Of course, as the biblical story goes (1 Sam. 23:1-14), David did not remain in Keilah and
and Saul existed--even before creation itself--that if David had stayed in Keilah under the
circumstances that prevailed in his life, Saul would most certainly have besieged the city. And of
course, God is supposed to know this, according to the Molinist, even if Saul has free will in the
libertarian sense. In fact, we are to suppose that Saul does have free will, for (A) is said to be a
counterfactual of freedom.
Craig has said, "Since God knows what any free creature would do in any situation, he can, by
creating the appropriate situations, bring it about that creatures will achieve his ends and purposes
and that they will do so freely."
open to him. . . But the fact that he knew before creation what would eventuate given any
creative option does, of course, mean that no gambling was involved in the creative
process. He did not have to worry about any surprises; he knew no second guessing
would be necessary. For he had the ability to consider all the actualizable worlds and
choose the one which best mirrored his creative options.
Since God knows which CFs are true in every possible world (in virtue of his middle
free creatures, in the circumstances made actual by God's creative decision, do those things that
God wants them to do. Of course, as Basinger and others point out, God has no control over
which CFs are true in a given possible world. So God cannot actualize just any possible world he
might desire to actualize. His options are limited by what each free creature would in fact (freely)
do in any given circumstance.
thus has very strong control over his creation without endangering human freedom or
responsibility.
called the grounding objection (GO). In the remainder of this paper, I will explain the grounding
objection and defend it against the major rejoinders that proponents of MK have made.