
Molinism, Identity, and Bullet Bill
A Response to Greg Welty’s Bullet Bill Objection
In a response to Molinism, the Calvinist philosopher Greg Welty provides an argument to demonstrate that if Calvinism makes God the author of sin, then it follows on Molinism also makes God the author of sin. This leaves the Molinist in the position of dropping the charge that Calvinism makes God the author of sin, or abandoning Molinism. However, I believe as we elaborate on the crucial elements of Welty’s thought experiment, and introduce a theodicy, we find his charge against Molinism does not hold.
With the exposition done with, let’s get to the objection. Now, being too cheap to buy the book Calvinism and the Problem of Evil, where the argument is presented as a chapter contribution, I will work with the argument as presented by apologist Randal Rauser. Rauser writes,
In his essay “Molinist Gunslingers: God and the Authorship of Sin,” Welty takes on the core objection that in the world of Calvinistic determinism God is morally culpable as the author of sin. Welty offers two points by way of reply. The first is an appeal to mystery. Following Paul Helm he notes that key Reformed confessions “leave it a mystery why (for instance) if God ordains everything that comes to pass, and if human sin comes to pass, God is not responsible or culpable for those sins.” (59)
In the main part of his essay Welty focuses on a tu quoque argument in which he charges that if Calvinistic determinism implicates God in evil actions, then Molinism (the primary alternative to Calvinism) does so as well: “Molinism makes God the author of sin (in the objectionable sense) if Calvinism does.” (60)
If Welty is going to defend this claim, he must address the common assumption that Molinism avoids implicating God in evil because God only acts in accord with his knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. Molinists insist that God is not determining the agent to act and thus the creature is responsible for his/her own actions. By contrast, says the Molinist, on Calvinism God determines the creature’s action and so is implicated in it.
Welty challenges this alleged contrast and to make his point he appeals to a meticulously developed firearm analogy. The first step in the analogy is to describe the “ordinary gun” case in which a man pulls a gun on another person and shoots them. Note the dimensions of the case: the gunman acts to bring about a particular effect, but his actions themselves are not sufficient for the effect since he relies on contingent laws of nature, and his knowledge of those laws which guide his action. The gunman does not determine what the laws of nature are but he is nonetheless responsible for the crime (60–3).
In the second scenario Welty envisions a gunman firing a Bullet Bill gun. (Bullet Bill is a sentient bullet with a wicked grin in Nintendo video games and he chases after Mario when fired rather like a heat-seeking missile.) In the first scenario (i.e. that of the ordinary gun) the gunman knows what the trajectory of the bullet would be in various situations based on the laws of nature. And in the second scenario the gunman knows the trajectory Bullet Bill will take in various situations based on his knowledge of the counterfactuals of creaturely (bullet) freedom: that is, he knows that if the gun is fired in situation A that Bullet Bill will kill Mario but if it is fired in situation B then Bullet Bill will kill Luigi.
This brings us to the punchline: Welty argues that the gunman is culpable for knocking off Mario regardless of whether he uses the ordinary gun or the Bullet Bill gun. By analogy, if God is culpable at all then he is culpable whether he determines creaturely action (the ordinary bullet: Calvinism) or if he knows counterfactuals of creaturely freedom (the Bullet Bill: Molinism).
This is a very clever argument which Welty executes (if you’ll excuse the pun) both with rigor and Nintendo references. And if it is successful it certainly forces the Molinist’s hand: either bite the bullet (if you’ll excuse another pun) and accept that the Molinist has no advantage over the Calvinist, or retreat to Open theism.
Before we address the thought experiment, let’s draw a distinction between two senses of God as being the author of sin. It could mean (1) God is culpable for our sins, or it could mean (2) God is the determinate cause of our sin. The analogy Welty draws, focuses too much on the first charge, but ultimately fails since to accept the second charge entails the first charge is true. To be a determinate cause means that God guarantees the effects of human actions must follow from the cause of his volition through our volition. In distinction, the Molinist claims God is neither culpable nor the determinate cause of sin, Calvinists claim merely that God is not culpable. This means they have the additional problem of making sure the distinction does not collapse.
Moving on, the two scenarios, at least as Rauser describes them, do not fully capture all the dimensions which distinguish Calvinism from Molinism. In the first scenario, concerning the regular bullet, it is not a moral agent, even on Calvinism. In order to rectify the situation, I think it better to construct a Bullet which reflects agency on Calvinism. A Calvinist must be, I would think, a compatibalist who claims that we are still culpable, even if we could not have done otherwise. For this, I would suggest switching an inanimate bullet for a Frankfurt Bullet.
