Appendix D

Middle Knowledge in Plain Terms

A Plain-Language Primer on God’s Knowledge of Every “What If”

Why This Matters for the Book

Suppose you are a parent with two children. You know one of them so well that you can say with confidence: “If I bring her to the bookshop on a rainy Saturday, she will choose the mystery novel.” You also know the other: “If I ask him to help in the kitchen before dinner, he will say yes.” You are not forcing either child. You are not pulling strings. You simply know them, and you use what you know to set up good outcomes without ever taking their choices away.

Now scale that up to God.

If God knows, for every person who could ever exist, what that person would freely choose in any set of circumstances, then God can arrange the world, and each person’s life, to give the best possible appeal to every heart. He never overrides anyone’s will. He never forces a “yes.” He simply knows what would work and places each person where it will. That idea is the engine behind much of this book’s argument. When Chapter 6 asks whether a sovereign God gets what He wills, when Chapter 14 explains the mechanism, when Chapter 15 builds the case that God saves without forcing, when Chapter 16 meets the toughest objection to the mechanism, and when Chapter 18 asks how a free “yes” can be assured, they all lean on this one concept. Theologians call it middle knowledge (Latin scientia media, “the knowledge in the middle”). The name comes from a sixteenth-century Spanish priest named Luis de Molina, which is why the view is also called Molinism.¹

This appendix is a plain-language primer. Its only job is to explain what middle knowledge is, what it does for the book’s argument, and what the strongest objection to it looks like. If you have read Chapter 14, you already know the core idea. Think of this appendix as a reference you can come back to whenever a chapter mentions middle knowledge and you want a refresher.

The Core Idea in Plain Words

We need to start with a simple question. What does God know?

The short answer is: everything. Christians have always said that God is all-knowing (the old word is omniscient). But “everything” is a big word, and it helps to break it into parts. Molina noticed that God’s knowledge falls into three logical layers. Theologians call them the three moments of God’s knowledge. They are not steps in time. God does not learn one thing and then figure out another. He has always known all of it. The “moments” are a way of sorting what He knows, the way you might sort books on a shelf: first by topic, then by author, then by the ones you actually own.²

The First Moment: What Could Happen

The first layer is God’s natural knowledge (Latin scientia naturalis). This is God’s knowledge of every possibility. He knows every world He could create, every person He could make, every situation that could arise. He knows the laws of logic and the truths of mathematics. He knows that a triangle must have three sides. He knows what would happen if He had never created anything at all. All of this is grounded in His own nature. He does not choose it; it simply is.³

Think of it as the full menu. Every dish that could possibly be cooked is on it. Most of them will never be ordered. But God knows them all.

The Second Moment: What Would Happen

Here is where Molina broke new ground. Inside that vast menu of possibilities, God also knows something more specific. He knows what every free person would freely choose in any situation He might place them in.⁴ Not just what they could do. What they would do.

This is middle knowledge, and it sits “in the middle” between the first and third moments. It is still before God’s decision to create anything. He has not yet chosen which world to make. But He already knows, for every possible person, in every possible setting, how that person would freely act.

Go back to the parent analogy. You know your daughter could choose the mystery novel or the comic book. That is natural knowledge: the range of possibilities. But you also know she would choose the mystery novel, because you know her. That is middle knowledge.⁵

The key word is freely. Molina insisted that the people in these scenarios are genuinely free. God is not causing their choices. He is reading them. He knows what each person would do because He knows that person perfectly. As Kenneth Keathley puts it, God does not perceive what free creatures would do by looking forward in time; He conceives their choices within Himself, by His own omniscience.⁶

The Third Moment: What Will Happen

Armed with His middle knowledge, God freely decides which world to bring into being. Once He does, the result is His free knowledge (Latin scientia libera). This is His complete knowledge of the actual world, past, present, and future. It is called “free” because it rests on His free choice to create this world rather than some other one.⁷

Keathley sums the three moments up in three short words: could, would, and will.⁸ God knows everything that could happen (natural knowledge), everything that would happen (middle knowledge), and everything that will happen (free knowledge). All three are part of His perfect omniscience.

Does the Bible Hint at This?

Molinism is a philosophical model, not a verse you can point to. But the Bible does contain striking examples of God knowing what free people would do in situations that never actually happened. In 1 Samuel 23:10–13, David asks God whether Saul will come to the city of Keilah, and whether the citizens there would hand him over if Saul came. God answers both questions: yes, Saul will come, and yes, they would hand you over. David leaves, and neither event takes place. God knew what would happen under conditions that never came about.¹⁰

In Matthew 11:21, Jesus says that if the miracles done in Chorazin and Bethsaida had been done in the pagan cities of Tyre and Sidon, those cities would have repented. He speaks of what people would have freely done in circumstances that never existed. That is the language of middle knowledge.¹¹

These examples do not prove Molinism on their own. But they show that the biblical writers were comfortable with the idea that God knows what free people would do, not only what they will do. As Timothy Stratton puts it, Molinism is not a grid laid on top of Scripture but a framework that arises from commitments the Bible itself teaches: that God is all-knowing, that humans have real freedom, and that God achieves His purposes through both.¹²

What This Gives Us

So why does this book lean on middle knowledge so heavily? Because it solves three problems at once.

1. Providence Without Puppetry

The oldest tension in Christian theology is this: if God is in charge of everything, how can we be free? If we are truly free, how can God be in charge? Calvinists have leaned hard toward sovereignty and struggled to explain genuine human choice. Arminians have leaned toward freedom and struggled to explain how God can guarantee any outcome. Middle knowledge dissolves the tension. God does not cause your choices. He places you where He knows you will freely choose well.¹³ He achieves His aims not by pulling strings but by setting the stage. As Keathley explains, God “meticulously ‘sets the table’ so that humans freely choose what He had predetermined.”¹⁴

That is sovereignty without puppetry. God is fully in control, and you are fully free. The mechanism that holds both truths together is His middle knowledge.

