NOTE: THIS POST TOUCHES ON SOME RATHER ABSTRACT PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES THAT MAY NOT BE VERY EDIFYING.
Hi Jim,
You asked: “Are you familiar with Craig’s view of the transworld damned and did I accurately describe Craig’s view?” Yes, I am quite familiar with Craig’s idea of transworld damnation; indeed, I have employed essentially the same idea, which I have called “transworld reprobation,” in a couple of my own papers. It is a complicated and difficult concept (for the uninitiated), but your description definitely points in the right direction.
The idea of transworld damnation or transworld reprobation is patterned after Alvin Plantinga’s idea of transworld depravity and requires a basic understanding of two things: how Plantinga employs the concept of a possible world, and why many possible worlds, probably an infinite number of them, lie outside even the power of an omnipotent being to create (or, more accurately, to make actual). Plantinga explains all of this in God, Freedom, and Evil, pp. 34-48. I also provide a rather abstract definition of “transworld reprobation,” in “God, Freedom, and Human Destiny ((Religious Studies, 1990) willamette.edu/~ttalbott/DESTINY2.pdf and “Craig on the Possibility of Eternal Damnation” (Religious Studies, 1992) willamette.edu/~ttalbott/CRAIG4.pdf.
Perhaps the most difficult thing to get across to students, so I have found, is this: Even if a person S “suffers” from transworld depravity, there will nonetheless be a host of possible worlds in which S confronts one or more free choices and freely makes the right choice every time; and even if S “suffers” from transworld damnation, there will nonetheless be a host of possible worlds in which S sins, freely repents, and is saved. But here is the kicker. If S does “suffer” from transworld damnation, then nothing God can do–that is, no love he might display, no punishment he might deliver, and no possible set of circumstances in which he places S–would in fact result in S’s repenting freely and being saved. So it turns out that none of the possible worlds–even though they are genuinely possible–in which S freely repents lies within God’s power to make actual. Therefore, God knows from the outset that if he creates S, then S will never freely repent and be saved; God can both create S and save S, in other words, only if he is prepared to override S’s own freewill in the matter of repentance and salvation.
Now I would be altogether surprised if the above paragraph did not produce more confusion than clarity. But since a more elaborate explanation would likely be even more bewildering, I’ll now address your second more practical question: “What is your assessment of Craig’s teaching about the transworld damned?” There are really two questions here: First, is the concept of transworld damnation coherent, in my opinion? And second, do I believe that any actual person “suffers” from it? The answer: I seriously doubt that the concept is coherent, and I’m absolutely certain that, even if it is coherent, God would never create someone who actually “suffered” from transworld damnation.
I doubt that the concept is coherent for two reasons: First, I believe that the very idea of someone freely rejecting God forever is already incoherent. And second, I am now very skeptical of the Molinist assumption that the following kind of proposition, sometimes called a counterfactual of freedom, has a definite truth-value:
§ If Talbott had been an employee of Bernie Madoff and Madoff had offered him $1,000,000.00 in circumstances C to falsify some records and to keep quiet about it, then Talbott would have freely accepted the bribe. Don’t get me wrong. I do not doubt that God has foreknowledge. But I do doubt that he has what some philosophers call middle knowledge, which would require that the above proposition have a definite truth-value. I suspect, however, that it is neither true nor false.
But suppose I am mistaken about all of this. Even so, it is logically impossible, so I claim, that a perfectly loving God would permit the kind irreparable harm that hell represents to enter into his creation; hence, it is also logically impossible that he would create someone who “suffers” from transworld damnation. Craig counters with the following claim: It is at least possible, he says, that no one would freely repent unless God permits some to damn themselves freely; it is also possible that he could increase the number of those who freely repent and thereby gain heaven by increasing the number of those who freely damn themselves. And my rejoinder is that Craig provides no good arguments for such possibilities, which strike me as preposterous. For a more detailed explanation of Craig’s view and why I reject it, see my paper “Craig on the Possibility of Eternal Damnation” at the URL specified above. Or, for a less technical discussion, see Chapter 11 of The Inescapable Love of God.
Hope this helps, at least a little.
-Tom
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