is true that this would make CF’s somewhat dependent on God’s will, God would not necessarily have the power to CHANGE such ideas, any more than he would have the power to change his idea of a triangle into that of a square. He could of course think of one rather than the other, but it does not seem possible that he could “unthink” one INTO the other. Perhaps the idea of a certain soul, joined temporally to certain predicates (body x, circumstance y) has as unique a
response to these things (which is its “freedom” being expressed through time and matter) as the unique idea of a triangle. Such an idea is complete in itself as a possible entity or thing. Again, God could no more imagine such a particular idea differently than he could imagine a fish as a cat, a 1 as a 2, or a triangle as a square. He could imagine these things as they are in themselves, but to think of one rather than another - to imagine a soul which did NOT eat the apple in the garden, when assigned all the same temporal predicates as Adam - would be to imagine a different idea of a different soul. In other words it would be not to imagine Adam at all. (Mark, I am not saying Adam could not have been made with a different body or under such circumstances in which he did NOT eat the fruit - that may have been possible - only that, were a soul given exactly the same temporal predicates and chose differently, such a soul would have had a unique expression of freedom and would NOT be the eternal idea of Adam’s soul.) What follows is that it would not be possible to “make” Adam’s idea or soul any different than it is in itself. God could only have created a different soul. Freedom, then, becomes a property inherent in the irreducible substance of each soul in themselves, much like “three sidedness” is an inherent property of triangles or “being unmarried” is to bachelors. This being the case, a particular soul’s freedom or self determination would be beyond God’s control to change, and so, although CF’s are grounded in God as ideas, yet creaturely freedom is safeguarded.

What are your thoughts?

One is reminded of Tennyson:

'Much more, if first I floated free,
As naked essence, must I be
Incompetent of memory:

‘For memory dealing but with time,
And he with matter, could she climb
Beyond her own material prime?’