2. Optimal Grace

If God knows what each person would freely do in every possible setting, then He also knows, for each person, which appeal is most likely to win a free “yes.” The philosopher Jerry Walls calls this optimal grace: grace fitted to the individual, offered in the way most likely to draw a willing response. What wins one heart might harden another, so God does not offer a one-size-fits-all gospel. He offers the right word, at the right moment, in the right way, for each soul. (See Chapter 15 for the full argument.)¹⁵

For the universalist, this is powerful. A God who knows exactly how to reach each person, and who has all the time eternity allows to do it, is a God who can get everyone home without forcing anyone through the door. He does not break it down. He knows which knock will be answered.

3. The Infinite-Opportunity Argument

Combine middle knowledge with the claim, defended in Chapter 19, that death does not end God’s offer of grace. Now God has not just one lifetime but an unlimited span to compose the right appeal for each person. If even the most stubborn heart would freely say “yes” under some set of circumstances, and God knows which set that is, and God has all of eternity to bring it about, then the larger hope rests on firm ground. (See Chapter 17 for the full treatment of whether anyone could refuse forever.)

This is not a proof. The possibility remains that some person might have no feasible set of circumstances under which they would freely say “yes.” That is the “one open question” this book faces honestly in Chapter 17. But the combination of perfect knowledge, perfect love, and unlimited time makes the universalist conclusion overwhelmingly reasonable. That is the shape of the argument: not a logical guarantee, but a conviction grounded in the character of God.

The Main Objection in Plain Words

Middle knowledge is a powerful idea. It is also a contested one. I want to be honest about the strongest objection and about the wider question it raises.

The Grounding Objection

Critics ask a sharp question: What makes counterfactuals of freedom true?¹⁶

A counterfactual of freedom is a statement about what a free person would do in a situation that may never happen. For example: “If Sarah were offered the job in Denver, she would take it.” The Molinist says that statement is either true or false, and God knows which. But the critic asks: what grounds its truth? Sarah has not been offered the job. She has not made the choice. There is no event, no fact, no thing in the world that makes the statement true. So how can it be true? And if it is not true, God cannot know it, because even God cannot know a falsehood as a fact.¹⁷

This is called the grounding objection, and it is the most discussed challenge to Molinism in the philosophical literature.

Molinists have offered several replies. The simplest is to challenge the demand itself. Most philosophers today do not think every true statement needs a special “truth-maker” beyond the fact that it corresponds to reality. Consider the statement “unicorns do not exist.” That is true. But no thing in the world makes it true; its truth consists in the absence of unicorns, not in the presence of some entity. If everyday truths can be grounded this way, so can counterfactuals.¹⁸

A deeper Molinist reply appeals to God’s own nature. Kirk MacGregor, building on the work of earlier Molinists, has argued that God’s perfect understanding of every possible person’s essence is itself the ground of His counterfactual knowledge. God knows what Sarah would do because He knows Sarah perfectly, down to the core of who she is. That exhaustive knowledge of her nature gives Him direct access to what she would freely do in any circumstances. The knowledge is not caused by Sarah’s choice; it flows from God’s infinite comprehension of her.¹⁹

I find this reply strong but not beyond all dispute. The grounding objection is a genuine philosophical puzzle. Honest thinkers disagree about it. I do not pretend it has been settled once and for all.

Is Molinism Even True?

A reader might step back from the technical debate and ask a simpler question: does God actually have this kind of knowledge? Maybe He does not. Maybe the whole idea is wrong.

I take that question seriously. And I want to make an important point about this book’s argument: the larger hope does not stand or fall with Molinism.

Middle knowledge is the most powerful version of the mechanism I am proposing. It gives the clearest account of how God could save everyone freely. But the core of the book’s case rests on something broader and less controversial: that a God who knows each person fully, who loves each person without limit, and who has all of eternity to work, can be trusted to reach every heart. Even a reader who rejects Molinism entirely can hold that a God of infinite wisdom, patience, and love will find a way to win each soul. The divine-presence model of Chapter 12, the postmortem-opportunity case of Chapter 19, and the rationality-of-rejection argument of Chapter 17 all carry weight without a single mention of Molina.

Molinism gives the hope its sharpest philosophical edge. It is the best account I know of how sovereignty and freedom can work together. But the hope does not require it. If middle knowledge turns out to be wrong, the conviction that God will save all still stands on the wider ground of His character, His love, and His patient, unending pursuit of every person He has made.

A Glossary of Key Terms

The following table gathers the key terms used in the book’s discussion of middle knowledge. Each entry gives a plain-language definition. For the full argument, see Chapter 14.

For a broader glossary covering all the book’s key terms, see Appendix F. For the book’s treatment of libertarian freedom, compatibilism, and determinism, see Appendix C.

A Final Word

Middle knowledge is not easy. The first time you meet it, it can feel like staring at a puzzle with too many pieces. But the core idea is simple, and it is worth holding on to: God knows you perfectly, and He knows what would reach you.

That is all middle knowledge really says. And if it is true, it changes everything about how we think about God’s sovereignty, about the freedom of the will, and about the hope that God will one day bring every person home. God is not a puppet master pulling strings. He is a Father who knows His children and who never stops reaching for them.

The formal argument, the philosophical machinery, and the technical debates all matter, and Chapter 14 gives them their full hearing. But beneath it all is something simple and personal. A God who knows every “what if” is a God who has never run out of ways to reach you. That is the hope this book defends. And middle knowledge is one of the strongest reasons to trust it.