Concept

Counterfactuals of Freedom

Intro

A counterfactual of freedom is a statement about what someone would freely choose to do in a situation that has not actually happened. Something like: "If Jerry had been offered a better job in Boston, he would have moved." The statement is hypothetical. Jerry has free will. But there is supposed to be a real answer about what he would have done.

This idea sits at the heart of a position called Molinism. The Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina worked it out in 1588 to solve a hard puzzle. How can God be in total control of history without taking away genuine human free will?

Molina's answer was that God has three kinds of knowledge. First, He knows all the necessary truths (math, logic, what is possible). Second, He knows what every possible person would freely choose in every possible situation. Third, He knows what will actually happen in the world He chooses to create. The middle category, what people would freely do, is called middle knowledge or scientia media.

With this picture, God can plan history precisely without forcing anyone. He looks at all the possible worlds He could create, He sees what each free person would freely choose in each setting, and He creates the world whose free choices serve His purposes. The creatures still really choose. God still really plans. Both stay true at once.

This solution has critics. Calvinists tend to reject it, asking what makes the counterfactuals true if nothing has decreed them yet. This is called the grounding objection. Open theists reject it too, but for the opposite reason: they think the future of free creatures is genuinely undetermined and that there is no fact yet about what a person would freely do.

Modern defenders include Alvin Plantinga (who used the idea in his free-will defense against the problem of evil) and William Lane Craig (who uses it in his account of God's sovereignty over salvation and history). The doctrine is technical, but it is one of the most-discussed tools in contemporary philosophy of religion, and it shows up wherever the Calvinism-Arminianism debate comes up.

In full

Counterfactuals of Creaturely Freedom (CCFs) are subjunctive conditional propositions of the form "If a free creature C were placed in circumstances S, then C would freely do A," where A is genuinely libertarianly-free (S does not determine A) and yet the counterfactual has a determinate truth-value. The doctrine of CCFs is the central technical commitment of Molinism, the position that God's omniscience includes middle knowledge (Latin scientia media; Spanish Jesuit Luis de Molina, Concordia 1588), the knowledge of what every possible free creature would freely do in every possible circumstance. CCFs occupy logical space between God's knowledge of necessary truths (natural knowledge) and God's knowledge of his own decree (free knowledge), and Molinism's distinctive claim is that God uses middle knowledge in the act of creation to instantiate a world that achieves his purposes through-and-not-against creaturely free will. The doctrine is contested at multiple points: Calvinists generally reject CCFs on grounds that nothing grounds their truth without a divine decree (the "grounding objection"); open theists reject CCFs on grounds that the future of free creatures is open and indeterminate; modern Molinists (Plantinga, Craig, Flint) defend CCFs as the metaphysical-key to reconciling divine sovereignty with libertarian free will.

The thesis

A counterfactual of freedom has the form:

If creature C were placed in circumstances S, then C would freely do A.

The technical features:

Subjunctive conditional. The mood is hypothetical: "if X were the case, then Y would be." Not "if X is, then Y will be" (which is indicative).
Libertarian freedom. A is not determined by C's nature + S. C has the categorical capability to do A or refrain from A in the same circumstances S.
Determinate truth-value. Despite the libertarian freedom, the counterfactual has a fact-of-the-matter, it's true or false. C would do A in S, even though C could refrain.

The combination of (2) and (3) is the contested element. Compatibilist or determinist views can affirm (3) without difficulty (the determining cause grounds the truth). Standard libertarian views can affirm (2) without difficulty (the freedom is incompatible with prior determination). Molinism's distinctive claim is that both (2) and (3) hold simultaneously, the future free act has a determinate truth-value despite the libertarian freedom.

Historical development

Luis de Molina (1535-1600) and the Concordia

The doctrine was formalized by Spanish Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina in Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis, divina praescientia, providentia, praedestinatione et reprobatione (1588). Molina developed the concept in response to two pressures: Reformed theology (especially Calvin and Beza) on divine sovereignty + predestination, which seemed to determine creaturely action; and humanist concern for libertarian free will + moral responsibility.

Molina's solution: introduce a third category of divine knowledge.

Scientia naturalis (natural knowledge): God's knowledge of all possible necessary truths, logical, mathematical, modal. Pre-volitional (logically prior to God's free decision to create).
Scientia media (middle knowledge): God's knowledge of all true counterfactuals of creaturely freedom, what every possible free creature would freely do in every possible circumstance. Pre-volitional but contingent (the truth values depend on creaturely-free choice, which God knows but does not determine).
Scientia libera (free knowledge): God's knowledge of what will actually happen, including God's own decree of creation and providence. Post-volitional (logically subsequent to God's free decision to actualize this world rather than another).

