In my past studies of the subject I have come across things such as Calvinist who are making arguments against it while thinking it does not represent their beliefs and others that make arguments that it is somewhat supportive of their view. I see Arminians do the same.
Recently I was appalled at some of the “scholarly” attempts I came across which set out to explain it.
I literally got headaches trying to keep up with WLC’s arguments that went on and on with formal philosophical presentations of values and deductive arguments where I found I could occasionally throw a monkey wrench into his arguments based on his presuppositions which I felt were not adequately defended or headed in the wrong way, but I also liked much of his reasoning and he got my wheels turning at times.
Keathley is another favorite that makes some good arguments and uses a ROSES soteriology which is worth looking at but that doesn’t quite do it for me either.
Reading about Molina’s history, thoughts and arguments and those of some of his followers back in the day has proved to be beneficial, but I often found the directions they are going to be incomplete.
Then there are also many scholarly Catholic arguments which discuss the use of Molinism and the Jesuits to combat the “heresies of Calvinism” which make some pretty valid and interesting points.
Molinism is a field of theology that has seen recent revitalization and from I’ve observed of the most recent growth it all over the place on many issues.
There is a lot yet to be learned of the type of God’s knowledge that He possesses and ways to be developed to explain how that knowledge is presented in the scriptures often seems to be a better approach than trying to pin-point how the mechanics of His divine knowledge works. I believe that is where the base of strength is in beginning to systematically formalize philosophical principles of middle knowledge by which good grounding arguments can be expanded on which will eventually help to better explain the mechanics of how it all works.
In the meantime, I imagine possibly like yourself, I have thrown out the usefulness of Classical/Closed Theism’s simplistic explanations of God’s knowledge as woefully insufficient. But what I am left with is explanations that are so deep that there seems to be no end to it.
So concerning your search, I do not believe a precise, in depth, simplistic book which breaks down all the variants on the subject and organizes all the factors has been written yet. But I do believe the theology is based on solid enough principles to insure that it continues growing and drawing interest. Personally, I take bites off all the good stuff I come across and have been spitting out plenty of seeds along the way.
