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Craig’s Dilemma – Escape for Aseity, but Hello Grounding Objection
William Lane Craig says he doesn’t think aseity is threatened by middle knowledge, because he is an anti-realist with respect to abstract objects including possible worlds. In other words, he views possible worlds as non-existent. Thus, God’s middle knowledge is not dependent on something outside himself. While that’s an understandable response, it runs smack into…
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Don’t Conflate Middle Knowledge and Knowledge of Contingents of Creaturely Freedom
Alfred J. Freddoso in his lengthy introduction to his translation of Molina’s “On Divine Knowledge,” provides some advice that would be well taken by his fellow Molinists (p. 23): Molina claims that infinitely many conditional future contingents obtained from eternity and that from eternity God had comprehensive knowledge of them. However — and this is…
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Responding to Wes Widner
I had been planning to respond to Wes Widner’s critique of Dr. White on Molonism (critique here) but then I noticed Steve Hays’ response to Widner (Steve Hays’ response here). Steve Hays does a great job, so for a detailed response, see his comments. I’ll add a few thoughts of my own by way of…
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Middle Knowledge – Video Series
I have now concluded the series on Middle Knowledge and specifically of Turretin’s treatment of it, in his Institutes of Elenctic Theology. I should note that a summary of the section that I addressed has been created and can be found at the following link (link). I didn’t consult this list specifically in the preparation…
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Middle Knowledge – Part 6
This is the sixth and final section on Turretin’s discussion of Middle Knowledge. This section delves into the philosophical arguments that undermine the concept of middle knowledge, demonstrating that the concept of middle knowledge leads to inevitable self-contradictions. 1. Two categories of knowledge are all that are required, because all true objects of knowledge are…
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Middle Knowledge – Part 5
This is the fifth video in the series, of which (for those already weary of the series) there are six videos. This section deals with alleged proof texts of Middle Knowledge: (1) 1 Samuel 23:11-12 This is the place where David asked God whether the men of the city would deliver David up if David…
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Middle Knowledge – Part 4
This is the fourth section of the discussion of Middle Knowledge taken from Turretin’s Institutes. This section deals with Turretin’s six main objections to Middle Knowledge: (1) Two categories of knowledge are enough, because all things are either merely possible or actually future, (2) Untrue things cannot be foreseen as true, (3) God’s exhaustive providence…
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Middle Knowledge – Part 3
This is the third video in the series on Middle Knowledge. This section presents the “state of the question.” That is to say, it helps describe what exactly is under consideration. Thus, in this video we distinguish the issue from the issue of God knowing all possible contingent things, of God knowing necessarily contingent things…
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Middle Knowledge – Part 2
This is part 2 of the series. The first part of the series can be found here (link). The first part discussed the true doctrine of the knowledge of God, but this section defines the erroneous doctrine of middle knowledge and describes its history. As is discussed in the video, Molinism was the brainchild of…
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Middle Knowledge – Part 1
This is the first part of what is planned as a multi-part discussion on middle knowledge and free will. This part discusses the fact that God’s knowledge is intrinsically simple (undivided) but can be divided extrinsically (as to its objects) into two categories: natural and free. These two categories exhaust all the objects of God’s…