Molinism and the Suffering of Animals

By Dean Meadows

Ask a room full of skeptics which objection to God they believe is most effective, or the argument that has convinced them to abandon theism, and the answer will most likely be gratuitous suffering (suffering that doesn’t seem to have a purpose). In my opinion, animal suffering (after OT “atrocities”) is the fast-growing objection to the existence of God. Examine the online skeptic TikTok and YouTube channels, and animal suffering is going to be mentioned.

The animal suffering objection is a serious problem for Christians because the usual answer to the problem of evil, pain, and suffering is the free-will defense. However, the free-will defense misses the mark, for it only addresses things like the evidential problem of evil. Moreover, theodicies like the soul-making theodicy tell us how hardship builds virtue, but the fawn trapped in a wildfire does not become more virtuous, so what is the point? The fall of Adam provides us an understanding as to the moral corruption of humanity and the curse of the land, but does it necessarily mean God had to make a world in which there was predation, extinction, and suffering of animals? With these questions in mind, I believe that Molinism helps provide a starting point for defending the existence of God against the gratuitous suffering objection.

The Skeptics Objection

In a recent discussion with a skeptic at the local coffee shop, I was told, matter-of-factly, that “God could have prevented this suffering and made the world better. God could have built a world where humans were accountable for their sin, but animals did not suffer, or some version of “God could have done x with humans and y with the rest of the world.” Here, I’m going to address the “could have” statement because it is a claim about which worlds were feasible for God, and feasibility depends on truths that neither the skeptic nor the Christian can see.

Free Agents and Stable Environment

Assuming we have some modicum of free will (check out the rest of the site for the arguments for libertarian free will), we must be able, at least in part, to predict results of our actions (all actions, not just moral actions). For example, if you swing an ax, you need to know that it will split wood and not turn into a feather halfway down. Moral responsibility requires a world of stable, law-like regularities. Michael Murray called this “nomic regularities.”

Yet, a world of reliable physical laws is a world where fire burns whatever comes in contact with it, including fawns. God could rescue every animal the instant harm approaches, yet a world of constant rescues by God would be a world without dependable consequences or stable ecosystems. The skeptic could reply that God could have chosen different laws that could have provided the existence of free creatures without all the death, and this is where Molinism shines. On Molinism, God knows what every possible free creature would do in every possible set of circumstances. But “circumstances” does not mean mere snapshots of history or time. Rather, the truth “if Peter were in the courtyard, he would deny Jesus” concerns Peter in exactly that particular courtyard, preceded by exactly the history leading up to the courtyard talk with the slave girl. The circumstance of any free choice includes the entire prior history of the world.

Now, apply that to natural history: Suppose God removed predation from the Cambrian age, or spared the fawn. Every later circumstance changes, because the past is part of every circumstance. Here, two consequences follow. First, different people. Which humans exist depends on which ancestors met and what children were conceived, and those depend on countless prior events throughout the whole history of life. Alter that history, and you’ll almost certainly end up with different people. The skeptic desires a “better world that God could have made,” but it isn’t merely our world minus the suffering. It is a different world altogether with different people. Second, there would be different counterfactuals. Even if similar or the exact same people existed, the free choices in altered circumstances are governed by different counterfactual freedoms. God does not control those. He can only survey them. So there is no promise that a gentler natural history contains as many persons as possible freely coming to know and love him, or any at all.

But the skeptic seems to miss an additional crucial point: a world containing free persons and even redeemed persons is tied to its whole history. The ability to deliver any world depends on truths that are not up to God and not visible to us. So, the skeptic needs a strong claim that a world with comparable goods and less animal suffering was feasible. This is no small task because it requires more than just imagining a better world. Showing that it was feasible would require the very middle knowledge that only God has. Hence, the skeptic is simply left to speculate as to the why but can’t produce the alternative that reduces suffering of animals but provides as much world-stability to be able to predict outcomes and consequences.

Still, the skeptic may press, “Why 500 million years of predation? Why the Permian extinction? Why not just skip right to the end of all that and make humans? These are great questions. I still think Molinism does some heavy lifting. Some Molinists argue that middle knowledge of God extends to the counterfactuals of chance: truth about how genuinely indeterministic processes, such as mutation or quantum events, would turn out in given conditions. If those processes are products of true chance, then how they would go is not something God stipulates, any more than he stipulates what Peter would freely do. He knows it; he does not dictate it. So, God’s choice of laws and initial conditions is a choice among natural histories whose outcomes he can foresee but cannot rewrite without constant miracles which would undo the stable world free creatures need. The costs of evolution, predation, and extinction are features of the feasible routes to image-bearers and God selected a route knowing every alternative. Scripture says “the young lion roars after their prey, seeking their food from God” (Ps. 104:21). The psalmist sees predation as something attributed to God’s ordering of the world. The Chicxulub crater cleared space in which mammals diversified; plate tectonics keeps the planet habitable. If all termites, house flies, and ants went extinct, there would be an ecological catastrophe. Yet, all of these, no matter how harmful, benefit the production of embodied, free creatures.

Conclusion

If the skeptic is going to defeat the argument, he needs to show more than just the ability to imagine a better world. He has to show that God could have created a world consistent with every truth about what free creatures would do and how chance would fall, containing free persons who come to know and love God as fully as ours does with less animal suffering, and without needing a constant miracle that would dissolve the stable order free agents need. It seems the skeptic cannot carry the burden. Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that via God’s middle knowledge, the current world is the most feasible world that allows free creatures to flourish and know God.