Faith Interface

Molinism and God’s ‘Middle Knowledge’

Luis de Molina

Molinism is a theological and philosophical attempt to provide a solution to the classic philosophical problems associated with God’s sovereignty, providence, foreknowledge and the freedom (and responsibility) of humanity. This view may be traced to the 16th Century Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina (1535-1600) — hence, the term Molinism. Specifically, it seeks to maintain a strong view of God’s sovereignty over creation while at the same time preserving the belief that human beings have self-determined freedom, or libertarian free will.

The goal of the Molinist position is to reconcile God’s foreknowledge and man’s free will. Historically, this has been done in two ways. First, many theologians have decided to downplay or overemphasize God’s soveriegnty or man’s free will.  Open Theism is emphasizes the libertarian free-will of humanity such that God cannot accomplish His will unless humans cooperate with Him.  In this view, God cannot know the future actions of humans with libertarian free will, because the future is not yet determined and is totally dependent on the free actions of humanity. Extreme Calvinists deny that man has a free will altogether and claim the God knows the future in it’s totality because because he pre-determines the future actions of humans. Many Calvinists would argue that human free will (and therefore responsibility) can still be compatible with God’s sovereign predetermination of the future actions and decisions of individual humans (not surprisingly termed Compatibilism). A second option, one that many tend toward after spending any time on the subject, is to simply appeal to God’s mysterious ways — conceding both the God is sovereign and knows the future perfectly AND humans are completely free, but that how these can both be true at the same time is a complete mystery. While it is legitimate for the Christian to make this appeal to mystery in some circumstances, Molinists do not believe this necessary.

 Molina’s doctrine is called scientia media, or middle knowledge, because it stands in the middle of the two traditional catagories of divine epistemology as handed down by Aquinas, Natural and Free knowledge. It shares characteristics of each and, in the logical order of the divine deliberative process regarding creation, it follows natural knowledge but precedes free knowledge. Luis de Molina’s solution to the freedom/foreknowledge dilemma has had a revival of sorts in recent times, through the efforts of people like William Lane Craig, Thomas Flint and Alvin Plantinga.

VARIATIONS OF GOD’S KNOWLEDGE

The most famous distinctive in Molinism is its affirmation that God has middle knowledge (scientia media). Molinism holds that God’s knowledge consists of three logical moments. These ‘moments’ of knowledge are not chronological; rather they are to be understood as ‘logical’. In other words, one moment does not come before another moment in time, rather one moment is logically prior to the other moments.

1. Natural Knowledge

This is God’s knowledge of all necessary and all possible truths. In this ‘moment’ God knows every possible combination of causes and effects. He also knows all the truths of logic and all moral truths. He knows all possible combinations of events and human choices.

2. Middle Knowledge

This is God’s knowledge of whay any free creature would do in any given circumstances, also known as counterfactual knowledge. God knows what any free will choice would be of any person at any time in any circumstance. This knowledge deals with counterfactuals, things which would have happened if circumstances were different but have not actually occurred. Supportive verses are Matthew 11:21-24 and 1 Cor. 2:8.

3. Free Knowledge

This is God’s knowledge of what He freely decided to create. God’s free knowledge is His knowledge of the actual world as it is. God necessarily knows in totality all that actually exists that He has freely chosen to create.

Molinists believe that God does not only have knowledge of necessary truths and contingent truths but that God’s middle knowledge contains, but is not limited to, His knowledge of counterfactuals. A counterfactual is a statement of the form “if it were the case that P, it would be the case that Q”. An example would be, “If Bob were in Tahiti he would freely choose to go swimming instead of sunbathing.” The Molinist claims that even if Bob is never in Tahiti, God can still know whether Bob would go swimming or sunbathing. The Molinist believes that God, using his middle knowledge and foreknowledge, surveyed all possible worlds and then actualized a particular one. God’s middle knowledge of counterfactuals would play an integral part in this “choosing” of a particular world.

 Because God’s Middle Knowledge allows Him to know what every possible person would do of their own free will in every circumstance, He knows under what circumstances each person might or might not recieve Christ (according to their own free will). This allows Him consider all feasible worlds where each person’s free will choices line up with His desires (Eph. 1:5, 11). In a seeming paradox, both God’s soverignty and man’s responsibility and free will are maintained when He chooses to actualize a particular world. His Middle Knowledge of what would happen then becomes His Free Knowledge of what will happen – what we call Foreknowledge. His Foreknowledge though, does not determine what a person must do, only what they will do according to their own free choices – in a world that God sovereignly actualized! Scripturally this may be based on (Rom. 8:29) where God’s Foreknowledge of what would happen precedes His predestining those who freely choose Him.

The view of election here is that God’s sovereign choice of whom He will allow to freely choose Him is based on the circumstances He choses to place before them.  It may appear similiar to the Arminian view that predestination is God looking ahead through time to those that would choose Him and then electing those to be saved. It may also appear fundamentally the same as the Calvinist view that God chooses those that will come to salvation and chooses those that will be condemned. Ultimately, it may appear similiar to both views because it affirms the scriptural truths in each without compromising in other areas or appealing to mystery. This does not make it correct, because it is not itself an explicitly biblical teaching, but it does present a coherent, working theory of the combatibility of foreknowledge and free will.

BIBLICAL SUPPORT FOR MOLINISM

Molinists argue that their position is the Biblical one by indicating passages they understand to teach God’s middle knowledge. Molina advanced the following three texts: 1 Samuel 23:6-10, Proverbs 4:11, and Matthew 11:23. Other passages which Molinists use are Jeremiah 38:17-18 and 1 Corinthians 2:8. William Lane Craig has argued at length that many of Christ’s statements seem to indicate middle knowledge. Craig cites the following passages: Matthew 17:27, John 21:6, John 15:22-24, John 18:36, Luke 4:24-44 and Matthew 26:24.

Adapted from:

1. http://www.basictheology.com/definitions/Molinism/
2. http://www.theopedia.com/Molinism
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molinism