Critics of libertarian free will, as I understand them, would suggest that the problem with it is that it seems to enthrone free will as a kind of pristine and untainted residual feature of Edenic man. Man has fallen altogether, except his will, or so goes the criticism a Calvinist would level against libertarianism. I must say that what I've read of libertarians does seem to suggest that they believe the will is utterly neutral with respect to just about every choice. These men will speak of sin nature, but one is led to wonder what they can possibly mean by it if it does not affect and inform the will in any appreciable way?
This freedom of the will for libertarians is protected by a doctrine known as "Middle Knowledge--" which means simply that God knows what you would do if external factors and conditions were different. He sort of surveys all the choices that people freely make and then chooses to instantiate the world that has the largest, or most acceptable, balance of people freely choosing Him. As it pertains to me, he knows that if certain factors had not been in place in my life, I would have exercised the free choice to reject Christianity, but God knew that and instead chose to create a world in which other factors moved me to freely accept Christianity. In God's knowledge (His "Middle Knowledge") are all the contingent realities that would result from the infinite number of variations in external conditions presented to the wills of individuals and He has chosen this particular world to create.
I will pursue a few questions in this piece:
1. How does this protect libertarian free will as it has been defnined by so many scholars?
2. How is it substantially different from hard Calvinistic predestinarianism?
3. Is not "middle knowledge" a useless division of God's knowledge into a million merely potential realities?
4. How does the notion that God's knowledge does not contain "counterfactuals of freedom" (the choices you could have made but didn't) rule out freedom?
Questions 1 and 2:
On the "middle knowledge" view, God chooses to establish the world that will result in the "external conditions" necessary to produce the exact number of converts He desires. It may be a penultimate reality that they are choosing, but the ultimate reality is that they (and the conditions that will produce them) are already predetermined, or perhaps pre-selected would be a better term.
Calvinist Perspective
1 God, "before the foundations of the world ordains the number of those to be saved (the elect)."
2 Person A is "in the number to be saved."
3 Person A is saved.
"Middle Knowledge" Perspective
1 God, "before the foundations of the world computes the available contingencies of people's free choices and all the factors necessary to produce/lead/elicit the free responses of the exact number He desires to be saved (the elect) and ensures the production of that world."
2 Person A is "in the number to be saved."
3 Person A is saved.
In what substantive sense are the two first premises different, besides the impressive rhetoric of the second? While it is clearly possible that I am not understanding the "middle knowledge" perspective in all its depth, it could also be possible that middle knowledge is merely a modification of the reformed view?
I frankly think that premise one in argument two is merely a long form of the same idea in premise one of argument one. It seems to me that Edwards, for example, would simply say that among the factors necessary to lead or produce the free responses of the elect is the active grace of Christ in the hearts of the elect, enabling them to believe. One must remember that, on the Calvinist view, the purpose of God's active grace is to restore the capacity of the individual will to embrace Christ. But the fact remains that either argument above envisions a world populated by elect and non-elect people whose final position is not really under their ultimate control. What real difference does it make to the number of elect whether or not God predestines or pre-selects? They are still not free to be anything other than elect!
Let us remember that libertarian free will has to do with making choices without causal determinents. But if the range of my legitimate choices is limited by a power outside of me, it is true that I am free within the range of choices, but surely something has acted externally to limit my available choices, and to limit them on so fundamental a question as my eternal destiny. Actually, God has acted to limit even my knowledge of available choices. I frankly see this as strangely similar to the Calvinist view that God allows freedom, defined a certain way, within certain pre-established boundaries. But either view limits freedom through God's active agency. The libertarian turns out only to broaden the limits of freedom by making God's actions purely "external," but that by definition is only a modification of Calvinism and not a new view. God's will still acts over against human choices to shape the emergence of the redeemed family.
Thus the only difference between the two views comes down to the definition of freedom. In one view, freedom is no causal interference after the causal interference of limiting choices. In the other view, there is causal interference after the causal interference of limiting choices, but it is a causal interference curiously to restore the wills of the elect. One merely establishes boundaries around choices, but those boundaries are predetermined. The other establishes boundaries around choices and says that grace penetrates the hearts of those in such a quality of rebellion that they would continue in their free rebellion regardless of the boundaries. One view changes the environment to produce a new person. The other view changes the environment and the person in the environment.
Perhaps I have mis-spoken. The difference turns out to be a biggish difference between the classical Reformed position and that of Dr. Craig and other advocates of this "Molinist" or "middle knowledge" perspective on the issue of human freedom. It is simply unthinkable to the Reformers that willful choices are purely uncaused phenomena; like particles generated from some quantum vacuum of the will. If they are utterly uncaused phenomena, then who really is choosing? If nothing is, so to speak, causally behind the will and controls it, then what accounting can be made of the origin of our choices?
Libertarian freedom would mean that for every choice, desire may result from the choice and be bound to the conscious personality, but can never motivate a choice (because this would constitute a causal force sufficient to move the will). Once desire is set by a choice, in order for sufficient neutrality of the will to be maintained, the desires of the personality would need to dissipate with rapidity so that the "quantum vacuum of the will" could be, as it were, reset for the next choice to be made.
Edwards, and the other Reformers, on the other hand, would vehemently contend that the fallenness of our humanity affects the heart of man to such an extent that his desires, bound up with his conscious personality, move his will. In short, we choose what our personalities desire, and so the motive of the heart is logically anterior and logically connected to all our choices.
Question 3: Is "middle knowledge" a useless division of God's knowledge into a million merely potential realities?My critique here is analogous to Aristotle's critique of the Forms. He wanted to know why we should not believe that there is only one reality rather than two, and that the forms of things are imbedded within them, or are so tightly related to them as to be distinguishable but inseparable? By analogy, why should we believe that God's knowledge is somehow filled with what must only be considered an infinite number of variant versions of history?
Philosophy is concerned with "ultimate reality." That surely must be reality as it is to God. Of course, we can't see reality as God's sees it, so we may have to remain somewhat agnostic about how reality actually is as God see it. Note I said, "somewhat agnostic" because I do believe that God has given us enough to go on to understand reality as we are designed to know it, and that does bear some analogical resemblance to how God knows it. But surely there must be points at which our knowledge, as analogical, is merely approximate, and in some cases we must be wholly in the dark on certain questions. Whether or not God knows "counterfactuals of freedom" seems to me thoroughly speculative. It is unprovable either rationally or biblically. That God knows exactly how history will turn out is a manifest fact of Scripture.
But we still ask the questions, because we are on a continuum, from our imperfect understanding of reality to God's understanding. He himself has asked us to go with Him on the journey toward understanding, and so we persist.
Given this understanding, what is the best theory of God's knowledge?
Question 4: Why is "middle knowledge" necessary to establish human freedom?
In no way does it seem to me obvious that God's knowledge must contain conterfactuals of freedom in order for human beings to be free, at least given the definition I have enunciated above.
Freedom defined as "doing what one desires" is still a legitimate exercise of the will informed by the motives of the heart. If God's knowledge contains only the sum of His creative and redemptive actions combined with the actual choices of people, then how in any way does that result in determinism for the creature whose choices are simply known by God? (see the next entry for a further discussion of this)
