# Middle Knowledge; a discussion from de Molina to William Lane Craig



## Gforce9 (Jul 6, 2013)

My understanding is that the Jesuit, Luis de Molina, first articulated what is called middle knowledge; the idea that there is a necessary knowledge of God, the decrees of God, and this middle area where all kinds of contingencies are unfolding. Sinclair Ferguson has spoken on this before and made a parallel (of middle knowledge) to a chess match. In short, middle knowledge says God knows all the possibilities, but He doesn't know what world is actually being "spun" into existence. J. Ligon Duncan has indicated that Francis Turretin, in his _Institutes of Elenctic Theology_, "tears de Molina limb from limb" on his middle knowledge.
William Lane Craig is a proponent of middle knowledge. It seems to me that any notion of God not knowing all things inerrantly, infallibly, and without contingency is a frontal assault to the character of God. Here are some questions to bat around:

1-Does the very ascent to middle knowledge deny the omniscience of God? 

2-If yes, how do we handle someone who says they believe God is omniscient, but also believes in middle knowledge?

3-Is Craig's view identical with those of de Molina or are there significant differences?

4-?


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## Semper Fidelis (Jul 6, 2013)

Gforce9 said:


> 1-Does the very ascent to middle knowledge deny the omniscience of God?


In a sense but it fundamentally denies the aseity of God because it views God as knowing the future but He only knows it on the basis of what He can learn about the actions of free creatures outside of Himself. It also denies the sovereignty of God for reasons I will articulate below.



> 2-If yes, how do we handle someone who says they believe God is omniscient, but also believes in middle knowledge?


I think we need to appeal to those Scriptures that point out that God does not stand in need of the creature in any way. Craig's view sees God as running all the permutations of possible worlds and then choosing that world in which a maximum number of people will be saved based on their autonomous decisions. Craig has said: "God must deal with the cards He's been dealt."

Craig will acknowledge that people will change their decisions based upon circumstances that impinge upon them but it's not God, properly speaking, that is creating those circumstances in His thought experiment before He creates the Universe. The problem with middle knowledge is its grounding. That is to say: Who is dealing the cards? Whoever (or whatever) is binding God to the unfolding of these possible worlds is, in a sense, more fundamental than God Himself as to impacting the decisions of autonomous people in a theoretical world. Thus, God has not only lost His aseity (in having to learn what creatures will do in order to know what they will do) but He also loses His sovereignty in the conditions that led to those theoretical possibilities such that He's left with the world that is maximally pleasing for Him to create not on the basis of the counsel of His own will but on the counsel of the will of every creature as well as some other undefined grounding that influenced those decisions.



> 3-Is Craig's view identical with those of de Molina or are there significant differences?



Sorry, I just realized I sort of presented WLC's view above because that's what we're likely to run into. I can't speak to this.


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## RamistThomist (Jul 6, 2013)

Carl Trueman has a lecture on John Owen and the Socianians where Trueman neatly dissects Molinism. I can't remember exactly where it is, but if you can find it, it would be worth it.


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## DMcFadden (Jul 6, 2013)

Gforce9 said:


> My understanding is that the Jesuit, Luis de Molina, first articulated what is called middle knowledge; the idea that there is a necessary knowledge of God, the decrees of God, and this middle area where all kinds of contingencies are unfolding. Sinclair Ferguson has spoken on this before and made a parallel (of middle knowledge) to a chess match. In short, middle knowledge says God knows all the possibilities, but He doesn't know what world is actually being "spun" into existence. J. Ligon Duncan has indicated that Francis Turretin, in his _Institutes of Elenctic Theology_, "tears de Molina limb from limb" on his middle knowledge.
> William Lane Craig is a proponent of middle knowledge. It seems to me that any notion of God not knowing all things inerrantly, infallibly, and without contingency is a frontal assault to the character of God. Here are some questions to bat around:
> 
> 1-Does the very ascent to middle knowledge deny the omniscience of God?
> ...



Not just William Lane Craig. Alvin Plantinga is also known as a Molinist.

BTW, Craig tries to answer "misconceptions" about his view here: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/misconceptions-about-middle-knowledge

Monergism.com has an interesting reformed critique of middle knowledge by Travis James Campbell: http://www.monergism.com/thethreshold/articles/onsite/Middle_Knowledge.pdf


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## R. Scott Clark (Jul 7, 2013)

http://heidelblog.net/2009/05/ping-pong-evangelicals-middle-knowledge/

http://heidelblog.net/2010/04/more-...lassic-reformed-definitions-of-the-key-terms/

http://heidelblog.net/2013/04/boston-and-free-choice/


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## sevenzedek (Jul 7, 2013)

ONE OF THE FLAWS OF MIDDLE KNOWLEDGE AND HOW I DEAL WITH THOSE WHO SUBSCRIBE TO THE ERROR OF IT:

If God is not the one who is determining the events that take place between the time of His creation and the time of His decrees, then who is making those determinations? ... creatures? ... some other force? Whatever is the controlling agent, it supersedes God. It is not possible for God create such a world. This is similar to the conundrum that asks if God can make a rock too heavy for Him to lift.

