Nathan Justice

I examined evidence concerning the coherence of divine foreknowledge as defined by Arminianism and Molinism. Arminianism argues that God has complete and infallible knowledge of the future, and attempts to simultaneously maintain a strong view of libertarian freedom. Molinism agrees with the Arminian stance on foreknowledge and human freedom, but argues God must have middle knowledge to maintain strong providential control over creation. I argued that Molinism better accounts for the biblical data and provides a more coherent theological and philosophical position, because Arminianism cannot provide a strong theory of providential control. I also briefly presented my concept of Reformed Molinism, which combines Molinism with Robert Kane’s event-causal version of libertarian freedom.

This paper argued that Molinism best rebuts the problem of natural evil when compared to the attempts of Open Theists, particularly William Hasker. I began by summarizing Hasker's Natural Order Theodicy and subsequently critiqued it. I found no problems with the proposed theodicy, but I took issue with Hasker's attempt to establish the coherence of Open Theism from this theodicy. I explained the weaknesses of Open Theism's response to natural evil and simultaneously argued for the strength of Molinism's response. I concluded that Open Theism leaves God as a reckless risk-taker, and therefore Molinism provides a better response to the problem of natural evil.

This paper examines the issues of divine foreknowledge and the problem of evil from the standpoint of four different theological systems: Open Theism, Arminianism, Molinism, and Calvinism. I summarized each view’s understanding of divine foreknowledge and then explained how this understanding applied to each view’s refutation of the problem of evil.