Questions on Universal Salvation, Molinism, and the Burial of Jesus

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question.

Dr. Craig, Thank you for your ministry and the amazing work you have done in my life through the power of the Holy Spirit. John Piper has said regarding the crucifixion, “These few hours in history was the climax of the worst wickedness that has ever been performed on the planet. And God planned it so that we might be saved!” You have defended that God is not the author of evil. How would you respond to the Calvinist argument that this is biblical evidence that God predestines evil? Oliver, United States

DR. CRAIG: I would explain to Oliver that on a Molinist perspective (that is, a perspective following the Jesuit theologian Luis Molina) that God knows that certain persons would act in certain ways if he were to place them in those circumstances. And even though it is God's absolute will that everyone always do the right thing in whatever circumstances he puts them in, it can be God's conditional will to allow people to be in certain circumstances in which God knew that they would do evil because God knows that he can bring some good out of it. I think this is exactly what happened in the case of the crucifixion. The New Testament says very clearly that the crucifixion of Jesus happened by the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. I would say that what this means is that God knew that if he were to send his Son at this time in human history when these people were in Israel and certain people were on the Jewish Sanhedrin, the high court, that they would condemn Jesus to death freely, and he knew that if Pilate were the procurator of Judea during this time that Pilate would cave into their demands and he would send Jesus to the cross. This all happened according to the foreknowledge and foreordination of God knowing how human agents would freely act in whatever circumstances they are in. So it is compatible with human freedom, and yet it is under the sovereign direction and control of God.

KEVIN HARRIS: A related question next. It says,

Hello, Dr. Craig. I have a question regarding the application of middle knowledge and how we view soteriology. Middle knowledge is God's knowledge of what free creatures would do in varying circumstances. But what about the amount of people that God could create? Could this number be infinite? If it is infinite then doesn't that mean that it is very likely if not certain that God could create a world in which everyone is saved? The works of Josh Rasmussen provoked me to this question, and my trying to find an answer to this question has been very fruitful which is why I've been led here. I find the Molinist framework very helpful and so deeply desire to defend this concept. Any help here would also be appreciated. God bless. Cayden, United States.

DR. CRAIG: What Cayden needs to understand is that it is not part of middle knowledge or Molinism that God could not have created a world in which everybody freely did the right thing or in which everybody is freely saved. That is one of the applications of Molinism that I have personally made to the question of why God did not create a world in which everyone is freely saved. What I suggest is that maybe such a world is not feasible for God. Even though it's possible, given the counterfactuals about how people would freely act in the various circumstances they could be in, maybe it's not feasible for God to create a world of universal salvation. If I'm wrong about that, fine. That doesn't affect the theory of middle knowledge in any way. It just means that that application that I've suggested is unsuccessful. But does Cayden give us a good reason here for thinking that my proposal is implausible? I don't think so. I think he is confusing two things. He says that if the amount of people or the number of people that God could create is infinite then doesn't that make it very likely that God could have created a world in which everyone would freely be saved? That doesn't follow at all. In having a possible world in which there's an infinite number of people, that doesn't do anything to increase the probability that all of them would freely find salvation. On the contrary, you might think it actually diminishes it. Surely, someone would go wrong. But I don't think that's what Cayden is really talking about. I think he's misexpressed it. I think what he's asking is: Are there an infinite number of feasible worlds each containing a finite number of people which God could have actualized? And if there is an infinite number of such feasible worlds then surely, he's saying, in some of them everyone would have been freely saved. I'd simply respond that while that's possible logically, there's just no reason to think that that's true. Cayden needs to remember that these counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are contingently true. And it may just happen to be that in the actual world, in none of these feasible worlds would there be universal salvation. Or, if there is (say they're worlds with only one or two people in them), that there are other overriding deficiencies of such worlds that make them less preferable to God. Given that it's contingent, I just don't see that there's any way you can say that if there were an infinite number of feasible worlds available to God that in some of them universal salvation would take place. One last point. Cayden needs to keep in mind that we're not dealing here simply with random odds. Don't think of this as like throwing dice, and if you throw the dice enough times then any combination is going to come up. We're talking here about free choices of personal agents and therefore you should not think of these choices as randomly distributed across feasible worlds in the way that, say, the spins of a roulette wheel would be random. Therefore, I simply don't think there's any grounds for saying that if there are an infinite number of feasible worlds available to God that there probably are feasible worlds in which universal salvation takes place without any overriding deficiencies.

