Middle Knowledge

By: Dixie CarpenterSubmitted to Professor BronleeweIn partial fulfillment of Philosophy and Christian ThoughtMay 7, 2015

Middle KnowledgeMolinism: the view of Gods providence that tries to identify the answer to the would question. What would someone do. This is right between what is known as Gods natural knowledge and Gods free knowledge. Gods natural knowledge is of all the worlds he has the potential to create. His free knowledge is Gods knowledge of what will be. Middle knowledge is somewhere in between the two.[footnoteRef:1] Middle knowledge is Gods knowledge of all the possible choices of free agents that can exist in the potential world he creates. God then establishes a plan that puts circumstances into place that these free choices are contingent on. God, knowing what each free agent will do in any possible situation they are in, and knowing the situations they are or will be in, then has free knowledge of all that will take place. [1: William L. Craig, God Directs All Things: On behalf of a Molinist view of divine providence in Four Views On Divine Providence (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology)ed. Dennis Jowers, (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2011), 81.]

When determining the knowledge of God, it is important to understand the boundaries by which that knowledge is being examined, for instance, John Shook claims that Gods omniscience is not compatible with free will. There is either one or the other. His argument is that the incompatibility between Gods knowledge and free will relies on the definition that [t]he only facts God can know are hard facts, and that free will is a state in which for any free action performed by an agent, it must have been possible for her to instead do something else.[footnoteRef:2] Middle knowledge seeks to provide a solution that acknowledges both free will and Gods sovereign knowledge. [2: John Shook, Gods Divinely Justified Knowledge is Incompatible with Human Free Will, Forum Philosophicum, 15, (2010) 142. ]

From Gods natural knowledge, he knows every possible world which he could create. Then, God uses his middle knowledge to know every possible choice that every possible free agent of his creation could make. Along with this knowledge, God knows the best possible outcome for the world which he creates, and chooses the best possible outcome. God then puts into place all the factors on which contingent decisions will be made by free individuals, guiding them on a path which helps lead to the best possible outcome for the universe, and at this point God has free knowledge. Due to his natural and middle knowledge, God can make a choice that will not impede on free agents, but will also allow him to know all of the future. As William L. Craig describes, because of this middle knowledge, God plans his response to his creatures based on the choices they will make, already setting in place their pre-disposition. God also ordains how he will respond if his creatures were to choose contrary.[footnoteRef:3] [3: Ibid. 90.]

Something that middle knowledge is not, is open theology. Openness theology values the importance of the individual opinion. It tries to account for Gods love by giving people freedom. Yet, for freedom to be free there can be no strings attached, and so God made the world without knowing everything about the future, to enable free will. In the introduction to Most Moved Mover by Clark H. Pinnock, he says, In a controversial move, we also envisaged God making a world, the future of which was not yet completely settled, again to make room for the input of significant creatures.[footnoteRef:4] In its most basic form, openness theology is that God cannot know any future decision or event, but he is fully aware of everything happening in the present and that has happened in the past. [4: Clark H. Pinnock,Most Moved Mover: a Theology of God's Openness(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001), 3.; Openness theology will be discussed throughout the paper, for now this is just a slight introduction to it.]

Craig makes it clear in the introduction to his article, What Does God Know? that a dangerous step to fall into is the step away from Gods omniscience. He seems surprised to point out that some scholars view God as a risk-taking God, using terminology quite accepted in the openness camp. [footnoteRef:5] Craig goes on to explain the value of Gods foreknowledge found in scripture through prophecy. Both Old Testament prophets, Jesus, and others in the New Testament, made prophecies of things that would happen, and they did happen. These were the sure signs of a prophet from God. Therefore, God knew ahead of time, to some extent, what would take place. Middle knowledge addresses how he knows this. [5: William L. Craig, What Does God Know? in Douglas S. Huffman and Eric L. Johnson, eds.,God under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents God(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), 138.]

