A Reflection on the Economy of Salvation
According to Molinism, logically prior to actualizing a world, God chooses just one –- namely, ours –- of many possible worlds to actualize based in part on what human beings would freely decide to do in the freedom-permitting situations in those worlds in which they have libertarian free will. On this account, God has middle knowledge, which is his pre-actualization and infallible knowledge of these counterfactuals of human freedom.
If Molinism is true, it seems that the economy of salvation is a game. By “game,” I don’t mean to trivialize the matter, which — if there is such a game — is of utmost importance. Rather, I use ‘game’ in its economic and game theoretic sense. Suppose that a game is, roughly, a situation in which two or more rational agents (i.e., players) choose based on what they believe other agents in the situation will do, and the choice is made for the sake of utility (i.e., roughly, desire or preference satisfaction). [1]
The game of salvation includes God and every human agent. On one hand, logically prior to actualizing the world, God chooses this world given what he infallibly believes we would freely do herein while taking into comparative account his infallible beliefs about what we would freely do in every other possible world in which we are libertarianly free. God’s expected outcome includes the utility payoff of saving as many human persons as feasible given our free choices. [2] Such salvation is the ne plus ultra of human welfare.
On the other hand, each human person has the opportunity to choose whether or not fallibly to believe [3] whatever proposition(s) is necessary to affirm (if any) to be saved, given what he or she fallibly holds that God will or won’t do regarding his soteriological plan (or its absence, if there is no God). The utility payoff we seek involves an adequate degree of human welfare for ourselves and others — assuming we care sufficiently about the welfare of others.
Now, an asymmetric game is one in which the players do not stand on par with each other. One or more has a relevant advantage. As Corrigan defines the term, an asymmetric game is such that one player has more knowledge than another. (Understanding Economics: Game Theory, Chapter 8) This definition highlights an epistemic asymmetry. One (or more) has an epistemic advantage.
The game of salvation hence appears to be asymmetric such that God has epistemic advantages: he knows infallibly what we all will freely do, believe, etc., while we possess fallible beliefs about whether there is a God, whether salvation is included in God’s set of intentions for the world, what God will do with respect to his plan of salvation — assuming there is one, etc.; moreover, God has strategies available to achieve his salvific goal, while such resources are unavailable to us.
From the fact that God has resources inaccessible to us, it doesn’t follow that we have no resources. There are decision strategies available to us, fallible and probabilistic though they are. Lately, I have been thinking of ways to expand upon Pascal’s Wager, which is one deliberative resource available to us. Perhaps I will post more on this point later.
[1] This definition is based on one provided by Jay R. Corrigan, professor of economics at Kenyon College, in Understanding Economics: Game Theory, Chapter 1. Corrigan distinguishes a game from a decision, which is a situation in which one chooses without regard for anyone else’s response to that choice.
[2] In other words, the Christian conception of God, the greatest conceivable being, is the idea of a deity who desires to save everyone (cf. 1 Timothy 2:4). This point suggests that if universalism is feasible for God to accomplish, then it is true in this world; and via contraposition, if universalism is not true in this world, then it is not feasible for God to accomplish given our free choices. God desires universalism. If he does not accomplish it, then he does not get what he desires. If he gets what he desires, then universalism follows.
An interesting question arises: is universalism a feasible goal for God to achieve, given our libertarianly free choices?
*Universalism is the thesis that God saves all human persons, in other words, all persons who have ever been human – thus ruling out the idea that God does not save persons who used to be human but somehow lost their humanity as a function of becoming damned.
[3] I set aside for the moment various complications concerning doxastic voluntarism.