How Much Risk?

Thus far, our description of open theism does not seem to resemble a God who takes morally irresponsible risks. Yet critics of open theism can still wonder how much control God has in bringing about the MCP, even calling into question God's ability to guarantee the success of the MCP (cf. Mawson 2008). It is not difficult for critics to raise this complaint since proponents of open theism themselves often play up just how much risk is involved when God creates a universe. To justify the critic's complaint, one can point to the debate among open theists about whether or not God can guarantee that He will achieve the MCP. We say that the lack of clarity around risk lowers the initial plausibility of open theism.

To understand this debate, Johanness Grössl and Leigh Vicens say that there are two versions of open theism to consider. They call these high‐risk open theism and limited‐risk open theism. In high‐risk open theism, it is metaphysically possible that all creatures reject God's offer of friendship. Grössl and Vicens clarify that the term “high‐risk” does not mean that the probability of all creatures rejecting God's offer of friendship is high. In fact, according to them, high‐risk open theists say the probability of all creatures rejecting God's offer of friendship is actually so low that it is negligible (Grössl and Vicens 2014, 477–78). This view is high‐risk because there are in fact possible dark timelines branching from the beginning of this universe in which the MCP fails. Representatives of this position are said to be thinkers like William Hasker and John Sanders (Sanders 2007).

Grössl and Vicens describe Gregory Boyd's position as a limited‐risk open theism because this view says that it is impossible for God to fail to achieve the MCP (Boyd 2011, 2015). They write, “We call this view ‘limited‐risk’ since the risks in which God engages are limited to certain specific undesirable events occurring, and not to the realization of His most central purpose for creation” (Grössl and Vicens 2014, 478). In limited‐risk open theism, God is able to guarantee that the MCP will be achieved. There is no risk that all of humanity will reject God's offer of friendship. Of course, there is a risk that various painful and evil events will occur along the way toward God achieving the MCP. But the terms high‐risk and limited‐risk in the open theist literature are only concerned with the risks surrounding the MCP.

It might seem that critics are able to raise doubts about God's ability to bring about the MCP if one is considering high‐risk open theism. However, critics have also tried to raise the same doubts against Boyd's limited‐risk open theism (Ware 2000). ^iv We take these doubts to be the product of at least two different factors. First, the open theists’ own confusing statements over divine risk. Second, the lack of detailed discussion from open theists about how God can mitigate risks. We take each in turn.

Open theists themselves do not seem to have a clear stance on the risks involved when God creates a universe. In fact, we suspect that most open theists actually implicitly affirm the limited‐risk view. ^v This is because we find it less than clear that so‐called high‐risk open theists give a ringing endorsement of the view. For example, in at least two passages, Hasker says that, “even if it is admitted to be possible,” the probability of God failing is so overwhelmingly improbable as to be negligible (Hasker 2004, 119, 103). The qualification of if admitted to be possible is not a ringing endorsement of high‐risk. A more recent discussion comes from the open theist, Richard Rice. Rice explicitly rejects Boyd's claim that God can guarantee the success of the MCP (Rice 2020, 95–96, 182, 230). He states that the probability of divine failure is theoretically possible, but it is so improbable as to be practically remote (Rice 2020, 231). This sounds like a high‐risk view, yet Rice also states that the open theist affirms a version of predestination on which God has predestined that a group of people will participate in His MCP. On an open theist version of predestination, the identity of every individual in this group has not been determined in advance. Yet Rice says that an open theist predestination is “the guaranteed fulfilment of God's purposes” (Rice 2020, 47). Rice even states that it is practically certain that God's efforts will not end until the MCP is satisfied (Rice 2020, 231). Given this, we find it difficult to see how Rice can consistently affirm a high‐risk view. To us, this looks like a limited‐risk view. This kind of confusion over the risk involved lowers the initial plausibility of open theism, and makes the view vulnerable to its critics.

Whatever amount of risk the open theist wishes to affirm, we say that something is missing from the open theist account of reality—divine risk management. If open theism is to be considered a plausible view, open theists need to stop playing up how much risk God takes, and start developing theories about how God mitigates the risks involved in creating a universe with an open future. Hence, in what follows, we explore philosophical and scientific theories that open theists can use to develop accounts of divine risk management. This, we maintain, will raise the plausibility of open theism.

Why Should We Engage with Molecular Biology?

