Information AboutMolinism |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT MOLINISM | |
| christian philosophy | |
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Under this doctrine, middle knowledge (so-called because it is the second of three types of knowledge God has) is total knowledge of how any possible free agent would act in any and all circumstances. Thus, given possible agent A and possible circumstances C, God is said to know what action that person would freely choose. However, this leaves open the question of precisely how God is able to know what a free agent would do. This difficulty is heightened by the fact that, under a typical Libertarian Account of free will, it is always possible (in the fullest sense of the word) for a free agent to do an act or not; and therefore, there is no such thing as "what someone would do in a given situation", as a free agent might do anything. Molinists support their case with Jesus's statement in Matthew 11:23: :And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. That is, Jesus claims knowledge of how the Sodomites would have responded under a different set of circumstances from those that actually occurred. This account allows God to arrange for a person to carry out a specific act, without overriding their free will; instead, God can arrange the circumstances surrounding the choice so that the act is both freely chosen and providential. An important feature in this account is that, although God knows how free agents will act in any situation, God does not determine or cause the actions and choices of the free agent; if he did, there would be no freedom. CRITICISM The Grounding Objection is at present the most debated objection to Molinism. The argument basically entails the idea that there are no grounds for the truth of Counterfactuals prior to the existence of the individual of which they refer. Also, it seems that Molinism cannot provide the Libertarian Freewill that Middle Knowledge is supposed to offer. EXTERNAL LINKS
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