MINARCHICAL MOLINISM

An evolution of my previous musings on Open Molinism.

MINARCHICAL – God is the ultimate and only rightly sovereign authority, but His clear desire is for His imagers to run their own lives and the world using their God-given free will agency (eg. as seen repeatedly in the Bible: giving dominion to humans; letting Adam name the animals; Psalm 115:16 the earth He has given to the children of men). God takes a minimal approach to enacting control over us, as He wants us to FREELY respond with obedience and love (ref: CS Lewis’ world of automata; Alvin Plantinga’s more valuable world). He does still have to interfere at times to prevent total anarchy just as in a Night Watchman state (eg. The Flood; giving the Law). Otherwise, He also intervenes (eg. appearing to Abraham; enacting the Exodus) only as necessary to achieve His direction for world history (eg. the Cross) and aiding the lives of believers because we’ve freely consented to join His society with its associated rules (eg. Choose you this day whom you will serve; Romans 8:28). This is the best and possibly only way to prepare people who will freely never choose sin once we reach the ultimate Voluntary Society, heaven (as in Soulmaking Theodicy).

MOLINISM – God has Middle Knowledge of everything that would happen, and uses it as per the preceding point to directly intervene to achieve the results He knows 100% are guaranteed to obtain by His actions.

In short, God has maximal power & knowledge but uses them minimally with regard to humans.

This proposal differs from standard Molinism mainly by not having a Moment where God selects and sets the Actualized World where all free choices of agents are locked in, rather God interacts in real time to achieve His goals.

I think it reflects quite well what we read in the Bible about how God knows what will happen and interfaces with people and the world.