The doctrine of middle knowledge is the logical bridge between God's freedom-to-decree and creaturely-libertarian-freedom: God knows what each possible creature would freely do, then chooses to actualize a world in which those creaturely choices instantiate his purposes, without determining the choices.

Reformed-Catholic controversy: De Auxiliis (1597-1607)

Molina's Concordia was deeply controversial. Dominican theologians (especially Domingo Báñez) attacked Molinism as Pelagian-tending; Jesuits defended it as the proper synthesis of grace + free will. The dispute escalated to the Vatican: Pope Clement VIII convened the Congregatio de Auxiliis (1598-1607), a formal commission of cardinals to adjudicate the dispute. After ten years of deliberation, Pope Paul V issued a non-decision: both Molinism and Bañezianism could be taught in Catholic schools as valid theological options. The doctrine has remained a Jesuit-distinctive position with broader Catholic engagement; it influenced Catholic theology of grace + free will into the 20th century.

Modern revival: Plantinga, Craig, Flint

Molinism was largely dormant in Protestant theology from the 17th to the late 20th century. Two developments revived it:

Alvin Plantinga's free-will defense (God, Freedom, and Evil 1974; The Nature of Necessity 1974), Plantinga deployed CCFs to construct his free-will defense against the logical problem of evil. The defense argues that even an omnipotent God might not be able to actualize a world with significant moral-good and no moral-evil, because creaturely-free choices are subject to "transworld depravity", there may be no possible world in which creature C freely chooses good in every circumstance. The defense's coherence depends on the truth (or coherent meaningfulness) of CCFs.
William Lane Craig's The Only Wise God (1987) and Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom (1991), Craig made Molinism a major Reformed-evangelical-engaging position. Craig argues Molinism reconciles divine foreknowledge + libertarian free will + meaningful divine providence in ways that Calvinism (which compromises free will) and open theism (which compromises foreknowledge) cannot.
Thomas Flint's Divine Providence: The Molinist Account (1998), the canonical contemporary monograph defending Molinism. Flint develops the theory's metaphysics + responses to objections.

Rejection by Reformed and Open Theist camps

Reformed (Calvinist) rejection: Calvinists hold that creaturely-free choices are not categorically-undetermined, they are determined by the creature's nature in interaction with circumstances, with the ultimate causal source being God's decree (compatibilism). On this view, CCFs are either trivially true (the creature would do what its determined-nature dictates in S) or false (libertarian-freedom is incoherent / does not exist). Either way, middle knowledge is unnecessary, God's foreknowledge is grounded in his decree.
Open theist rejection: Open theists (Pinnock, Sanders, Boyd, Hasker) hold that the future of free creatures is genuinely open and indeterminate, no fact-of-the-matter exists about what a free creature would do in a circumstance until the creature is in the circumstance and chooses. CCFs lack determinate truth-values. Open theism therefore denies omniscience-of-future-free-acts (or redefines omniscience as knowing all knowable propositions, with future free acts not yet propositions-of-determinate-truth-value).

The grounding objection

The principal philosophical objection to CCFs, developed primarily by Robert Adams (1977 "Middle Knowledge and the Problem of Evil") and William Hasker (God, Time, and Knowledge 1989; later development in Providence, Evil and the Openness of God 2004):

What grounds the truth-values of CCFs?

For an indicative conditional ("if it rains, the streets get wet") the grounding is the obtaining of natural-causal-laws + initial conditions. For a counterfactual involving libertarian freedom, no such grounding seems available:

Not the creature's nature + circumstances (those don't determine the act, by libertarian-freedom premise).
Not the actual choice (the counterfactual is true prior to the actual choice; if the truth-value depended on the choice, it would not be middle-knowledge-prior-to-decree).
Not God's decree (then it would be free knowledge, not middle knowledge).

The objection: CCFs lack truth-makers, so they can't be true. Therefore middle knowledge, knowledge of CCFs, does not exist (or its content is a different sort of knowledge than the doctrine claims).

Molinist responses include:

Plantinga's "deeply contingent" response: CCFs are contingently-true brute facts about the modal-structure of reality, neither necessarily true (so not natural knowledge) nor consequent on God's decree (so not free knowledge), but genuinely-contingent and primitively-true. The grounding-question may presuppose a Bivalence-plus-Sufficient-Reason metaphysics that is not obviously correct.
Craig's "creature would freely do" response: what grounds the truth of "C would freely do A in S" is that C would freely do A in S, i.e., the counterfactual is grounded in the counterfactual fact itself, in the same way that "Eisenhower won in 1952" is grounded in Eisenhower's having-won. Adding a further-grounding requirement is over-demanding.
Flint's modal response: the question of grounding presupposes that all truths require truth-makers; this is itself a contested metaphysical thesis (truth-maker maximalism). Some truths may simply be true without a corresponding truth-making fact distinct from the truth itself.

