What Is Middle Knowledge?

Dr. Craig explains middle knowledge, a key concept in Molinist theology!

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[bpbp]

I'm not an expert, but I play one on

Can we all agree that God is outside of time & is not bound by it, because he created it?

God is not bound by our perception of who he is. Time is not bound by our perception of what it is.

If our perception of either one is "incorrect" because of incomplete information, that doesn't change the fact that both are still who & what they are, no matter what our flawed perception thinks they should be.

We have a lot of information about God & time, but we don't have all the information about God & time.

This is how I see it working.

God can instantaneously see all of time, all at once & can see all choices being made by everyone all at once.

Picture something like this:
The "time line" from creation to the end of time is about 3 or 4 feet long & God is looking at it all at once.

It's a simplistic explanation, but I think it works.

[mugsofmirth]

What is the role in apologetics of explaining these various kinds of knowledge?
This all sounds very superfluous.

[fourfirefoxes]

“16. Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham; who is the father of us all, 17. (As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations, ) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.” (Rom 4:16-17, KJV)

[Z__K]

Greetings. Historically (Classical & Medieval) saw such knowledge metaphysically grounded in ‘Divine Ideas’. This is common knowledge among Medieval Philosophy scholars. Thankfully, there is a new window into this with Dr. Thomas M. Ward

Ward, Thomas M. (2020). Divine Ideas. Cambridge University Press.

[TimCrinion]

Atheist: God has no power, so your choice is 100% determined by you.

Calvin: God is sovereign, so your choice is 100% determined by God.

Partway: God is sovereign, but you have free will, so maybe your choice is 60% determined by God, 40% determined by you.

Molin: God is sovereign, so he can bring about any possible world he likes. Inside each possible world, he knows what you would choose of your own free will. So your choice in the actual world is 100% determined by God and 100% determined by you.

[pathfinding]

In making this statement, Dr Craig makes one of two or possibly both errors.
The first is in assuming that God would not want to create beings that could surprise Him, and the second is that even if He wanted to, God would be unable to do so due to his omniscience.

Experiencing the new, to be surprised is an essential part of a lived experience. To say that human beings can access this wonderful experience but God can not is to de-personalise God to a degree.

God can create boundaries then give his creation such freedom within those boundaries that even He would not know what choices they would make and could therefore experience joy at seeing the result.

When parents get a puppy for the family, they often give the children the authority to name the puppy and the parents abide by the choice. There are obvious boundaries as they would not allow the puppy to be given a profane name. But within reason, the children not only have freedom but also authority that the parents will abide by. And they will experience joy at the creativity of their children's choice of name.

Likewise, when God told Adam and Eve to name the creatures he created, God did not know for certainty what the names would be. God would have a supercomputer like understanding of their psychology so could likely make good guesses, but their mood of the day or experiences of that day could influence their state of mine prior to the naming.

God did not create his children so he could watch a movie play out that he has committed every nanosecond to perfect memory. God created his children so he could be a papa and delight in the wholesome choices of his children and to suggest that God does not desire the experience of being 'pleasantly surprised' by anything is bizarre.

It does not diminish God to suggest He is not omniscient in all ways. But it does diminish Him to suggest that He would have no interest in creating a world where he could not experience newness and surprise.

[Dino_LIVE_]

Does Dr. Craig believe God is in time at some point?

[dcouric]

The problem isn't middle knowledge. It's that, even given God's middle knowledge, universally fallen humanity in the natural state of sin would never choose him, in any circumstances, following Adam’s disobedience at the beginning.

[TheMirabillis]

What is ‘necessary’ for free will are live options. If a Person must do something and they have no other option but to do what they do, then they don’t have free will. They are locked into what they must do.

For example: - if God knew that you would do X, then once the World has been created, you must do X. You don’t have the option of doing Y. Because you have no live options, then you don’t have free will.

Therefore, in Molinism or Middle Knowledge, free will is a complete illusion and it amazes me that many People who should understand that don’t understand that.

[TheRetrospective]

I‘m a fan of Dr Craig but not of molinism or middle knowledge. For me, free will supersedes God‘s knowledge. Anthroposophy explains this better than I could.

[jamessoo]

Dr Craig sounds like he knows more than God knows Himself. Hahaha

[osks]

Under the rigour of a proper Biblical exegesis, we quickly discover that the idea of God’s ‘natural knowledge’ and God’s ‘free knowledge’ is a theological canard constructed to accommodate the (utterly unBiblical) idea of God’s ‘middle knowledge’ - an artificial abstraction contrived by men like William Lane Craig to somehow salvage the ‘sovereignty of man’ while paying little more than lip service to the absolute sovereignty of God…
I really don’t understand why the disciples of Dr Craig aren’t also troubled by the fact that he insists on appealing to two extra-Biblical sources to support his Autonomian commitments, rather than allowing the sufficiency of the very Word of God (2Tim 3:16, 17) to speak for itself on the things of God…
On the one hand, Craig employs an argument formulated by a Muslim apologist (amongst others), Al-Ghazali, as ‘proof’ for the existence of God (as though it were possible to reduce the infinitude of God to the level of finite human comprehension)!
And then, Craig employs an argument formulated by Luis de Molina, a Spanish Jesuit priest commissioned by Pope Paul III as a Romanist ‘soldier of the Catholic Church’ to counter the Scriptural principle of Sola Scriptura upheld by the Protestant Reformation
It is little wonder that God has (yet again) given His church over to the Fool into apostasy…

[Jockito]

On what basis can God predict what I will freely choose? Just saying that he can, doesn't seem very satisfying to me. This is also known as the grounding problem.

[markmcdonald]

Molinism is the book of all possible chess games. God flips the pages, puts his finger on the game to be played. It's written before any pieces make any moves. Just because in some possible "fictional" world they would freely choose to move a certain way does not mean they have any actual free will. In the game God choose, before that piece was alive and able to make any choice, their "free" choice was selected for them. it thus becomes deterministic. they have no choice in the real game, the possible world, they actually exist in. I might have theoretical free choice in numerous never-existent worlds. Those worlds don't matter - never will - they will never exist. This world matters! In this world, per Dr. Craig, I have a pre-determined free will activity I must engage in per God's choice of this world. My choice having been set prior to my actual existence. Molinism is self-defeating in explaining how God knowing and people doing actually works and preserves justice. Hypothetical worlds and hypothetical choices are not, cannot be, actual choices. I live, and have only ever lived and acted in, this one real world. In this world i know, can know God through general revelation and special revelation. In this world, he asks me to choose life or death. In this world I must have capacity to actually make a choice, or there is no choice. Space, matter and time become meaningless.

[Fetsimo]

It's heresy is what it is. Molina and Dr. Craig speculate in pure philosophy and aren't basing their speculations in the truth of scripture. None of this comes from biblical theology.