[UPDATE: I’ve actually modified the related post since I wrote this one. I’m leaving this post here, though, because I still think it’s got an interesting thought in it]

In my recent post on God’s providence I discussed a view which I called “middle knowledge”. To some this might have been confusing, for this position is also sometimes called “Molinism”, after the Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina. Molina is responsible for introducing the doctrine of middle knowledge to reconcile libertarian free will with a strong view of divine providence, and as such the term Molinism is often used to designate the position I was talking about. Admittedly, that probably would have been a better label to use, although I tend to use the term “middle knowledge” to avoid confusion between Molinism as philosophical framework for providence and Molinism as a collection of doctrines about soteriology. This has happened in the past where people use the word “Calvinism” where they actually should use the word “compatibilism.”

One reason one might prefer the term Molinism, is because it more clearly encompasses the theses of libertarian free will and middle knowledge. While I was thinking about this, it dawned on me that while middle knowledge doesn’t technically include the thesis of libertarian free will, it does entail something very much like it: first, recall that the facts in God’s middle knowledge are contingent. This means that what agents freely do is not causally determined by their circumstances or God, which entails some form of the Principle of Contrary Choice. Second, recall that the facts are not determined by God. What else could determine the truth of these facts? Well, us! So something like libertarian free will plausibly follows from the doctrine of middle knowledge.

Of course this is really all just a matter of semantics. For the remainder of the blog post series, I’ll probably use start using “Molinism” as the term for the view.