KEVIN HARRIS: This next question from Canada:

Dear Dr. Craig, Thank you for your unflagging commitment to the apologetics ministry. Your popular works and Reasonable Faith podcasts were an important part of my faith formation in my teens, and now as I prepare to be ordained for Anglican parish ministry I have rediscovered your work at the academic level. It has been a great encouragement and a source of intellectual renewal. My question emerges from atonement and the death of Christ. I am grateful for your defense of penal substitutionary atonement, but it seems to be only the first step, although the most important step, in a doctrine of salvation. Protestant theology has typically said that repentance and faith (or faith-only if faith necessarily involves repentance) are the means by which the atoning sacrifice of Christ is applied to an individual. In your study of the atonement, have you discovered a necessary reason why faith and repentance have this role of applying the benefits of the atonement? To put it in another way, is there some logic internal to penal substitutionary atonement which requires that faith be the principle by which this atonement is applied, or is the necessity of faith for salvation added to the necessity of atonement for sin by the free choice of God so that the doctrine of salvation involves two or more ideas which might not have been conjoined? Is there a possible world in which Christ atones for sin and yet God chooses to apply the merit of the atonement on the basis of some other criteria such as good works performed after regeneration or even something as inane as eye color? Benjamin, Canada.

DR. CRAIG: Thank you, Benjamin, for your question and congratulations on your entering the parish ministry. In the book, Atonement and the Death of Christ, I do discuss at some length what I perceive to be a very organic connection between the atoning death of Christ and the importance of placing our faith in Christ in order to appropriate the benefits of that atonement. This is in the chapters dealing with the idea of divine pardon. As I explain in the book, in order for a pardon to be efficacious it must be appropriated by the person pardoned. In our justice system if a criminal refuses a pardon offered him by the governor or the president then in fact he is not released from the demands of justice for his crime. He must continue to serve out his sentence or even to be executed because he has rejected the pardon and therefore falls back under the justice and the penalty that justice demands for his crime. In the case of the atoning death of Christ, it seems to me that it is on the basis of Christ's atonement that God then offers us a pardon for our sins and that we must appropriate it by receiving that pardon. That is what placing one's faith in Christ as savior is all about. It is appropriating that divine pardon.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next question.

Dear Dr. Craig. Jesus walked around touching the unclean and sick and healing them. The Father had Satan in his presence in the book of Job. God provided for Isaiah a cleansing coal for his lips. Moses could stand in God's presence after removing his sandals. These examples are of how unclean people do not contaminate God because God's holiness flows from him and contamination does not flow towards him. How then does Christ become sin as 2 Corinthians 5:21 states? T. J., United States.

DR. CRAIG: I think the answer, very simply T. J., is because Jesus Christ, unlike God the Father, has two natures – a divine nature and a human nature. In his divine nature, Christ can no more be contaminated by sin or evil than God the Father can in his divine nature. But in his human nature our sins can be legally imputed to Jesus according to his human nature. That’s why Paul says in Timothy that there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. So it is in virtue of his incarnation that Christ can take upon himself our sin and guilt and thereby pay the penalty for sin that we deserve.

