Randy Everist

Molinism and Divine Voodoo Worlds Randy Everist

Molinism has been one of the most helpful tools within philosophical theology for resolving or otherwise providing insight to problems in Christian theology. Dean Zimmerman's divine voodoo worlds argument against Molinism purports to show that Molinism has the curious result of there being possible worlds where God has voodoo-like control over every creature's free choice; thus, these creatures are not free. Zimmerman finds that Molinism entails that it is only a contingent fact God is able to actualize free creatures. If this is so, then a new problem of counterfactual luck faces the Molinist. Randy Everist provides two independent responses to Zimmerman's argument, focusing on agent-causal theories and exploring intuitions from ethics. Then, Everist even shows how this argument is relevant to people in the local church! He concludes Zimmerman's argument has not given sufficient grounds for thinking that Molinism fails to preserve libertarian freedom or entails a new problem of luck. Therefore, Molinists are free to use the teaching still.