According to A Dictionary of Philosophy of Religion, the difference between middle knowledge and openness theology are as follows:To posit middle knowledge of God involves holding that God knows not only all truths about what for us is the past, present, and future, but also that God knows all that would have occurred or might have occurred under different conditions. Some philosophers opposing middle knowledge are called open theists. They maintain, instead, that Gods omniscience covers all that can be known by God who exists in the present, and that future free contingent acts cannot be known until they occur.[footnoteRef:6] [6: Elsa J. Marty,A Dictionary of Philosophy of Religion, ed. Charles Taliaferro (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2010), 151.]

The biggest question in this debate is over whether God and his knowledge exist only in the present, or if Gods knowledge is able to look into the future, for lack of better terms. Middle knowledge proposes that God knows every possible outcome of every possible choice of very possible free agent on any possible world which he is capable of creating. Through this, God works out the best possible plan for the universe. Open knowledge believes that in order for people to be totally free agents, God must live in the present with knowledge that exists in the present. Yet, since God knows everything possible to be known about the present, he has a good idea of future events, but until they are in the process of happening, God cannot actually know future free choices. Which doctrine needs to be more protectedGods sovereign foreknowledge, or libertarian free will?Open theists are concerned with the idea of determinism. However, the middle knowledge view would hold that affirming Gods foreknowledge to some degree is different than affirming determinism. Determinism is the view that all events necessarily occur given all contemporaneous and antecedent events and the laws of nature it asserts that there is only one possible future, given all events and laws in the past and present.[footnoteRef:7] According to middle knowledge, God possesses the knowledge of counterfactuals.[footnoteRef:8] A counterfactual is basically an if-then statement. If Jenny is given chocolate ice cream, then she will accept it. Middle knowledge asserts that God would know all the counterfactuals of free agents in any possible world, and choose the best possible world from this knowledge. God would know, if Jenny is given the choice between chocolate and vanilla, she will choose chocolate. Yet, God also knows that a possible world exists in which if Jenny is given the choice between vanilla and chocolate, she will choose vanilla. In all of this, God never made Jenny choose chocolate. The closest he can be to determining this choice is by creating the world in which if Jenny is given the choice between chocolate and vanilla, she will choose chocolate. Although God knows which world he has created and therefore the choices his free agents will make, he does not make these choices for them. [7: Ibid., 63.] [8: Timothy OConnor, The Impossibility of Middle Knowledge in Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theologyed. Michael C. Rea, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 45.]

One of the main causes for debate in the issue of the middle knowledge of God is when this middle knowledge occurs. There is understood by theologians to be a type of created order, in which God first decided to create the world, at which point he knew all possible worlds that he could create. However, some people would say that God only had natural knowledge at this point, and was not yet aware of any counterfactuals of middle knowledge until after creating the world.[footnoteRef:9] This would create the problem in which God did not know the counterfactuals of the world he was creating, and therefore created the world on an uninformed decision.[footnoteRef:10] Craig explains why God must know the counterfactuals before the creative decision: [9: Craig, God Directs All Things, 80-1.] [10: OConnor, The Impossibility of Middle Knowledge, 56.]

Moreover, limiting the truth of such counterfactuals to a moment logically posterior to Gods decree appears to make God the author of sin and to obliterate human freedom, since in that case it is God who decrees which counterfactuals about creaturely free acts are true, including counterfactuals concerning sinful human decisions. Thus, we have good reason for thinking that if such counterfactuals are now true or false, they must have been so logically prior to Gods decree.[footnoteRef:11] [11: William Lane Craig, Middle Knowledge, Truth-Makers, and the Grounding Objection, in Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theologyed. Michael C. Rea, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 70.]