As we noted before, open theists have offered different kinds of engagement with scientific fields like quantum mechanics and evolutionary biology. There has been no significant engagement with molecular biology. We take this to be unfortunate because molecular biology offers a range of risk‐management systems that ought to be of interest to the open theist who faces objections about an overly risky God. What we offer in the subsequent sections is a description of molecular mechanisms that actually exist and are well‐studied among biologists. Ultimately, we leave it up to the open theist to decide how to fit them in their model of the God‐world relationship. Our aim at the moment is to describe the details of the biological phenomena. We take it that anyone who is interested in understanding the world that we are actually living in will appreciate the discussion. Later we will make relevant suggestions for the open theist to consider.

Biological Redundancies

Biological systems are incredibly sophisticated. Imagine all the complex tasks a human body does at any given moment without being aware all the time; from the involuntary heart beating to every individual cell performing its correct function.

At first glance, it may seem that the success of such a system is the extreme level of specialization and optimization in which every biological pathway is efficiently optimized to achieve one clearly defined goal using one efficient and optimal pathway. However, if a system is perfectly tailored for one specific purpose, then every minor change in the system becomes extremely dangerous for the organism. Furthermore, this type of “perfect system” seems not to account for errors and unforeseen circumstances. Thus, making it a less than ideal system for a universe with an open future. An open theist can say that God did not create such a universe. Instead, God created a universe with a certain amount of flexibility that allows for stability and autonomy.

The precise amount of flexibility is difficult specify. However, we argue that a certain degree of autonomy and flexibility appears to be a fundamental requirement for biological success. Consider that over 90% of the living biomass on Earth is composed of sessile organisms like bacteria, fungi, or plants that cannot move or escape from either their environment or predators (Bar‐On and Milo 2018). ^vi During the day, many crucial parameters like temperature, sun light, humidity, and so on are constantly and unexpectedly changing, forcing these organisms to continually adjust. A rigid system would clearly struggle to cope with all of these unforeseen changes. Therefore, a certain degree of freedom and flexibility appears to be a fundamental requirement for biological success. Of course, the system cannot be too flexible because it will end up in chaos and fail to perform any unified responses against a series of adverse circumstances.

However, our planet Earth is thriving with an incredible variety of life forms that are not just living but flourishing in so many different ecosystems, thus proving their success through evolutionary time. This naturally raises the question, what is the key to their fundamental biological success?

One way to achieve their optimal flexibility is through an extensive use of contingency plans or risk‐management, redundancy, and surveillance systems. For example, higher living organisms have evolved a plethora of redundant processes able to complete the same task in different ways by using surveillance systems and error repairing mechanisms that will ensure the correct function in case of failing. However, it must be noted that some simple organisms, like viruses and other unicellular organisms, have gone in the opposite direction by eliminating redundancy. For them, the key of success often lies in their small and compact genome offering a quick replication able to overcome their host responses and conquer many environmental niches.

In the following subsections, we will delve deeper into redundancies, risk control management, error repair mechanisms, and surveillance mechanisms in the biological world.

Biological Redundancy: Many Ways to Achieve a Final Goal

“Redundancy describes a situation in which there is an excess of causal components in a system, above the minimum needed for its proper function” (Laruson, Yeaman, and Lotterhos 2020, 1).

One simple way to maintain flexibility within a system is to establish many ways to achieve the same goal. This is called redundancy. Redundancy offers multiple solutions to a given problem that could be a key of success during the evolutionary process (Laruson, Yeaman, and Lotterhos 2020).

In biology, the concept of “genetic redundancy” has been discussed since the early history of genetics when it was used to describe the phenomenon of duplication of genes or genome. This early definition of genetic redundancy is now included into a more specific understanding of “Functional Redundancy”—a situation where “two or more genes perform the same biochemical function,” within an individual (Ascencio and DeLuna 2013). A gene can be defined as a continuous DNA or RNA region that encodes the synthesis of a gene product, either RNA or protein acting as a functional unit of heredity. Genes are inherited from parents to offspring and contain the information needed to specify traits. The genome is the complete set of genes and other genetic material present in a cell or organism.

As humans, we possess two copies of each gene making our whole genome duplicated. We are so‐called diploid organisms. Other organisms, called polyploid organisms, can have multiple copies. For example, the humble potato ranges from two to six copies depending on the species. Viruses and bacteria have very small genomes with no or few duplicated genes and as a result a single mutation often destroys several functions simultaneously (Krakauer and Plotkin 2002).