Imagine that instead of a regular gun the first gunslinger has a gun which can create Frankfurt bullets ex nihilo. For those of you who don’t know, this name is a nod to the American philosopher Henery Frankfurt who argued that the ‘Principle of Alternative Possibilities’ (the capacity to do otherwise) was not necessary for Free Will [2]. Imagine in the brain of each Frankfurt bullet, we have a switch, and if the Frankfurt bullet decided to do otherwise, the switch would automatically make it want to kill Mario. However, none wish to do otherwise from the get go. Now, it doesn’t matter if one accepts Frankfurt compatibalism or not, but this still does better reflect Calvinism. We are born with a will that wants to do X, and cannot do otherwise, like will Y.
It is at this point I wish to argue that Welty makes God the author of sin. Let’s accept the first sense of the term “author of sin” as “being culpable for the existence of human sin”. If God, by creating us, robs us of the ability to do otherwise, then by determining us causes one outcome, he is now responsible for our sin. Consider for a moment the Kantian point that ought implies can. That is if we ought to do X, it means we could do X. In what sense could the Frankfurt bullet possibly not kill Mario? And if he can’t, why ought we expect him to do so?
Hence, God is not only authorizing sin by determining it, but also by robbing those agents of blameworthiness, making them blameworthy. Thus, Welty needs to provide some argument against the ought-can implication, and argue for compatiblism in order to protect the second sense of God as the author of evil from collapsing into the second. That, or harmonize libertarian free-will with Calvinism.
The Molinist, holding to Libertarian free will, does not have to worry about collapsing God determining sin into God being culpable of sin, she only needs to keep God from being culpable of sin — if we permit the possibility of LFW. Now, how could the Molinist escape from the charge that her gunslinger is not culpable which is unavailable to the Calvinist? At this point, I think formulating a theodicy and transferring it into the thought experiment is the best way of illustrating it.
I purpose the following solution,
Premise 1 — For a being to be responsible for evil, he must cause that another person (or himself, or some morally relevant agent) to be worse off than they were before.
Premise 2 — God does not cause any person (or himself, or some morally relevant agent) worse off than they were before.
Conclusion — God is not responsible for evil
In support of premise 1, I would say that the reason something is wrong, is because it makes that person worse off in some way. It might be an attack on their dignity, robbing them of some virtue, or causing them to suffer bad consequences, but we have to be worse off in some capacity.
Premise 2 is where it the argument hinges. Now, God being all powerful just means he can do all possible things, with the exception of the things which can diminish his powers (like committing evil, or creating a more powerful deity, etc). So, God could not change the law of identity (A = A). Since no one is identical to Saint Paul of Tarsus except Saint Paul of Tarsus, that means there is something to being Paul that is necessary, which no one else possesses. It strikes me as possible — through a series of contrived events — Paul could have been a diplomat to China, but I could never conceive it possible of Paul being a straw hat, even though there is no contradiction.
I would think than that there are certain traits essential to making Paul who he is, and I’d say one of these is Paul’s family history. It was necessary, out of causal events, that some of our ancestors had to sin, otherwise the same people of this world would not be born. If there was a perfect world, it would mean we could not exist. So, because of this, and because under Christianity, humans either go to heaven, or have the potential to get to haven if we freely will it, we are not worse off than not existing.
This is a theodicy I wish I could say I came up with, but I got the idea from a lecture given by Vince Vitale, who himself cites the work of prior Christian philosophers. His lecture is one you can watch here:
Molinism seems to strengthen the theodicy, as it does not seem there is a possible world whereby everyone is in a circumstance where they freely choose the good, and is congruent with everyone being in a circumstance where freely falling in love and produce the same people as the actual world.
This is also what makes Welty’s thought experiment disanalogous. The gunslinger, unlike God, does make someone worse off than before, namely Mario. Thus, the Molinist — provided they accept the Non-Identity theodicy- is free to reject Welty’s argument. Whereas this theodicy would be incompatible with Calvinism, which could have God determine everyone to do the good, and determine them to choose to produce the same people.
End Notes
[1] Randal Rauser, “Calvinism Among the Philosophers”, Link
[2] Michael McKenna and D. Justin Coates, ‘Compatibilism’ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Link

