Simple Foreknowledge Analysis

Simple Foreknowledge and the idea of hard and soft facts, even though it is supposedly a “simple” view of God’s foreknowledge is a very hard view to understand. However, the middle knowledge, or Molinistic view tries to explain Gods foreknowledge through a belief in counterfactuals and three different types of knowledge that God has. A counterfactual is a conditional statement, or as explained by William Lane Craig, are statements that “are antecedent or consequent clauses [that] are typically contrary to the fact.” (Craig 120) Molinists believe that there are three types of knowledge possessed by God. These three types are Natural knowledge- God’s knowledge of the range of possible worlds; Middle knowledge- God’s knowledge of the range of feasible worlds; and Free knowledge- God’s knowledge of the actual world. These three types of knowledge imply that God knows every possible decision someone could make through his natural and middle knowledge, and that he also knows that actual decisions a person will make through his free knowledge. According to Molinists, God had knowledge of all counterfactuals before he created the earth, and because of this he could not create a world in which the decisions that have already been made could not have occurred. It is logically possible that God could have created a world that, for example, Adam did not sin, but it is not feasible because Adam did sin and God knew that he would. This supports the same idea that Simple Foreknowledge proponents hold, that a person can have free will and that God can have knowledge of the future. Because God has knowledge of every decision a person could possibly make and God knows us, leading him to know what decision we will choose to make. We still freely choose to make the decisions, but God does in fact know that we will choose that decision. Not because he forces us to act the way we do, but because he knows how we will act. All of the previously discussed views are considered incompatibilist views, meaning that they support the idea of free will but do …show more content…
The fourth view is Calvinism, supported by Paul Helm, and it is the only view out of all four that is a compatibilist view. Compatibilists believe humans have free will and that everything is determined by God. Helm says that “the issue, as classically stated, is whether divine omniscience, as far as it is concerned with the future, is logically consistent with human freedom.”(Helm 161) If this is the case, then people must accept one of two things, that God is not as omniscient as the bible makes him seem, or that humans are not freely responsible for their actions. Calvinists have three different ways of understanding divine omniscience, “One is… God’s knowledge is the cause of things… second sense is that in which the foreknowledge of God is logically subsequent to his decree… the third and weakest sense is a sense of divine foreknowledge that is logically prior to God’s decree; it is in the light of what he foreknows that that God decrees this or that; what he decrees is conditioned by what he foreknows.”(Helm 163) Helm says that there are two kinds of omniscience, strong omniscience- or the degree of knowledge that encompasses all events past, present, and future, and weak omniscience- any omniscience that is less than strong omniscience. Calvinists believe in strong omniscience and that God is all knowing in every aspect, including his knowledge of the