A question from the inbox: I have been struggling with reconciling omniscience, the rebellion of Satan and creation. Accepting the view that God knows all things (including what transpires in the future), it is logical to assume that He foreknew...
Now that we have considered the ramifications of divine middle knowledge, let us turn to some theological objections that are raised against it. The theological problem may be stated as follows: if God has middle knowledge, and desires that all people are saved, why did he create a world in which so many people are lost? God's middle knowledge shows him under which circumstances any person would accept him, and so why didn't he plan his creation in such a manner so that all are saved? This is not a problem for simple foreknowledge (as it holds that God did not have such knowledge in the logical moment prior to creation), but needs to be explained by the defender of middle knowledge.
Continue reading "Theological Objections to Middle Knowledge" »
So there are some biblical passages that would appear to support divine middle knowledge, yet I think the more convincing arguments for it are theological. Divine middle knowledge provides explanations for numerous theological dilemmas that are otherwise very difficult to...
Continue reading "Ramifications of Divine Middle Knowledge" »
So Divine Middle Knowledge is God's knowledge of what each possible creature would do when placed in each possible situation. This allowed him to select which possible would to create in a manner that would best meet his goals for...
Continue reading "Biblical Evidence of Divine Middle Knowledge" »
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...
Before talking about divine middle knowledge, I first want to briefly mention the idea of logical priority. One thing has logical priority over another if the second is logical dependent on it. It is important to note that this logical...
I wrote several articles a few months ago about the problem of fatalism in theology, specifically how the concepts of divine foreknowledge and human freedom were not in fact contradictory. I then examined the arguments for Open Theism, and concluded...
Continue reading "Introduction to Divine Middle Knowledge" »
Some time ago, Allan wrote several articles seeming about a book that was seeming to advocate Open Theism. In reply I wrote a quick post presenting some of the evidence for God being omniscient, and subsequently pointed out that if...
In theological circles, fatalism is the argument that divine foreknowledge is incompatible with human freedom. It argues that if God foreknows what we will do, then we must do it so we cannot have free choice.Consequently it seems that the...
Mark has suggested that we can escape the argument for fatalism by holding that God is outside of time. If God were outside of time, then he would know events timelessly, and so would not literally know them before they...
Fatalism is a rather broad concept that emerges in many fields, but the one that concerns me today has to do with God's foreknowledge. In a nutshell, fatalism argues that if God foreknows that I will do something, then I...
I've just started reading The Only Wise God by William Lane Craig, which examines the compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom. So far it seems pretty good.First of all he looks at the definition of divine foreknowledge, and notes...
Following up on my brief post on omniscience, Allan has posted an article disputing that those verses prove God's foreknowledge. Since then I have posted an old article I have on predestination, which does include some verses that do point...
I first wrote this article on Predestination around December 2000. At the time I was attempting to refute pure Arminianism. Since then, my views have softened slightly towards more a middle foreknowledge view, mainly because of my views of God's...
Continue reading "Predestination - The Sovereignty of God" »
My name is Dave Bryant, the author and sometimes philosopher of this website. I've been writing about theology and apologetics for the last few years and recently starting rambling a bit about politics and software development as well. More about me or contact me.
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