The following information comes from a lecture I attended of William Lane Craig:
Religious pluralists often argue that there is a contradiction between the premise that “God is all-loving/powerful” and “some do not hear the Gospel and will be lost.”
To see them as contradictory there must be one of two hidden assumptions:
- If God is all powerful He can create a world in which everybody hears the Gospel and is freely saved.
- If God is all-loving, He prefers a world in which everybody hears the Gospel and is freely saved.
I will show that such is not the case, and argue that they are logically compatible.
God is All Powerful
The first assumption is false. While God can create a world in which everybody hears the Gospel, so long as everyone is free there is no way to guarantee that everyone will respond in faith and be saved. God cannot do the logically impossible—He cannot make creatures with free-will accept Him without taking away their free will.
God is All Loving
But what if God created a world in which everyone heard the Gospel and accepted it? Does God’s all-loving nature cause Him to prefer that world to the current world? Maybe not. Maybe there are some advantages to our world. Maybe the world in which all would be saved would be a world of only five people. The second assumption is false as well, then.
Logically Coherent
We can prove that our two premises are logically coherent. We need only find a necessary to obtain the best result. It’s possible that in order to create X number of people who would be saved, He had to create X number of people who He knew would go to hell.
How do we know that there is anybody who would have been saved if only they had received the Gospel? After all, many who hear it reject it. Maybe God had ordered the world in such a way that all those who never hear the Gospel and are lost would not have been saved even had they heard it. God ensures that anyone who would be saved if they heard the Gospel be in such a place and time that they hear it (Acts 17:24-27—God determined the times and places men should live so that men should find Him).
“God has created an optimal world which has an optimal balance between saved and lost, and those who never hear the Gospel and are lost would not have freely received it even if they had heard it.” So long as this is even possible, there is nothing logically contradictory about our two premises.
Given God’s will to create free creatures, God had to accept the fact that some would choose to separate themselves from Him forever.
God wanted to share His love and fellowship with free persons. The joy that comes from those who freely accept Him should not be vetoed by those who reject Him. This is similar to the way in which we humans should not be precluded from creating any children at all simply because there will be some who commit gross evil.
Thinking to Believe 
August 24, 2009 at 8:26 am
Jason, good post. However, could you please provide some clairity. You mentioned in your first note that to assume that “God is all Powerful” is a false assumption. I wonder how you came to that conclusion provided that the scriptures identify Him as the Almighty. And many other passages (Both old and new testament) speaks of His sovereignty(Jeremiah 18; Romans 9)
. What i will say is that due to his sovereignty, God has ALLOWED man to have free will and to choose life or death (Deuteronomy 30:19-20). We see passages which speaks of God’s will for all of mankind – that all men be saved. Yet we know that all men will not be saved. So we have to make these results harmonize. If God is Almighty, and He desires for all men to be saved, yet all men aren’t saved. We would reason that God (by design) has allowed man to chose for himself life or death. However, if God had designed robots, predisposed to chose life or to choose death, He would have been 100% justified in doing so and we would have nothing to say or do about it.
1 Tim 2:1-4
“1I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men;
2For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.
3For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour;
4Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.”
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August 24, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Rather than saying that God is not all-powerful – which He clearly is – I prefer to say that God voluntarily limited His own EXERCISE of power by granting free will to humans. Omnipotence is properly defined as the ability to do anything that is POSSIBLE, and it is not possible for God to dictate or guarantee the behavior of beings whom He has given genuine free will.
Along similar lines, I have been debating some atheists who are claiming that, in order to be perfectly just AND perfectly loving, God would necessarily have to provide equality of opportunity for salvation to ALL humans. They argue that, if Christianity is true, then God seems to have unfairly privileged those who have had a chance to hear the Christian message – apparently based on nothing more than geography, ethnicity, and timing.
My tack has been to emphasize that God’s perfect justice would mandate that ALL be condemned, so His perfect love is demonstrated if ANY are saved. I have also made the same suggestion as above – it is POSSIBLE that no one who has never had the opportunity to hear the Gospel would have believed it even if they had. None of us knows for sure, but God does – given His omniscience – so the whole issue is effectively moot.
The fundamental problem, to me, is the all-too-common one of confusing Law and Gospel. We want to believe that we are entitled to having a say in our own destiny, and thus have a hard time accepting the fact that (1) salvation is ALWAYS entirely the work of God – something for which the saved person NEVER deserves any credit whatsoever; and (2) damnation is ALWAYS entirely the work of humans – something for which God NEVER deserves any blame whatsoever.
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August 24, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Truthofgod,
Notice that I did not say that the statement “God is all powerful” is false. I said the first assumption is false. What was that assumption?: “If God is all powerful He can create a world in which everybody hears the Gospel and is freely saved.” What is false is the understanding of omnipotence underlying this assumption: that God can do absolutely anything. As I pointed out, omniscience does not entail doing the logically impossible, which is what making free creatures that cannot reject God would be (logically impossible).
Jason
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August 24, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Ok, i see your point. And i agree. Thats for the clarification.
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August 25, 2009 at 11:25 pm
I have heard him give this lecture. He makes some very logical points. Of course he is rather brilliant.
Have to admit though, I am amazed sometimes at how illogical he can be when attempting to explain the “trinity”.
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August 26, 2009 at 5:41 am
Mr. Worlow, that’s because the trinity is an illogical concept…lol..Just wanted to put that in there. 🙂
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August 28, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Jason,
You write:
Religious pluralists often argue that there is a contradiction between the premise that “God is all-loving/powerful” and “some do not hear the Gospel and will be lost.”
Then you write much afterward, but I don’t find your solutions to be satisfactory.
God could create a world in which everybody is given notice of the Gospel. I prefer the explanation that God will present the Gospel to some in the afterlife, or after a resurrection during the End Times, to allow them a choice. These are certainly within God’s power and are accepted by many Christians.
Arthur
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August 29, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Good post Jason. Divine counterfactual knowledge helps here as well. I usually take the middle-knowlede view. James White, a Calvinist, has some criticisms of WLC’s molinism too if you want to check it out. http://www.aomin.org
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August 31, 2009 at 3:53 pm
James White seems to have a criticism of almost all things non-James-White. 🙂
Even Craig’s molinism aside, I think Craig demonstrates there is no contradiction in the premises.
Jason
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August 31, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Arthur,
I didn’t offer my solutions. I was summarizing Craig’s. That said, I don’t find your solution Biblically satisfying.
Jason
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September 3, 2009 at 7:13 am
Jason, you are right on about White. I do listen to his podcasts regularly though mainly due to his interaction with the text of Scripture. He is Calvinist and therefore keeps me sharp since I am not. I have learned to filter out his whining.
I agree about WLC’s outcome of the premises for sure. I believe White, however, accuses his argument as being vacuous of Scripture.
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