KEVIN HARRIS:

Dr. Craig, a scholar friend of mine said that it's improbable that Jesus was entombed by Joseph of Arimathea due to the fact that Pontius Pilate was not the type of man to give permission. He said Pilate didn't care about Jewish traditions and culture. He was a very cruel man with no space for sympathy. He used this example of when he was extremely terrible to the Jews. So it was unlikely he would have had sympathy for Jesus. He then says that Jesus was left to hang on the cross for a few days and then was buried with the rest of the criminals. As a Christian, I normally try to refute claims. I would say that we barely have any historical information on Pilate to begin with so it's unlikely if we know his cruelty was a pattern. Secondly, even if he was buried with criminals that doesn't explain the multiple resurrection appearances which is impossible to have been hallucinations. And the amount of faith the apostles had to die for their cause. These questions are bothering me quite a bit so I was hoping you could answer both of them using historical information as much as possible. So my questions are (1) would Pontius Pilate deny Jesus’ burial by Joseph? And (2) even if Jesus was buried with crucified criminals, can his resurrection and faith in all his disciples be defended? Jimny, United States.

DR. CRAIG: What Jimny needs to understand is the distinction between the probability of Jesus’ burial by Joseph of Arimathea on the background information alone without considering the specific evidence and then what the probability of Jesus’ entombment by Joseph of Arimathea is on the combination of the background information plus the specific evidence. It's entirely possible that if you consider the entombment of Jesus by Joseph solely on the background information that it would be improbable, but that this is simply overcome by the specific evidence that we have that Jesus was in fact entombed by Joseph of Arimathea. So his scholar friend is simply ignoring the specific evidence. What his friend is saying is that if you ignore all the evidence for Jesus’ burial by Joseph and you just look at your general background information it's improbable that Pontius Pilate would have given over the body of Jesus to be buried. I would say in the first place that that's not very improbable at all. Pontius Pilate was politically shrewd, and he knew when to compromise in order to avoid problems with the troublesome Jewish subjects that he had to govern. For example, Josephus tells the story of a run-in that Pilate had with Jews about AD 26. That's just a few years before Jesus was crucified. Pilate had commanded that there be standards of the emperor placed in the Jewish temple, and the Jews protested violently against this desecration of their temple. Pilate sent armed soldiers into the crowds with swords and at his command they unsheathed their swords and threatened to kill the Jewish protesters. At that point the Jewish protesters bared their necks and said we would rather die than have our temple desecrated in this way. What did Pilate do? He backed down and had the standards removed. In order to maintain the peace, Pilate knew when to compromise. You find exactly the same thing happening at the trial of Jesus. Pilate wants to let Jesus go, but when the Jewish leadership begins to threaten a riot and they say to Pilate, “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar's” then Pilate knowing which side of the bread his political butter is on goes ahead and sends Jesus to the cross. It is not at all improbable that Pilate would have been willing to give up the body of Jesus, a man he knew was innocent, to a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, Joseph of Arimathea, in order to allow him to be interred rather than simply buried with the other two thieves on the crosses beside Jesus. That's with regard to the background information alone. I don't think your friend's argument is very good. I think that Jimny is right – it is correct to say we just don't know enough about Pilate to say with any confidence that he wouldn't have released the corpse of Jesus to a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin. But all of that is academic anyway because we have specific evidence that in fact Pilate did release the body of Jesus. In my written work I lay out something like five independent lines of specific evidence for the historicity of the burial story. The vast majority of New Testament scholars (almost everyone) agrees with the historicity of Jesus’ entombment by Joseph of Arimathea. So the first question that Jimny asked, “Would Pontius Pilate deny Jesus’ burial by Joseph?” – I don't think we can say that there's any probability that he would have done that. But in any case we have specific evidence that he didn't deny burial, that he acceded to Joseph's entombment of Jesus. That's the point to emphasize – the evidence we have. As for Jimny’s other question: Suppose Jesus was in fact interred by the Romans along with the other two criminals that were crucified – could his resurrection be still defended? Yes. I think it could. You wouldn't have the empty tomb in that case. But you still would have the postmortem appearances and the transformation in the lives of the first disciples to believing that Jesus was risen from the dead. But all of that is academic anyway because the burial of Jesus by Joseph of Arimathea is one of the most certain and best established facts about the historical Jesus that we have.^[1]