RE: Theists: How can predetermined fate and free will coexist?
December 19, 2016 at 5:02 pm
(This post was last modified: December 19, 2016 at 5:25 pm by Ignorant.)
(December 19, 2016 at 2:00 pm)SteveII Wrote: For reference:
1. God's natural knowledge of necessary truths.
2. God's middle knowledge, (including counterfactuals).
---Creation of the World---
3. God's free knowledge (the actual ontology of the world).
If God's knowledge in #2 is of free choices, then when God actualized a real world, I cannot see how that would change the nature of the Judas' choices. In #3, God's knowledge of what you will decided to do is logically equivalent to what you will decide to do.
My understanding of libertarian free will is that a person's ability to genuinely choose between options comes from within themselves. [1] If it was present in #2, it is still present when actualized. [2]
Right. I understand Molinism. Molina didn't subscribe to libertarian free will (which doesn't care about divine agency/providence). If he did subscribe to libertarian free-will, he wouldn't have bothered with middle knowledge. He did bother, however, with middle knowledge, because if man's will is not acted upon by god in ANY sense, then god's providential agency is hard to reconcile with such freedom. His solution? Middle knowledge. His position was a stepping stone in the direction of libertarian free-will, but it hadn't gotten there yet. God's agency still plays a part in determining the free agency of human beings according to Molina. Because that is the case, it can't be libertarian free will.
1) This is the basic position of anyone who holds a view of "will" in general (free or otherwise), not merely libertarian free will.
2) Yes, but since god's determination of a single actual reality is in some sense related to the determination of your will within that reality, it cannot be said to be libertarian. Classical libertarian freedom is incompatible with any sort of determinism that isn't human. Molina was trying to make them compatible, and so his understanding of freedom is different than classical libertarianism.
(December 19, 2016 at 4:50 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:(December 19, 2016 at 12:27 pm)Ignorant Wrote: I think the point of Jormungandr's objection lies in God's ultimate choice to actualize one, and just one of the possible worlds. No other possible world will take place, and in that sense, god has determined exactly one set of Judas's life choices in which he betrays Jesus exactly as he does in reality. Libertarian free will holds that the human will is the single formal cause of its own choice (i.e. nothing at all but the will itself determines the will's choice). If god determines which set of Judas's choices among an infinity of various circumstances, then god has, in some sense, determined which choices the will makes. This can't line up with libertarian free will. Molinist free will is not the same as libertarian free will, even if they are very similar. At least that is my understanding, and I've been wrong before.
Why must the nature of choice always be one to the utter exclusion of the other? Could it not also be that God makes some things inevitable and others elective?
Not if you're a Thomist! =) Seriously though, that may be the case. But it is certainly not the case if you're a Molinist. For the record, I hold to Thomism here.
