This sounds similar to Molinism (Catholic) and 'middle knowledge'.
Molinism, besides the two distinctions of the divine knowledge
scientia simplicis intelligentiae (God's knowledge of possible things) and
scientia visionis (God's knowledge of actual things), introduces a third distinction,
scientia media (God's knowledge of things that are more than merely possible but less than actual). What I said in my previous post is not exclusive to Molinism nor is it
scientia media, as it does not really touches on it.
While both Molinism and Thomism are legitimate within Catholicism, I personally hold to the Thomistic position and am not convinced about the third distinction. The Molinists idea of
scientia media seems to introduce a certain passivity within God's knowledge that is inconsistent with his pure actuality, it makes God's knowledge dependent upon something other than himself (creation) and it also seems to weaken God's independence and sovereignty.
One problem is that inanimate creation is under a law of cause and effect. Drop a rock and predict it will fall, unless supernaturally intervened upon. Turn a light switch on, and the room gets brighter (unless there is a problem).
Moral creation involves free moral agency and contingent choices that have an equal possibility of being actualized or not (may or may not happen vs will/will not). There is an element of uncertainty until the choice is made.
First, while there is indeed a distinction between free moral agency and the manner on which inanimate matter acts, free moral agency is not absolutely independent of the influence of anything external, such as inanimate things that operate under the law of cause and effect, nor is it independent of our own internal dispositions. All our choices are responses to external and internal stimuli. They do not occur in a vacuum. So, from this it follows that it is not true that all possible choices have an equal possibility of being actualized or not. Some choices have a higher degree of being actualized than others, all depending on the situation we find ourselves in and our own internal disposition, which wether we realize it or not, is inclined to a given choice more than to another.
Second, the element of uncertainty when it comes to free moral agency rests on a lack of knowledge on the part of the person that is making the choice or the person observing someone else making it. This uncertainty we also see when we study inanimate things in science, things that appear random but that really are not (since they are subject to the law of cause and effect), appear to us as random simply because we lack a complete knowledge of all the factors involved.
This lack of knowledge when it comes to humans or inanimate things is not in God, for as I said in my previous post, he knows fully all causes and their respective effects, and that includes human beings as well. Humans being the cause of their choices, having in them all the elements that dispose them towards this or that choice, are known by God exhaustively and infallibly. God knows all our thoughts, feelings, desires, etc in such a complete and certain manner that it is safe to say that God knows us better than we know ourselves. So, no knowledge lacking in God of both ourselves and the inanimate things that surround us, it follows that God knows with absolute certainty any choice we will make in any given situation.
The outcome is not known as a certainty from eternity past or the act is not truly free/contingent.
This is a separate issue. One thing is wether or not God knows all things, including the conditioned free choices of creatures in himself from eternity, and another is wether or not the fact that God does knows them, invalidates the free agency of creatures.
"The distinction between what is possible and what is actual is valid for God as well as us. The past is actual, the present is becoming, and the future is possible."
This is what the unsettled theist assert, but such a god can in no way be the first mover and creator of the universe, for if he is as subject to time as the creation, and experiences things by succession, then he also has discursive knowledge (knowing things one at a time, one after the other, like we do). That being the case, he falls victim to the same dilemma of infinite regress that an eternal universe falls into. Such a notion also entails that instead of being absolutely simple, such a god is a composite, and that instead of being perfect, he is subject to improvement by learning things over time. This idea of god effectively invalidates virtually all proofs for the existence of God. Not to mention, that is is alien to the Scriptures.
"If an act be free, it must be contingent. If contingent, it may or may not happen, or it may be one of many possibles. And if one of many possibles, it must be uncertain; and if uncertain, it must be unknowable."
Not necessarily, in fact, Lord Jesus gives an example of his infallible knowledge of the conditioned future free actions of creatures in Scripture:
"Woe to thee, Corozain, woe to thee, Bethsaida: for if in Tyre and Sidon had been wrought the miracles that have been wrought in you, they had long ago done penance in sackcloth and ashes." (Matthew 11:21)
So, just because an event is one of many possibilities, it does not follows that it is uncertain or unknowable. It may be to us, as I said above, due to our lack of knowledge about all the factors involved, but the same does not holds true to God.
Either free will is not genuine or exhaustive foreknowedge is not possible. God's desire for reciprocal love relationships necessitates self-evident free will (in His image), but at the expense of EDF (exhaustive definite foreknowledge).
This involves a false dichotomy. Both free will and God's exhaustive foreknowledge are truths affirmed by Scripture, so the issue should not be that we pick one or the other, but rather, that we seek to understand how both work together.
As I said, this is a separate issue from God's knowledge, we could get into it if you want, but the focus of this post, and my previous post, is God's knowledge.
This is a voluntary self-limitation of knowledge that could only be changed by creating a deterministic universe (omnicausal control vs omnicompetent control).
So, are you saying here that God decided to create a world that he didn't know how it would turn out? Or are you saying that God simply chooses to not know the future (in this world), but that if he so wished, he could know the future (in this world)?
The nature of creation, not a deficiency in omniscience, is the issue. God knows all that is knowable: He knows the past and present exhaustively, and knows the future correctly as possible or probable until it is actualized by the contingent choice.
You are contradicting what you said above. You said that free will comes
"at the expense of EDF" otherwise it is not genuine, so the issue for you is or at least entails a deficiency in God's omniscience. You are also placing human limitations on God, ignoring that between creator and creature there is a infinite difference in every conceivable sense.
Now, if as you say, God knows the past and present exhaustively, since there is no limitation in his knowledge of all the causes involved in everything at present and the respective effects they produce, then it follows that he knows exhaustively which of those effects will obtain given the present condition of the causes from which they emerge. There is no such thing as something taking God by surprise for that would entail that he does not knows the present nor the past exhaustively.
We, in our limited knowledge of the causes involved can know with a good degree of certainty what will happen in the future. How much more God, who knows all things exhaustively by knowing himself perfectly?
Evo
