So now that we have discussed the concept of logical priority and logical moments, we can move onto to divine middle knowledge itself.

Craig explains God's knowledge in three logical (but not temporal) moments.

The first moment contains God's knowledge of all necessary truths. This includes things such as the laws of logic, that are true by the nature of God himself. They are not true because God willed them to be true, but are true simply because God is God. God could not lack this knowledge and still be God. This is called God's natural knowledge and includes knowledge of all possible worlds and individuals that he could create, and all the things that those individuals could do in every possible situation.

Jumping ahead for a moment, the third moment of God's knowledge is his knowledge of the actual world that he has created, and includes his foreknowledge of everything that will happen. This moment of knowledge is logically after God's decision to create, and therefore God has control over the content of this knowledge. If God had created a different world, then the content of this knowledge would be different, consequently this moment is called God's free knowledge. God would always have this sort of knowledge regardless of what world he created, but the content of the knowledge would be different.

The second moment of God's knowledge, lying between his natural knowledge and free knowledge is God's middle knowledge. In this moment of God's knowledge, he knows what each creature would do (not just could do) in each situation. Craig gives the example of Peter - at this stage in God's knowledge, he knows that if he placed Peter in certain circumstances he would deny Christ three times. His natural knowledge revealed all the possible things that Peter could do, but his middle knowledge reveals what Peter would freely do. This is not because Peter is predestined and constrained by the circumstances, but that God simply knows what Peter would freely do.

The effect of middle knowledge is to limit all the possible worlds that God knows about from his natural knowledge, to the worlds he can actually create. For example, he could not have created a world where Peter was placed in exactly the same circumstances but did not deny Christ - he may be able to avoid those circumstances in the first place, but that is another matter entirely.

So, in the logical moment of God's middle knowledge he knows all the possible worlds he could create, and what would happen if he created each one. Consequently, he is then able to select which of these possible worlds best meets his goals for creation.

This means that God is ultimately in control of everything that happens, yet human freedom is not curtailed. It resolves the tension between predestination and free choice. God selects which world to create, knowing what will happen if he does so, and so can be said to cause things to happen. Yet at the same time, he is not overriding human freedom - he simply knows what free choices we will make. Consequently, it is still our free choice whether or not to accept him.

This is what I like about divine middle knowledge. It resolves the problem of predestination and free choice. It emphasises God's infinite wisdom in being able to select the best possible world given the infinite number of permutations. And I think it can be backed up biblically, but we'll leave that for next time.

Posted by Dave Bryant at 3:03 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (3)