From an evolutionary perspective, having multiple copies of the same gene is a powerful move to combat destructive mutation and promote biological success. If one gene is affected, the organism will have other functioning copies that will buffer the effect of the mutation. Consequently, the possibility to tolerate mutations can also be viewed as a mechanism to accumulate beneficial mutations and raise their evolutionary potential, hence allowing the mutations to persist in the population (Fisher 1935; Krakauer and Plotkin 2002). Thus, making this kind of redundancy a significant evolutionary advantage. In fact, it has been shown that for a significant proportion of gene duplication, this kind of redundancy has been an extremely stable feature across evolutionary time scales. Some cases have 80–100 million years of evolutionary conservation of this kind of redundancy. What this means is that these genes were duplicated during the era of the dinosaurs, and these duplications are still present today in many living organisms. Thus, giving us a clear example of their importance for the success of an organism (Kafri, Springer, and Pilpel 2009).

It is the combination of genetic redundancy, mutational robustness, and the potential arising of new characteristics that give an organism the ability to survive the environmental changes and ultimately to generate a new diversity of traits in the population. Yet the use of redundancies is not only present in genes, but also in cells.

From a cell biology perspective, redundancy is crucial in accomplishing the vast biochemical functions that the cell has to perform. Biological pathways are a series of interactions among molecules that leads to a certain change or product in a cell. Most biological pathways require sophisticated and optimized components in order to function, but their flexibility is still guaranteed through many levels of redundancy that ultimately will all lead to the same result.

A wide range of redundancy systems acting at the molecular level has been proposed by Ghosh and O'Connor (2017) and is defined as follows:

• Molecular redundancy: This occurs when at least two effectors use the same molecular mechanism to modify the same target. The effector can be a duplicated gene or redundant protein codified by different genes but with the same functionality. Here, the effectors can replace each other's functions because their activity has the same effect.

• Target redundancy: The effectors can modulate the same component in a pathway by using different molecular mechanisms. In this case, the effectors are so different that they cannot replace one another, but they act on the same component of the same pathway modulating it synergistically.

• Pathway redundancy: It defines effectors that modulate a single pathway but target different components of the pathway. This set of effectors is acting at different levels in modulating the same pathway and using different mechanisms, but the outcome of that modulation serves to achieve the same goal.

• Cellular process redundancy: This occurs when sets of effectors can compensate one another by targeting several complementary pathways that all lead to a single cellular process.

• System redundancy: It defines effectors that modulate very different biological pathways, but that lead to the same results. In biology, cell death is a single event that is governed by multiple processes. Each process is triggered by different signals. The process mechanisms are all biochemically different, but all together they all lead to the same outcome of cell death.

Taken together, all of these possible redundancies show how biological systems can arrive at a final goal using a variety of solutions. An open theist should consider that all of these mechanisms can be seen as a solid foundation toward biological success that can potentially guarantee the flexibility to adapt to an unknown future. With this understanding of redundancy before us, we now turn to discuss the phenomena of risk management in the biological order.

Risk Control Management in Biology: A Lesson from Two Fundamental Molecular Mechanisms

Living organisms have developed numerous systems of checks and balances in order to thrive at best in their environment. For example, control of flowering in plants is regulated not only by temperature, but also by the length of the day. Plants sense the passing of seasons due to an intricate network of molecular sensors able to measure repetitive amounts of cold received during the cold months. They also sense the amount of light they received during the day through their circadian clock in their leaves that will transmit the message to the shoots apex and initiate the flowering transition. Such an elegant control system will account for an exceptional warm season and will prevent them from flowering at the wrong time (Johansson and Staiger 2015; Bloomer and Dean 2017).

The open theist says that God employs contingency plans in providentially governing the universe. Hence, the open theist might say that it should be no surprise that a system of contingency plans and risk management is present at any molecular level down to the most fundamental biochemical pathways involving DNA and RNA synthesis. We leave it to the open theist to decide if she does in fact want to say this.

Cells have mastered a remarkable network of surveillance and error repairing mechanisms able to correct functions, even in cases of failing in producing the so‐called building blocks of life.

Before explaining these mechanisms, we will briefly describe DNA and RNA.

DNA and RNA are nucleic acid molecules forming chains made of basic structures of four kinds of nucleotide bases, a phosphate group, and a sugar molecule; all three together compose a nucleotide. There are four possible nucleotides and they pair in a specific manner: adenine with thymine (uridine for RNA), and guanosine with cytosine. DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is composed of a double helix structure and is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms. RNA, or ribonucleic acid, is a single‐strand molecule with several roles in the cells, including to act as a messenger carrying instructions from DNA for controlling the synthesis of proteins. Proteins are large molecules composed of smaller units called amino acids linked to each other to form long chains. There are 20 different types of amino acids that can be combined to make a protein. With this understanding, we begin by looking at DNA error repair mechanisms, and then turn to discuss RNA surveillance.

