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them. This is the generic grounding objection. And this objection, I contend, provides a powerful
refutation of MK. I will attempt to justify this claim in what follows.

Responses to the Grounding Objection
Molinists have not sat still in the face of the GO, as I indicated earlier. Many of them have
offered responses to the grounding objection which they believe show that it is not very powerful
after all, and certainly not conclusive.
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In this section I will evaluate some of the more serious
of these responses.
The Analogy with Future-Tense Statements
Some Molinists have responded to the grounding objection by arguing that the objection is
analogous to arguments purporting to show that future-tense statements have no truth value. In
other words, to argue that
(A) If David had remained in Keilah, then Saul would have besieged the city

has no truth-value, is to make the same mistake as those who contend that categorical
propositions about the future such as

(B) Jesus will return bodily in 2010

have no truth value. Now most of us believe that (B) has a definite truth value. It is either true or
it is false (probably false). And some very good arguments can be given to show that propositions
like (B) do in fact have truth-value. But, the defenders of MK might say, if (A) has no truth-value,
then neither does (B). William Lane Craig explains:
This argument [the grounding objection] seems to rest on the same misconception of
truth as correspondence that we considered earlier. . . There we saw that at the time of the
truth of future-tense statements, the reality to which they corresponded is nonexistent.
All that the view of truth as correspondence requires of future-tense statements is that the
realities described will exist. Similarly, at the time at which counterfactual statements are
true, it is not required that the circumstances or actions referred to actually exist. The
view of truth as correspondence requires only that such actions would be taken if the
specified circumstances were to exist.
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Likewise, Thomas Flint, following the lead of Alfred Freddoso, says that the grounding objection
to CFs
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E.g., Craig, The Only Wise God; "Hasker On Divine Knowledge" Philosophical Studies 67
(August 1992): 89-110; " Robert Adam's New Anti-Molinist Argument," Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 54:4 (December 1994): 857-61; On Hasker's Defense of Anti-Molinism,"
Faith and Philosophy 15:2 (April 1998): 236-40. Another well-known defender of MK is Thomas Flint,
Divine Providence: The Molinist Account (Cornell University Press, 1998).
12
Craig, The Only Wise God, 139-41.