If God was unaware of the counterfactuals before he created the world, then he could choose to create the possible world with the best possible outcome. However, if it was only after creating the world that he was able to know the counterfactuals, God could unintentionally create sin that did not correlate with a best possible purpose for the universe. Having the knowledge of counterfactuals and creating a world in which he can bring about his good purposes through the free will of free agents, establishes the goodness and omniscience of God. This view of omniscience is not the normal view, since it is view the world in counterfactuals and not as through some corridor of time. Since God knows the best possible outcome of all the possible worlds because he knows all of the possible decisions of free agents and what will be in place to create those free agents, this allows him to create a world in which the culmination of good counteracts the culmination of evil. Yet, this is not in any way the traditional view of the omniscience of God. Traditionally, the church has viewed God as maker and keeper of the earth. God brings all things to pass according to his will. Paul Kjoss Helseth states that, When God spoke the universe into existence, advocates of this view of providence maintain, he created a universe that is simultaneously both distinct from and yet utterly dependent on him for its existence from one moment to the next.[footnoteRef:12] This perspective is that God brings all things about, that he has a specific plan for each person, and that everything that occurs has a purpose in bringing about the glory of God. It is not hard to see that the traditional view of God differs greatly from the view of middle knowledge. In one, God works through a specific plan for each life to bring about his glory, and in the other, God has chosen the best possible outcome for the world and also the best path for individuals based on their own choices. [12: Paul Kjoss Helseth, God Causes All Things, in Four Views On Divine Providence (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology)ed. Dennis Jowers, (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2011), 32.]

Robert Merihew Adams asked a question in 1977 about middle knowledge that poses the trickiness of evil coexisting with this doctrine. He asked, Could God have arranged to have creatures who would perform free actions but only right ones?[footnoteRef:13] It would seem that in all possible worlds that God could have existed, according to his knowledge of all possible choices that people could in any possible circumstance make, designed the world in that the people he created would have desired to do only good out of their own free choice. This would appear to be the best possible offer out of any potential world that God could have created, begging the question, why does evil exist today. If God had the potential to create a world without evil, but with total freedom, it seems that he would have. Adams discusses Plantingas solution in this paper as well. Plantinga is a proponent of trans-world depravity.[footnoteRef:14] Trans-world depravity is basically the idea that because God cannot decide what the free choices of free agents are, even though he knows all possible choices, it is possible that the free agents of a possible world even when under the most influential circumstances are not capable of always choosing that which is good.[footnoteRef:15] [13: Robert Merrihew Adams, Middle Knowledge and the Problem of Evil,American Philosophical Quarterly 14, no. 2 (April, 1977): 116, accessed May 8, 2015,http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Adams-Middle-Knowledge-and-the-Problem-of-Evil.pdf.] [14: Ibid.] [15: Dean Zimmerman, Yet Another Anti-Molinist Argument, Samuel Newlands and Larry M. Jorgensen 1, (August 2, 2008): 47, accessed May 8, 2015, http://fas-philosophy.rutgers.edu/zimmerman/Anti.Molinist.arg.proofs.pdf. ]

Dean Zimmerman brings up several good arguments against Molinism. He explains that if the contingent statements in Molinism are truly contingent, then God would have to discover them.[footnoteRef:16] He explains this after bringing up that Gods decision over the best possible route for the universe would either be made at the same time as choosing a possible world, or immediately after it. This is because the contingent free choices of the free agents on the possible world are mostly irrelevant until after the world is chosen. Seemingly, God then has free agents that will in certain situations make certain free choices, but in alignment with trans-world depravity, not all of these free agents are capable of making good free choices. As Zimmerman describes it, the Molinist does not run risk against Gods foreknowledge because they can explain how God knows everything, at the same time they do not run risk against mans free will, because Gods choices are based on the counterfactual truths dealing with the free choices of men. However, there is a risk that the free agents in the possible world that God chooses to make, are actually incapable of choosing to do good in every circumstance.[footnoteRef:17] This would leave God to make what is best out of what he gets. This is one of the largest obstacles that Monolism faces, when explaining the knowledge and works of God. [16: Ibid., 46.] [17: Ibid. ]