Taking Stock

We started this section by describing the basic features of the universe that one should expect the God of open theism to create. Those features included stable laws of nature that allow for a variety of creatures with varying degrees of complexity, flexibility, and autonomy. Also, a universe that contains various systems that anticipate errors and mitigate the associated risks. What we have just described in the biological order is a vast system of successful redundancies, surveillance, and risk‐management systems that fully anticipate countless errors. In the next section, we argue that if God can use such systems in the biological order, then surely God can use analogous systems to achieve the MCP.

Primed for Divine Friendship: Human Cognitive Equipment

If one of God's goals is to create human persons who can enter into a genuine friendship with Him, then God will need to ensure that humans have a certain set of cognitive equipment that is primed for friendship. The open theist is already committed to the claim that libertarian freedom is essential to friendship. Yet, there are certain other cognitive powers that are needed in order to make possible genuine relationships between God and humans to ensure that dark timelines are eliminated. A standard package of cognitive mechanisms will also include the powers of rationality, emotion, empathy, and a theory of mind.

We start with the theory of mind, which is the ability to recognize other minds. The theory of mind has been much discussed in the literature on psychology and philosophy of religion (Visala 2018, 104–05). Alvin Plantinga has famously extended theory of mind to a faculty for an innate awareness of God called the sensus divinitatis (Plantinga 2000). ^ix Endowing humans with such a faculty would help eliminate dark timelines because without this faculty, humans would be unable to be aware of God.

Yet simply recognizing other minds, like God, would not be enough to ensure the success of the MCP. Humans endowed with the ability to recognize other minds and perform free actions is not sufficient for accepting God's offer of friendship. To enter into genuine relationships, creatures will need to have the cognitive powers of rationality and emotion. These cognitive powers are said to enable people to share ideas, take responsibility for their actions, and develop trust and cooperation (Visala 2018, 104). All of which are important for friendship.

Rationality and emotion go hand‐in‐hand (cf. Clore 2011). The power of rationality is the ability to be responsive to reasons for acting (Pearson 2018, 122). There are different kinds of roles that reasons play in our free actions such as justifying, motivating, and explaining the actions of an agent (Pearson 2018, 68). Often, reasons for acting are values or disvalues in a given situation. Emotions play a crucial role in helping agents identify reasons for action because emotions involve evaluations (cf. Brady 2013). Emotions are felt evaluations of situations that involve perceiving various values or disvalues in a given circumstance (Roberts 2013, 114–15; Todd 2014, 706). When one has an emotion, one is perceiving the value of the object of her emotion to be an object that is worthy of her attention and worthy of her action (Helm 2001, 195). Thus, there is a close connection between the emotional evaluations and acting for a reason. If an emotional response fails to properly track the value of the object, the emotional response is not rational. If an emotional response properly tracks the value of the object, the emotional response is rational (Todd 2014, 704).

We say that God endowing humans with these cognitive powers is a great example of a risk‐management system built into the psychology of human nature. Open theists claim that God is the supreme object of value. By endowing humans with the cognitive powers of reason and emotion, God has enabled humans to be capable of recognizing God's value and appropriately respond to God's value. Thus, enabling humans to accept God's offer of friendship. If humans lacked these cognitive powers, they would be unable to accept God's offer of friendship, and the MCP would fail.

Along with a theory of mind, rationality, and emotion, humans will need the capacity for empathy in order to enter into friendship with God. The capacity for empathy is a person's ability to understand what it is like for another person to feel the way that they do. In empathizing with others, a person comes to know what others care about and their reasons for acting as they do. Empathy plays a large role in the development of genuine relationships (cf. Betzler 2021). Human persons naturally want to be understood because there is a kind of loneliness that comes when others cannot understand why you are feeling as you do. This is because humans do not bond with people who do not understand them, whereas humans do bond with people who do empathetically understand them (Morton 2017, 183–84). The natural human desire to be understood can draw creatures to seek out the empathetic God of open theism (McConnell 1927, 121–22). By endowing human persons with these cognitive powers, God has ensured that humans are primed to genuinely accept His offer of friendship. Thus, God is able to eliminate a large number of dark timelines in which the MCP fails.

