On the Molinism Facebook
group, I recently answered a question about Molinism. The question will
appear in italics, and my answer follows. Enjoy!
On Molinism, Libertarian
free will is possible because God's Middle Knowledge is located logically prior
to His divine decrees. If God's counterfactual knowledge is located logically
posterior to His divine decrees, then this removes the possibility of
libertarian freedom, since, God's knowledge of counterfactuals are subsumed
into His free knowledge given that God has already decreed the world he desired
to actualize. Thus, what would be counterfactually known by God is known
because He has already decreed that it should be the case.
If God's counterfactual
knowledge is logically located posterior to His creative decree, libertarian
freedom is out of the question since man must choose what he does since God has
ordained that he does without taking into consideration libertarian free will
decisions logically prior to His creative decrees.
As I am processing the
above points, I guess my question is: How does having God's counterfactual
knowledge logically prior to His creative decree preserve libertarian
freedom...I think I know the answer, but perhaps you can clarify any missteps I
have made.
I
think I might be able to help (depending on any more specific questions you may
have or that might arise). You write, "On Molinism, Libertarian free will
is possible because God's Middle Knowledge is located logically prior to His
divine decrees."
However,
this is not precisely the case. If any aspect of God's knowledge were to be the
cause of man's choice (or entail that God caused it), then libertarian freedom
is destroyed. Instead, libertarian freedom is possible, and God knows the
counterfactual choices that free creatures would make in any possible set of
circumstances; on Molinism, God knows these truths pre-volitionally, but they
are not necessary, either.
The
content of God's middle knowledge, then, depends on the content of creaturely
free choices, and not the other way around. This is crucially what
distinguishes Molinism from other full-omniscience* libertarian views, like
classical Thomism.
*I'm using "full-omniscience" as a really rough
placeholder for a detailed description of views that take it to be the case
that God knows counterfactuals of creaturely freedom.
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