jointly sufficient conditions for making the just the choices we do, if choices and actions are
actually effects of sufficient causal factors if this is so, then it follows that God can know what
choices would be made by knowing just exactly the set of conditions (i.e., all factors which
together form the set of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions) that gives rise to
particular choices and actions. So, he can envision an agent in one situation, and knowing all the
factors true in that situation can know from these what choice the agent would make here, and he
can envision a slightly different situation, and again, in knowing all the factors true in that
situation he can know what the agent would do, instead, here.
The relevance of compatibilist middle knowledge is simply that it affords God a means
do. Take the Joseph story, for example. When Joseph tells his brothers in Gen 45:8, that it was
not you who sent me here but God . . ., we realize the point is that Gods action in getting Joseph
to Egypt was the ultimate one. This certainly does not cancel out the brothers free action or their
responsibility (of which they were keenly aware, as evidence by their desire to gain Josephs
forgiveness after the death of Jacob Gen 50:17-19). But how does God "send Joseph to Egypt"
when it is the brothers who plot and carry out this deed? God knows just what conditions must
be present for them to do exactly what they want to do, namely, sell him into Egypt. Perhaps
(and it is only that) the dreams God gave Joseph were devised because God, by his
compatibilistic middle knowledge, knew what the brothers would do without the dreams (not be
jealous enough, perhaps, to sell him), and what they would do knowing the dreams (now be
jealous enough to do it). Knowing this by compatibilist middle knowledge, God gives the
dreams to Joseph, in part so that his design of sending Joseph to Egypt is accomplished as the
brothers now contrive the plan (i.e., the plan God knows they would do) to sell him there. In all
this, all that God does is just and good, and what the brothers do is out their own hearts and is
evil (Gen 50:20). God regulates specifically what happens, but he does so in part through the use
of his indirect-permissive activity utilizing compatibilist middle knowledge.
Sixth, relationship with God requires that God be involved with us in our time and space.
Doctrine of God. Again, I might choose to use different terminology, but I affirm the concepts
he advocates. It makes eminent sense to me to understand God, in himself and apart from
creation, as both non-spatial and non-temporal, but then to see that when God creates the
heavens and the earth, creating necessarily then both space and time, God "fills" the creation he
has made. So, we rightly speak of God as omnipresent, meaning that God really is here and
everywhere present, while he is, in himself and apart from creation, non-spatial. So likewise, we
should speak of God as omnitemporal, meaning that God is every-time present. God really is
with us, in space and time, in all of life.
Seventh, relationship with God requires vibrant conceptions of both Gods immutability
that Gods ontological and ethical immutability requires that God be relationally mutable, so that
when the moral situation with which God is in relation changes, so too does God "change" in
relation to that changed situation in ways called forth by his immutable character and promise.