Does anyone understand "Middle Knowledge?"

No, I can't help you. I took a class in seminary where we had to read a book by Douglas Groothuis called "Truth Decay". That book got into some of these type issues and it confused me to no end. That is why I have stayed clear of Philosophy.

 

It is a componet of Molinism. This might help: http://www.iep.utm.edu/m/middlekn.htm

Here is message on the topic, scroll to Ken Keathley: http://www.foundersconference.org/past/bbcon.html

 

Re: Middle Knowledge

You'd probably get more help asking Frodo.

Rob

 

Can you give an example from the book then that WLC used to illustrate his position?

I find a number of things wrong with your illustration, and I don't know if it is fair to WLC's position.

Thank you in advance. :thumbs:

 

In much the same way the doctrines of Calvin have developed into today’s Calvinism. Or those of Arminius into the doctrines of Arminianism. The doctrines of Molina are also developing through philosophical explanations; possibly more today than in the past. You may not realize that Middle knowledge is not a recent “discovery”, but was introduced around the same time (shortly after) the aforementioned C and A by Luis De Molina (1535-1600) to reconcile predestination and man’s free will.

As you have expressed, Molinism’s counterfactuals, or CCFs (counterfactuals of creaturely freedoms), is a very difficult concept to grasp and explain. I have literally gotten headaches trying to keep up with some of the philosophical arguments. The difficulty in using their specific terms may be one reason why many have not looked more deeply into it. It is much easier to adopt C or A, or just claim neither has successfully boxed God’s knowledge with a precise description which cannot be refuted. As you know many will agree we can’t put a finite explanation on God’s foreknowledge when logically explaining the compatiblist view of free will.

Molinist believe God has not only necessary truths and contingent truths, but another kind of knowledge, deeper knowledge, which is philosophically explained in/with counterfactuals, that it does indeed exist. The Biblical support for these counterfactuals is very convincing IMO. The more I have researched this the more evidence I have come up with to support it, but I usually only throw an occasional monkey wrench into the gears rolling around here to see if someone might have an alternative explanation. Bringing this subject up here usually gets one accused of Open Theism concerning God’s foreknowledge, but it is not at all the same. Actually, OT opposes Molinism’s middle knowledge view. Personally, I have gotten into trying to figure how to explain that God could have more than one type of knowledge, which has often turned me to looking at the Trinitarian nature of God coinciding in a similar way.

The “truth factors” of Molinism have caught my attention, and have greatly helped me to develop my theology in the last few years. I have found Molinism to be a useful tool, learned a lot by looking into it. Like the other views, I’ve found varying doctrines concerning it, but the whole of it has some very valid points.


P.S. grasshopper's link to Ken Keathley's lecture gives a pretty good taste of the view.

 

The answers to these issues are IMO unanswerable this side of heaven.

I struggled with them as a young man until He gave me some Scripture:


NKJV Ecclesiastes 3:11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.

NKJ Isaiah 55:9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.

NKJ Psalm 46:10 Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!

HankD​

 

This is my approach, too. There are just too many passages in Scripture that allude to God changing His mind, not knowing certain things within the framework of time, etc. Fact is we don't know how God relates...or chooses to relate with His creation.

 

I would add that the historical opponents of Molina, both Catholic and Reformed, dismissed middle knowledge because it was ontologically deficient. Molina rejects premotion and divine concursus and for his position to work one has to envision a possible world without God. This was and is a non-starter for many theologians.

Everyone accepts the fact that God has knowledge of future contigency, but that is not technically the same as middle knowledge. Unfortunately, the modern debates add to this confusion because the middle knowledge advocates of today have not explored the ontological ramifications of the position. It comes up through the back door every now and then with the "grounding objection," but all that objection really gets at is ontology. Can one make any decisions without God's involvement of premotion and concursus? Middle knowledge requires this state of affairs. For many, the decrees stand in between God's natural and free knowledge, but Molina rejects this and replaces it with something else.

My favorite quote about Molinism comes from Herbert McCabe: "Of this I will say nothing at present except that it seems to me to possess the unique merit of denying simultaneously both divine omnipotence and human freedom" (Faith Within Reason, 72).

For more on historical Catholic arguments against Molina, namely Bannez, see what Boedder says here: http://maritain.nd.edu/jmc/etext/nath39.htm Boedder also points out how Molina's "supercomprehension" still doesn't get him where he needs to go because it is too determinative of free decisions.

For the Reformed position, there is unfortunatly little helpful on the Internet about synchronic contingency, but in a nutshell many of them (especially in the era of Reformed Orthodoxy) believed that God worked through genuine human freedom, and they were not compatibilists despite what you may read through populist literature on them. There is some helpful stuff here that deals with Scotus's view of it, though.

 

My I recommend this lengthy sermon: "The openness of God": http://resources.christianity.com/details/cm/20010125/3B48474C-5BD6-43E2-BD38-C2E6ACE1C38F.aspx

 

That last sentence at least has some scriptural support :

Proverbs 16:33 The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD.

HankD

 

Jeremy Pierce, whom I would consider to be a reasonable and fair and careful Christian philosopher, presents the five views of how God's omniscience fits with human freedom (one of which is Molinism) here. About Molinism, he says this:

But the whole piece is an interesting read, and I'd recommend it.

 

You may be defining atemporality differently than JP is. As he defines it, it is the view that "all of time is present to God, God is aware of all of time without knowing it in advance." God doesn't exist in time, but only outside of it.

That means that those who view God as atemporal see him as existing only in a sort of eternal "now", where he experiences all moments in time as presently occurring. Under that system, there is no basis for human beings knowing the future if it involves the free choices of humans, as in the biblical prophesies, since God (who communicates the prophesy to them) only knows the free choices of humans "outside of time", not earlier in time.

The system you put forward, as you've explained it, has God both outside of time and inside of time. But the people that hold to most of the viewpoints described in the article would probably object to your system because it has God planning creation outside of time and then carrying out that plan in time. They would object that "outside of time" planning or knowing by God as incompatible with true human freedom.