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14 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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What is the nature of divine knowledge? |
There is a logical/explanatory succession.
1. Natural knowledge (essential): God's knowledge of necessary truths (what could happen).
2. Middle knowledge (unessential): God's knowledge of counterfactuals (what would happen); contingent truths.
3. Free knowledge (unessential): God's knowledge of the actual world (what has/is/will happen); contingent truths. |
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How does the nature of divine knowledge relate to creation? |
1. God knows all logically possible worlds by His natural knowledge.
2. God knows which of those worlds are feasible for Him to actualise by His middle knowledge.
3. God freely decrees to actualise a world known to Him by His middle knowledge, and so decrees how He would act in any set of circumstances. |
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How does Molina define *providence*? |
God's ordering of things to their ends, either directly or mediately through secondary agents. |
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What is the nature of divine will? |
Everything that happens occurs by God's will or God's permission.
Absolute will: God's unconditional positive willing of events (often frustrated).
Permissive will: God's conditional permitting of events contrary to His absolute will (always fulfilled).
It is God's absolute will that we never sin, but He permits sin to bring about a greater good. |
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What is Molina's interpretation of divine concurrence? |
Simultaneous concurrence: God acts (not on, but) with a secondary cause to produce its effect. God concurs with our free decisions by producing the effects we desire. God is not responsible for sin as He does not move people's wills to sin. Rather, He permits their decisions to be made. |
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What is divine concurrence? |
God causes every event that happens. |
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What is Calvin's interpretation of divine providence? |
God knows what will happen because He makes it happen. If there are counterfactuals, they are known posterior to the divine decree, so it is God who determines creature's choices.
1. Makes God the author of sin, since He moves the will of people to sin.
2. It is evil to make people sin and then hold them responsible for acts over which they had no control. |
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What is simple foreknowledge? |
Logically prior to God's decree, God only has natural knowledge but no middle knowledge. Thus, He could not know what what the world would be like. |
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Given the evil in the world, wouldn't God having middle knowledge make Him evil, as He has then planned all evil to occur? |
God's middle knowledge provides Him with morally sufficient reason to allow evil. Such reasons may involve consequences that arise in future centuries and in other parts of the world. From our cognitively limited position, we cannot say that God has no such reasons. |
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How do we know that God has counterfactual knowledge? |
1. Omniscience entails God knowing only and all true propositions. 2. Scripture affirms counterfactual knowledge: 'None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory' (1 Cor 2:8). |
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What is the grounding objection? |
If counterfactuals have any truth value, they are all false, since there is no ground for their truth. |
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What are truth-maker theory and truth-maker maximalism? |
TM: true propositions are made true by certain entities in the world. TMM: all true propositions have truth-makers. |
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How is the grounding objection resolved? |
1. Plantinga: it is much clearer that some counterfactuals are at least possibly true than that TMM is true/all true propositions are grounded.
2. TM for counterfactuals are available; e.g., 'If I were rich, then I would buy a Mercedes' is grounded by the fact that 'I would buy a Mercedes' would have a TM under the condition that I were rich. |
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What is compatibilism? |
Divine foreknowledge and future contingency are compatible. |
