In both the marital analogy and the theological debate, non-closure can protect an agent from blame of intent for true side effects, but not from responsibility for all consequences of a chosen path, especially when those consequences flow from mechanisms the agent has deliberately employed. The key difference lies in moral sufficiency. 

In formal logic and decision theory, “closure” implies that choosing a goal requires accepting all its necessary implications. This works cleanly in abstract logic, where everything is transparent and necessary. Human intentions, however, are more focused and goal-oriented. They track specific reasons for acting rather than every logical consequence, some of which may be unforeseeable.

For example, if one intends to run a marathon, the athlete knows that this entails being physically exhausted afterward. Yet, it would be a mistake to say that the anticipated exhaustion is intended. Rather, the intention is to complete the race, and the inevitable exhaustion is merely a known and unavoidable consequence that follows from that goal. In this scenario, exhaustion is a foreseen consequence not a sought after effect. 

We can observe that an intention does not automatically transfer to every known consequence. In other words, we can intend an end while only accepting (but not intending) certain known costs or possible risks. This principle is called “non-closure of intentions under known entailment.” What this means is that one’s goals do not include every side effect one knows will happen. This distinction is useful because it separates what an agent aims at from what an agent merely expects. However, if intentions were “closed,” we would be constrained to say that the married father who intends to earn a promotion by working excessive hours necessarily intends to neglect his wife and family. Obviously, that is false. Therefore, by denying closure of intentions, we can maintain that an agent can expect that a decision will lead to a specific outcome without it being a purposeful target of his will. 

Case Study:

Sticking with the ambitious employee scenario, assume the man who is seeking a promotion knowingly adopts a plan requiring an 80+ hour work week for two straight years. He certainly foresees this will cause substantial time away from his family, yet accepts this foreseen byproduct without intending it as a goal, for he would gladly pursue his career goals in a less disruptive way. Later, a catastrophic result emerges. Sadly, his continued physical and emotional absence contributes to his spouse filing for divorce. 

Common Deflections:

Imagine the husband says that he only intended the promotion and not to neglect his family, let alone destroy his marriage. This much would be true. But suppose he then adds that because he did not intend the harm, his intention for the promotion could not have entailed the neglect. This move is patently fallacious. It confuses intention with foreseeability. While he may not have intended the harm, he foresaw (or should have foreseen) its likelihood, and therefore bears responsibility for the predictable consequences of his plan.

With respect to the unforeseen divorce, evasion is subtler, if not more deviant. The husband can truthfully say he did not foresee the demise of his marriage. Yet this does not absolve him of deliberately choosing an extreme plan that created the conditions for marital collapse. In essence, the husband has weaponized the entailment thesis by sliding from the truth that he did not intend the consequences to the claim that he’s therefore innocent. 

Lastly, if the husband is a deviant philosopher, he might gaslight that the state of affairs in conjunction with his choices did not cause strain upon the marriage necessarily. This, of course, is also true. Both emotional stress and seeking a divorce are only contingently true. However, while choices may not logically entail harm across all possible worlds, such a decision as this is tied to predictable consequences in our actual world. Basically, that an action does not guarantee a bad result in the abstract, doesn’t mean one isn’t responsible for the highly predictable damages it causes in reality.

Sadly, this sort of maneuver has too many life applications. In its ultimate inversion, accountability is not only evaded but reversed. The ambitious husband recasts his prolonged absence as a noble sacrifice for his family, even demanding gratitude for the very actions that are destroying his marriage!

Application to Divine Sovereignty and Human Agency:

The same tension between primary intention, foreseen side effects, and moral accountability lies at the heart of the long-standing debates over divine sovereignty, human freedom, and the authorship of sin. The ambitious husband’s deflection in some ways mirrors theological attempts to preserve God’s character while acknowledging a world filled with evil.

Molinism easily handles this challenge. In the Molinist framework, the Counterfactuals of Creaturely Freedom (CCFs), which are truths about how free creatures would freely act in any given scenario, reside in God’s middle knowledge. They are logically prior to the divine decree and independent of God’s will. Accordingly, God does not determine these counterfactuals, rather he merely discovers them as fixed truths.

Intending the Canvas, Not the Stain – Non-Closure in Divine Sovereignty:

In Molinism, God’s decretive intention is purely at the macro-level. To miss this is to miss the relevant dissimilarity with Calvinism.

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