Revisionism and Some Remaining Issues 303As noted above, a motivation for endorsing theological determinism is that it
provides an uncontested way to secure a strong notion of divine providence,
one according to which everything that happens, including our actions, pre-
cisely accords with God’s providential will (e.g., Helm, 1993). We find this
conception expressed in ancient Stoicism, in Islam, and in much of historical
Christianity. Our lives are subject to pain, failure, loss, and death. How do
we cope with all of this and the suffering it occasions? Accepting the strong
notion of divine providence involves the belief that everything that happens to
us, to the last detail, accords with God’s providential will. On this view, great
comfort in life can be secured by the conviction that even minor harms, let
alone horrendous evils, cannot befall us unless they feature in God’s perfectly
benevolent plan.
For the theist, it would be attractive to retain this notion of divine providence
while at the same time accepting a conception of human beings as having free
will as specified by the libertarian. This is what the influential position of Luis
de Molina (1595/1988) aims to provide. According to Molinism, God can know
from eternity what every possible libertarian free creature would choose in every
possible circumstance, and with this knowledge, God is able to direct the course
of history with precision.^15 But Molinism is a controversial position. According
to the grounding objection, it is not clear how there could be truths about what
non- actual free creatures would freely decide on which God could base decisions
as to which to actualize (Adams, 1977). Truths about what creatures would
freely decide would be grounded in what such creatures in fact freely decide, or
at least in what they will freely decide. However, if they don’t exist and never
will, such grounding is not available. Consequently, those who value an
uncontroversial way to secure a strong notion of divine providence have a reason
to take theological determinism seriously (Pereboom, 2005, 2012b).
Theological compatibilism might be thought to accommodate all of these
concerns (e.g., Edwards, 1754/1957). Theological compatibilists do argue that
God’s causal determination of all of our actions is compatible with basically
deserved blameworthiness for those that are immoral. Theists have tended to be
uncomfortable with this view, however, and manipulation arguments give voice
to this discomfort. Another serious objection to the theological compatibilist
option is that it fails to allow for an answer to the problem of evil that involves
free will. If our free will is compatible with God’s causal determination of all of
our actions, it stands to reason that God could have causally determined us never
to cause evil while preserving our free will (Mackie, 1955).
The remaining alternative is a free will skeptical account combined with theo-
logical determinism (Pereboom, 2005, 2012b). This view gives up on basic
desert moral responsibility and on the free will response to the problem of evil.
But it can preserve the strong notion of divine providence. The viability of this
position depends on whether theistic religion can do without basic desert moral
responsibility and the free will response to the problem of evil. Pereboom (2005,
2012b) argues that this would not amount to a significant loss. We’ve already
seen why one might be willing to relinquish basic desert responsibility (Section