Contingency Plans and Risk‐Management Systems

Thus far, we have identified some rather generic risk‐management systems that God might put in place in order to secure the MCP. As stated before, open theism is a model of God, and not a systematic theology. It is a model of God that has garnered interest from proponents in different world religions, not just Christianity, and from those of no particular religious persuasion (Lodahl 2009; Todd 2011; Lebens 2020, 96). An open theist can rely on her other theological commitments in order to identify more risk‐management systems that God might employ. In what follows, we briefly identify other mechanisms that God might put in place in order to ensure the success of the MCP. The mechanisms that we identify below start out with relatively generic religious doctrines, and then progress to more religion specific doctrines. We leave it to the open theist to decide which religious doctrines she wishes to draw from.

In the biological order, we described systems that anticipate countless errors, and that have mechanisms in place to correct those errors. We say that the sending of prophets is a theological analogue. Many of the world's religions affirm that God sends prophets in order to instruct humans on matters pertaining to moral and religious life. Prophets can function as a kind of surveillance system that corrects things happening in the world, thus preventing history from heading down a dark timeline. For example, within Judaism, God is said to have sent Moses to the Hebrew people in order to establish an initial covenant relationship with God. God sent subsequent prophets in an effort to bring them back toward a right relationship with God during times of trouble and disobedience. Within Hinduism, prophets or wise sages are also sent into the world during times of trouble and disobedience in order to turn the world away from a path of chaos. A prophet's life is limited of course, but a successful prophet establishes a worship community where regular rituals are practiced to ensure the surveillance and correction of potential errors for many generations to come. An open theist can say that part of God's exhaustive contingency plan for creation involves a policy to send prophets in order to ensure that humanity has access to salient knowledge about God. Further, God might adopt a policy to send more prophets if history begins to head toward a dark timeline. An open theist can even say that God sends multiple prophets as a kind of redundancy system. Thus, eliminating dark timelines where the MCP fails.

Another potential risk‐management system is a theophany. A theophany is when God temporarily takes on human form in order to communicate with human persons directly. An open theist can affirm that God's risk‐management policies include theophanies in order to successfully establish worship communities. Theophanies appear in different Jewish, Islamic, and Hindu scriptures. Christianity goes further by claiming that God became incarnate for the purpose of drawing human persons closer to Him. Since open theism is not a systematic theology, an open theist is able to draw on her own religious tradition to identify further ways that God manages risk in an open universe.

Yet there are other potential mechanisms that God might put in place. We suggest that death might be one such mechanism. At first glance, this might seem like an odd mechanism, but it has various benefits. According to the open theist, Richard Swinburne, God has the duty to ensure that humans have a life that is overall good (Swinburne 1998, 224). For Swinburne, God must create a world in which human persons are given the powers of rationality, freedom, and emotion in order to achieve the greatest possible good, which is union with God. Yet Swinburne thinks that God is obligated to ensure that any human who suffers an overall bad earthly life, not as result of their own free action, must be compensated with a good afterlife (Swinburne 1998, 232). There is a potential problem, however, with suffering from a bad earthly life. Some suffering that humans endure could prevent them from entering into healthy relationships with others, including God. Swinburne maintains that God is under an obligation to ensure that no human suffers to such an extent in their earthly life so as to prevent friendship with God. One such mechanism to ensure this is death. According to Swinburne, “God only allows humans to suffer at each other's hands or by natural processes for periods of up to eighty years or thereabouts” (Swinburne 1998, 232).

We suggest that the open theist can see death as a sort of repair mechanism that God puts in place in order to eliminate dark timelines. Death prevents a kind and level of suffering that would turn all humans away from God, and thus prevents the failure of the MCP. Yet, notice that the mechanism of death is linked to the notion of a good afterlife in Swinburne's thought. Swinburne is working within a Christian tradition, but an open theist need not be a Christian. Various doctrines of the afterlife can be identified as risk‐management systems.

For example, Jews, Christians, and Muslims can appeal to different versions of the doctrine of purgatory as a form of a redundancy mechanism. On different versions of the doctrine, purgatory functions as a place where humans are given further opportunities to accept God's offer of friendship after their death. The open theist can say that this kind of salvific redundancy allows for the optimal opportunity to accept friendship with God. Thus, further eliminating dark timelines in which the MCP fails. If an open theist is more attracted to Hinduism, she can replace the doctrine of purgatory with the doctrine of reincarnation as a redundancy system. She can argue that eventually everyone will come to accept God's offer of friendship after enough reincarnations.