If the idea that God only asserts His decrees while having no knowledge of what the world is being "spun" into is to be considered sound logic, then this definitely falls short of anything "more intellectually satisfying", as Craig would like to have it. If God has no knowledge leading to the events to which His decrees will respond, then how is it possible that God could have the foreknowledge required to make His decrees? Furthermore, how can God guarantee anything? His decrees are predicated upon events of which He has no knowledge or control. His decrees must be linked to a thorough knowledge of all things. Without this through knowledge, God is subject to random chance. Well, God is not subject to anything. Neither is it possible that God could create a world in which He is not in control if all things.

The Bible speaks plainly enough.

To say that God only has foreknowledge of what He will do in the future is like a man who in James 4:13 who says arrogantly, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit." As it appears, man is very arrogant to decree what he will do in the future when the means of determining his future is not within his control. In fact, man is even more arrogant to assert that God is left without any means to determine the events that will lead to the fulfillment of His decrees. Middle knowledge leaves us with a God who is impotent and without omniscience. Therefore, because Molinism asserts that God has none of this middle knowledge, it is actually a humongous subtraction from the doctrine of God's omniscience.

I have a friend who keeps the ideas of middle knowledge and open theism as his silly little pets. I guess philosophy can be intriguing, but it is not a good way to do theology without a Bible in the other hand. He would readily affirm that he has the Bible firmly in both if his hands. I readily affirm that he may as well leave the Bible on the dusty shelf.

How do I deal with my friend? I deal with him with a view to how I was when I was first saved. When I was first saved, all I knew was that Jesus is my savior. In my understanding I had many errors and notions about God and salvation. For instance, I didn't know, at that time, that God was the one who gave me the gift of repentance. I just thought that I believed on my own. I also didn't know anything about middle knowledge and I knew very little about His omniscience. All I had was a knowledge largely uniformed by scripture.

Craig is very wrong in his views about middle knowledge, but he is like all of us who deal with the noetic effects of sin. All thoughts that fall short of the glory of God are frontal attacks on the character of God. Granted, some errors are worse than others. While the people who hold to the doctrine of middle knowledge are greatly mistaken, salvation may still be a reality for them. I would deal lovingly with such people ensnared by such doctrines. Salvation is the process by which we become un-ensnared from all errors. Until we are all completely set free, there will be many "William Lane Craigs" who are savingly in the church of Jesus Christ.


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## Ask Mr. Religion (Jul 7, 2013)

See:
Reformed Apologist: Molinism - problems, problems, problems

Craig and others refer to the counterfactuals of creaturely freedom (CFs): Knowing what any possible agent would do in any possible circumstances, God can have complete providential control over the events that occur by knowing how the history of the world would go given any creative decision He might make about which circumstances to cause to be actual, and by then making that initial creative decision. Yet human libertarian freedom is obviously also maintained.

But, foreknowledge is *grounded* in something that actually happens, and it is the occurrence of that future event that sanctions the foreknowledge of it. On the other hand, whatever grounds the truth of counterfactuals of freedom is something other than an actually occurring event. The indeterminateness of counterfactual states of affairs in virtue of which counterfactuals of freedom are true is therefore of a wholly different order from the indeterminateness of future states of affairs in virtue of which future factuals of freedom are true. Though the latter are not yet determinate, they nevertheless will be.

Even granting that there are some CF’s with actual (true) antecedents whose truth might in principle be determined by actual agents it seems to be such that God could not know them pre-volitionally, if He must directly perceive their grounds. For until God decides which agents and which circumstances to cause to be actual, there aren’t any actual decisions that God could in principle know as the grounds of these CF’s. Since middle knowledge is meant to be the aid by which God determines the actual world, and yet it seems as if He could not have this knowledge logically prior to determining the actuality of a particular possible world, “middle knowledge” seems both incorrectly described and unhelpful for providential creation decisions.

I believe that the Molinist view of providence should be rejected because there are good reasons to think that there are not any (and certainly not enough) true counterfactuals of freedom. According to Molinism, foreknowledge is nothing more than the causally impotent byproduct of God’s creative act of will.


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## Gforce9 (Jul 8, 2013)

Thanks to all.....there is a lot of material to wade through....


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## Ask Mr. Religion (Jul 15, 2013)

See this latest confused answer by Dr. Craig to an equally confused fellow, Mike, about "depressing Calvinism":

Is Molinism as Depressing as Calvinism? | Reasonable Faith

Dr. Craig includes in his answer (*boldface *emphasis mine):

"You’re still thinking like a Calvinist, Mike, when you say, “_what if I'm one of those people who could never be saved and just thought I was?_” There are no such people according to Molinism! *God wants every person He creates to be saved and furnishes sufficient grace to every person to be saved, if only that person will accept it. So everyone can be saved.* God just knew who would freely accept His grace and who would freely reject it."

Sigh.


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