The grounding-objection-debate is technically philosophical and is not decisively resolved either way. Molinists regard it as a manageable difficulty; non-Molinists regard it as a fatal one.

Apologetic deployment

1. Reconciling divine foreknowledge with libertarian free will

The classical problem: if God knows what I will do tomorrow, can I do otherwise? If I cannot do otherwise, my freedom is illusory. If I can do otherwise, God's foreknowledge could be wrong, contra omniscience.

Molinism's solution: God's foreknowledge of free acts is grounded in middle knowledge of CCFs, which are grounded in libertarian-free creature-counterfactual-choices. The structure: God knows (CCFs) → God decrees (creates this world rather than another) → creatures freely act (libertarianly) → God's foreknowledge holds (because his decree was informed by middle knowledge of what they would freely do).

The compatibility is preserved: the creature's actual-choice is libertarianly-free; God's knowledge of the actual-choice is grounded in middle knowledge, which is grounded in the would-have-been-counterfactual-truth.

2. The Free Will Defense against the Logical Problem of Evil

Alvin Plantinga's Free Will Defense (God, Freedom, and Evil 1974) deploys CCFs:

The logical problem of evil claims (P) it is logically impossible that God exists + evil exists.
The Free Will Defense replies (P') if creatures have libertarian free will, God may not be able to instantiate a world with significant moral good and no moral evil, because of transworld depravity (the possibility that there is no possible world in which a given creature freely refrains from all evil acts).
Therefore (~P) it is not logically impossible that God exists + evil exists; the existence of evil is logically compatible with God's existence.

The defense's coherence depends on CCFs being meaningful and at least possibly true.

3. The middle-position between Calvinism and Open Theism

Molinism positions itself as the doctrinally-orthodox-with-libertarian-freedom alternative to:

Calvinism (which preserves divine sovereignty + foreknowledge but at the cost of libertarian freedom, Calvinists are compatibilists about freedom).
Open theism (which preserves libertarian freedom but at the cost of denying foreknowledge of free acts, open theists redefine or limit omniscience).

For evangelicals seeking to affirm both robust divine sovereignty + robust libertarian freedom, Molinism is a serious option. See Calvinism vs Arminianism vs Molinism vs Open Theism for the multi-position synthesis.

4. Prophecy + biblical compatibilism

Biblical prophecies of free human acts (e.g., Peter's denial in Matt 26:34; Judas's betrayal in John 13:21-30; Cyrus's edict in Isa 44:28-45:1) raise the foreknowledge-and-freedom question. Molinism supplies a clean reading: God knew via middle knowledge what Peter / Judas / Cyrus would freely do in their circumstances; God prophesied accordingly; the prophecy was true because the act was both libertarianly-free and counterfactually-predictable.

Connection to Scripture

1 Samuel 23:7-13, David at Keilah; David asks God whether Saul will come to Keilah and whether the men of Keilah will deliver David up. God's answer (yes to both) is paradigmatic of middle-knowledge (these are counterfactual answers about hypothetical futures that will not actually occur, since David leaves Keilah on receiving the answer).
Matthew 11:21-23 / Luke 10:13-15, Jesus's "woe to Chorazin and Bethsaida": "if the miracles which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago." This is an explicit counterfactual of (creaturely) freedom, Tyre and Sidon would have repented in the counterfactual circumstance.
Jeremiah 38:17-23, Zedekiah and surrender; Jeremiah counsels Zedekiah, "if you will indeed go out to the officers of the king of Babylon, then... but if you will not go out... then thus says the LORD...", God's response to the king's hypothetical-actual choice.
John 18:36, Jesus to Pilate: "if my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting." Counterfactual of-what-would-have-been.

Patristic / scholarly note

Luis de Molina, Concordia (1588), the foundational text. English translation (Freddoso, 1988) of Part IV ("On Divine Foreknowledge").
Domingo Báñez vs Molina, the Báñezian ("physical premotion") alternative; preserves stronger divine-determination of creaturely action.
Francisco Suárez, Jesuit theologian; modifies Molina's position in directions of "congruism."
Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (1974); The Nature of Necessity (1974), modern revival anchor; Free Will Defense.
William Lane Craig, The Only Wise God (1987); Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom (1991), evangelical-engaging Molinism.
Thomas Flint, Divine Providence: The Molinist Account (Cornell, 1998), the canonical contemporary monograph.
Robert Adams, "Middle Knowledge and the Problem of Evil," American Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1977), the classic grounding-objection.
William Hasker, God, Time, and Knowledge (Cornell, 1989), open-theist rejection of CCFs.
John Laing, Middle Knowledge: Human Freedom in Divine Sovereignty (Kregel, 2018), accessible evangelical introduction.
Ken Keathley, Salvation and Sovereignty: A Molinist Approach (B&H, 2010), Reformed-Baptist Molinism on soteriology.