There are problems with all the provided solutions for Gods knowledge and providence. No one theory is perfect, and middle knowledge though it tries hard, does not adequately answer for both Gods absolute knowledge and human free will. However, I think there can be something said for the middle knowledge view of omniscience. The knowledge of God traditionally is just accepted that God knows everything. A part of this is Gods existence outside of time, which allows him to always see the past, present, and future. However, the middle knowledge view of omniscience allows God to be fully aware of the past, the present, and all of the potential future. By knowing all of the potential future, he does not simply know what could be, but he knows which elements affect each free agent to make the choices they will make, overall allowing God to know all that will happen, by knowing all the possible situations, causes, and effects they will have. Though this is not the orthodox view of Gods omniscience, it still holds the knowledge of God in high regard.A concern I have about the middle knowledge viewpoint is that it seemingly places Gods control into human hands. Although free agents on the earth are not making the decisions for the overall good of the world, their decisions play a key point. Monolism gives complete free will to beings while maintaining al of Gods control, but is this control? If God, upon creating a world, looks at the free agents he has and all the possible choices they could make, and sets things in place to bring about circumstances that will enable these people to make the choices leading to the best outcome for the earth, still leaves the choice in the hands of the people. The quality of the best possible outcome for the universe is no longer based on Gods sovereignty, but on peoples ability to make the best free choices for their possible world, but not the best free choices that could exist. This is seen in the dilemma of the trans-world depravity and the inability of God to create free agents that will always freely choose good. The best possible world that could occur would be a world in which the free agents freely choose good things, but whether this world comes into existence is in a way the luck of the draw. Though God chose the best possible world with the best possible outcome through the free choices of its agents, those agents prevent the world from being any greater than it is. This means that the inability of the earth to be purely good rests in the best choices of men. Although God is the one creating and choosing and orchestrating these events, he is clearly not fully in charge. The idea that God knows every possible world he could create, every possible reason behind every possible choice people would create, and therefore everything occurring in the future, is impressive. It allows an interesting blend between two viewpoints that were previously very opposed. Furthermore, it is apparent that this concept is unique in that it is very different from openness theology, and also very different from the traditional view of Gods sovereignty. This is because middle knowledge knows the future based on the knowledge of free choices of free agents, and therefore is not the traditional view of foreknowledge which would make God the only truly free agent. Monolism strives to explain the co-existence of free-will and foreknowledge. The counterfactuals that middle knowledge focusses on are both good in advancing the concept of Gods omniscience, yet also problematic when used in the middle knowledge theory to discuss Gods actions in time. This perspective does carry some severe problems, such as the inability of God to create free agents that freely choose to do good all of the time, due to trans-world depravity.Looking at this web of ideas known as Monolism, using middle knowledge as the method of Gods sovereignty, it is clear that this view could be evolved. It has many good points, but it also has severe drawbacks. An unbiased re-analyses of the entire perspective would be useful. I think that examining this idea in light of a traditional view of Gods sovereign knowledge and providence, would be fruitful. This paper did not wish to serve that purpose, only to explore the concepts surrounding middle knowledge. Re-evaluating with a more firm perspective on Gods sovereignty, and some traditional approaches to the problem of evil could serve the important purpose to help further an understanding of Gods knowledge as a whole.

BibliographyAdams, Robert Merrihew. Middle Knowledge and the Problem of Evil.American Philosophical Quarterly14, no. 2 (April, 1977): 1. Accessed May 8, 2015.http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Adams-Middle-Knowledge-and-the-Problem-of-Evil.pdf.Craig, William L., God Directs All Things: On behalf of a Molinist view of divine providence in Jowers, Dennis, ed.Four Views On Divine Providence (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology). Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2011.Craig, William Lane. Middle Knowledge, Truth-Makers, and the Grounding Objection, 68-83, in Rea, Michael C., ed.Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.Craig, William L., What Does God Know? in Huffman, Douglas S., and Eric L. Johnson, eds.God under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents God. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002.Helseth, Paul Kjoss. God Causes All Things, in Jowers, Dennis, ed.Four Views On Divine Providence (Counterpoints: Bible and Theology). Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2011.OConnor, Timothy, The Impossibility of Middle Knowledge, 45-67, in Rea, Michael C., ed.Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.Pinnock, Clark H.Most Moved Mover: a Theology of God's Openness. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001.Shook, John, Gods Divinely Justified Knowledge is Incompatible with Human Free Will, Forum Philosophicum, 15, (2010) 141-159. Zimmerman, Dean. Yet Another Anti-Molinist Argument. Samuel Newlands and Larry M. Jorgensen 1, (August 2, 2008): 47, accessed May 8, 2015, http://fas-philosophy.rutgers.edu/zimmerman/Anti.Molinist.arg.proofs.pdf.11