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which I am speaking are essentially the same as are spoken about by Molinists, it seems best to
acknowledge the usefulness of their concept of middle knowledge, while defining differently the
nature of the creaturely freedom entailed. This radically modifies the construct and, in fact, gives
Gods knowledge the ground which is lacking in Molinism.
Consider for instance, Molinas proposal about Gods answer to David concerning what
the men of Keilah would do if he spent the night there. I grant that Gods statement to David
about what the men would do may not have been knowledge of a counterfactual truth but simply
a statement concerning their ill intent.
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Nevertheless, in my proposal, prior to Gods decree, God
was able to know in which world(s) David would be betrayed and in which world(s) he would
not be betrayed so that he could choose between them. If we do not grant this knowledge to
God, and if we do not assume that God pondered this knowledge in establishing his decree, then
God lacks something essential to the wisdom of his decree. To collapse this sort of knowledge
into the category of the necessary fails to acknowledge its distinctiveness.
In Gods natural knowledge, he has the knowledge of logical relations, causal
relationships, and so on, that grounds his more particular knowledge in the middle stage. But, it
is only when God begins to contemplate the creation of a world with various kinds of creatures
that he has reason to assess how such world histories might come out and then he considers what
it would take to bring a particular man like Joseph into Egypt in a situation where God would be
able to provide a context for the development of the covenant people as a nation.
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As per Turretin, Institutes, Topic 3, Q. 13, XV (I, 216).