¹ Craig, William Lane, ‘“No Other Name”: a Middle Knowledge Perspective on the Exclusivity of Salvation through Christ’, Faith and Philosophy, VI (1989), 172–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

² Ibid. p. 180.

³ Thomas, Talbott, ‘The Doctrine of Everlasting Punishment’, Faith and Philosophy VII (1990), 19–42;Google Scholaridem‘Providence, Freedom, and Human Destiny’, Religious Studies, XXVI (1990), 227–45.Google Scholar

⁴ Craig, William Lane, ‘Talbott's Universalism’, Religious Studies, XXVII (1991), 297–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵ Thomas, Talbott, ‘Craig on the Possibility of Eternal Damnation’, Religious Studies, XXVII (1992), 495–510.Google Scholar

⁶ Ibid. p. 497.

⁷ Ibid.

⁸ With respect to (i) see my summation on p. 304 of Craig, ‘Talbott's Universalism’; with respect to (ii) see my prospective statement on p. 306.

⁹ Talbott, ‘Eternal Damnation’, p. 500.

¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹ Talbott's admission of the possibility of (A) is problematic in an interesting way. He cannot consistently affirm that (A) is possible in the broadly logical sense because he also holds that it is broadly logically impossible that God permit any person to irrevocably refuse to be reconciled with God, so that (A) involves what Thomas Flint calls a ‘collapsing counterfactual’, i.e. a counterfactual which entails that its antecedent is false (Flint, Thomas P., ‘Middle Knowledge and the Doctrine of Infallibility’, in Philosophical Perspectives, vol. 5: Philosophy of Religion, ed. James, Tomberlin (Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeway Publishing, 1991), pp. 373–93).Google Scholar For if in no world does God permit persons to refuse reconciliation with Him, then necessarily if it is true that the instantiation of E were to refuse reconciliation under any freedom permitting circumstances he were in, then God does not instantiate E in such circumstances. A collapsing counterfactual cannot be true, and so Talbott cannot consistently admit the logical possibility of (A). If he does admit it, then he must reject his claim that necessarily God does not permit persons to refuse reconciliation with God. If Talbott holds (A) to be merely epistemically possible, then he is admitting that for all we know (A) is in fact true. Such an admission nullifies his first argument against (RH).

Talbott cannot adopt Flint's solution of asserting that the counterfactual only counterfactually implies the falsity of its antecedent, but does not entail it, for then there are possible worlds in which God permits people to refuse reconciliation with God. Nor can Talbott adopt Flint's second solution of replacing (A) with something like

(A′) There exists at least one creaturely essence E such that, for any circumstances C in which the instantiation of E would be free in the matter of being reconciled to God, the instantiation of E would not in fact freely consent to be reconciled to God in C

because (A′) still involves a collapsing counterfactual. Rather he must affirm something like

(A″) There exists at least one creaturely essence E such that, for any circumstances C, if the instantiation of E were to be created in C, the instantiation of E would not freely consent to be reconciled to God.

(A″) does not imply that E's instantiation would be damned, but that, in Talbott's view, he would be saved without his free consent in some C. Such a position still gives away Talbott's first argument against the coherence of a choice to reject God.

¹² Perhaps Talbott would say that he concedes the possibility of (A) only under an artificial and false conception of ‘freedom’, according to which a stunning revelation might be freedom-removing. But under a correct understanding of freedom, (A), or better, (A″) is false. According to this interpretation the instantiation of E would not freely consent to reconciliation in the artificial sense, but he would in the correct sense. Such an interpretation of Talbott's position, however, still undercuts his argument for the broadly logical impossibility of (RH), since he admits that his understanding of ‘freedom’ is ‘a difficult and controversial matter’ which he does not try to settle (Talbott, ‘Eternal Damnation’, p. 502). Therefore, it is epistemically possible that his understanding of ‘freedom’ is incorrect, thereby undermining his argument that (RH) is not logically possible.

¹³ Talbott, ‘Eternal Damnation’, p. 504.

¹⁴ Ibid. p. 505.

¹⁵ The difference between the envisioned circumstances C ₃ and a possible world is evident not only from Talbott's belief that even God could not create rational agents ex nihilo with perfect understanding and clarity of vision, but more importantly from the fact that God's deception, to be moral, must be merely temporary, so that those who freely accepted salvation in C ₃ are freed from their illusions. This latter circumstance is very important, since it is not at all evident on Talbott's view that persons who freely accept salvation in C ₃ could not, upon being confronted with the fact of their deception, including the illusory existence of those they loved, rebel against God and reject His salvation.

¹⁶ Talbot, ‘Eternal Damnation’, p. 507.

¹⁷ Ibid.

¹⁸ Ibid. p. 509.

¹⁹ See also Hunt, David P., ‘Middle Knowledge and the Soteriological Problem of Evil’, Religious Studies, XXVII (1991), 3–26,CrossRefGoogle Scholar who envisions the elect interacting with a world populated by soulless automata.

²⁰ I have tried to state this in such a way that it does not involve a collapsing counterfactual, as does Talbott's statement, ‘If every creaturely essence suffered from transworld reprobation and God … knew this, then either He would refuse to instantiate any essences at all or, if he did instantiate some of them, he would have a morally sufficient reason not to leave created persons entirely free, with respect to salvation’ (Talbott, ‘Eternal Damnation’, p. 504).

²¹ Talbott, ‘Eternal Damnation’, p. 507.

²² Ibid. p. 510.

²³ On the notion of a world-type, see Flint, Thomas P., ‘The Problem of Divine Freedom’, American Philosophical Quarterly, XX (1983), 255–64.Google Scholar

²⁴ See Flint, Thomas P. and Freddoso, Alfred J., ‘Maximal Power’, in The Existence and Nature of God, ed. Freddoso, Alfred J. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp. 81–113.Google Scholar

²⁵ Talbott. ‘Eternal Damnation’, p. 502.

²⁶ Ibid. pp. 502–3.

²⁷ Alvin, Plantinga, ‘The Probabilistic Argument from Evil’, Philosophical Studies, XXXV (1979), 1–53.Google Scholar

²⁸ See helpful discussion in Carson, D. A., Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility, New Foundations Theological Library (Atlanta: John Knox, 1981), pp. 18–35.Google Scholar

²⁹ I assume that an optimal balance exists. If there does not, then God is no more obliged to create such a balance than He is to create the ‘best of all possible worlds’.