Tom Flint

Divine Providence is a remarkable book that should quickly earn its place as the leading authoritative contemporary exposition and defense of Molinism. ―William Hasker, author of God, Time, and Knowledge Thomas P. Flint develops and defends the idea of divine providence sketched by Luis de Molina, the sixteenth-century Jesuit theologian. The Molinist account of divine providence reconciles two claims long thought to be incompatible: that God is the all-knowing governor of the universe and that individual freedom can prevail only in a universe free of absolute determinism. The Molinist concept of middle knowledge holds that God knows, though he has no control over, truths about how any individual would freely choose to act in any situation, even if the person never encounters that situation. Given such knowledge, God can be truly providential while leaving his creatures genuinely free. Divine Providence is by far the most detailed and extensive presentation of the Molinist view ever written. Middle knowledge is hotly debated in philosophical theology, and the controversy spills over into metaphysics and moral philosophy as well. Flint ably defends the concept against its most influential contemporary critics, and shows its importance to Christian practice. With particular originality and sophistication, he applies Molinism to such aspects of providence as prayer, prophecy, and the notion of papal infallibility, teasing out the full range of implications for traditional Christianity.

This chapter provides a Molinist response to William Hasker's ‘The (Non‐) Existence of Molinist Counterfactuals’. Flint differs to some extent with Hasker's presentation of the major anti‐Molinist arguments of the last thirty years, and strives to show just where Hasker's most recent ‘bringing about’ argument fails. He also questions Hasker's suggestion that progress is most likely to be made if we focus our attention primarily on continuing to investigate these arguments. Instead, Flint proposes that more energy should be devoted toward examining the longer history of the dispute over Molinism, toward philosophically developing in greater detail each of the three major views of divine providence, and especially toward applying each of the three general perspectives to particular areas of Christian belief or practice.

This chapter provides a Molinist response to William Hasker's ‘The (Non-) Existence of Molinist Counterfactuals’. Flint differs to some extent with Hasker's presentation of the major anti‐Molinist arguments of the last thirty years, and strives to show just where Hasker's most recent ‘bringing about’ argument fails. He also questions Hasker's suggestion that progress is most likely to be made if we focus our attention primarily on continuing to investigate these arguments. Instead, Flint proposes that more energy should be devoted toward examining the longer history of the dispute over Molinism, toward philosophically developing in greater detail each of the three major views of divine providence, and especially toward applying each of the three general perspectives to particular areas of Christian belief or practice.

Philosophers have spoken much in recent years about accidental necessity, especially in connection with arguments for the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom. Some have further suggested that acceptance of the Molinist stance on middle knowledge commits one to denying that accidental necessity is closed under entailment. This essay tries to show that not all of these discussions have shed maximal light on the fundamental issues, and that much of the confusion stems from a failure to acknowledge that there are a variety of distinct notions to which “accidental necessity“ can plausibly be seen as referring.

While many authors have written about the undertone of violence present throughout Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find," little has been said about the specific references in the story to the Civil War. These references, though, serve to highlight questions concerning evil, guilt, and punishment that come to the fore especially in the culminating scene between the grandmother and The Misfit. In the end, the story seems to be suggesting, trying to determine the fittingness of the evils we (as individuals or as a society) encounter may best be seen as a further manifestation of the pride that precipitated our original Fall; these are matters best left to God's judgment, not to ours.

Philosophical theology is aimed primarily at theoretical understanding of the nature and attributes of God and of God's relationship to the world and its inhabitants. During the twentieth century, much of the philosophical community (both in the Anglo-American analytic tradition and in Continental circles) had grave doubts about our ability to attain any such understanding. In recent years the analytic tradition in particular has moved beyond the biases that placed obstacles in the way of the pursuing questions located on the interface of philosophy and religion. The result has been a rebirth of serious, widely-discussed work in philosophical theology. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology attempts both to familiarize readers with the directions in which this scholarship has gone and to pursue the discussion into hitherto under-examined areas. Written by some of the leading scholars in the field, the essays in the Handbook are grouped in five sections. In the first ("Theological Prolegomena"), articles focus on the authority of scripture and tradition, on the nature and mechanisms of divine revelation, on the relation between religion and science, and on theology and mystery. The next section ("Divine Attributes") focuses on philosophical problems connected with the central divine attributes: aseity, omnipotence, omniscience, and the like. In Section Three ("God and Creation"), essays explore theories of divine action and divine providence, questions about petitionary prayer, problems about divine authority and God's relationship to morality and moral standards, and various formulations of and responses to the problem of evil. The fourth section ("Topics in Christian Philosophy") examines philosophical problems that arise in connection with such central Christian doctrines as the trinity, the incarnation, the atonement, original sin, resurrection, and the Eucharist. Finally, Section Five ("Non-Christian Philosophical Theology") introduces readers to work that is being done in Jewish, Islamic, and Chinese philosophical theology.