One of the most difficult areas of theology concerns the interplay between God’s knowledge (or foreknowledge) and what comes to pass in space and time. Every theological position comes at this issue in a different way, depending on their other theological commitments.
The specific issue is between the content of what is often termed "God’s Natural Knowledge" (also sometimes called "God's Necessary Knowledge") and everything that happens in reality from the first instant of creation through to the final consummation of all things in the new creation.
God’s natural knowledge could be defined as that part of God’s knowledge by which he perfectly knows himself, his very nature or essence. Since his essence is necessary, it follows that his natural knowledge includes all necessary truths. Since God's knowledge of himself must, by definition, include knowledge of everything God could do or permit in his creation, this knowledge includes knowledge of all possible creations, all possible creatures and all possible events that could happen to all those possible creatures. His natural knowledge contains every logically possible truth.
God's natural knowledge is often spoken of by Molinists, who distinguish between God's natural knowledge of possibilities and God's free knowledge of what will come to pass. Molinists also posit a third type of knowledge called "middle knowledge" which comes between the other other two and is God's knowledge of what free creatures would do in all feasible circumstances in which they could be placed.
Calvinists, by contrast only speak of God's natural (or necessary) knowledge and God's free knowledge of what will come to pass because God has decreed it.
Because Molinists often speak of natural knowledge, some of the best defintions of natural knowledge come from the Molinists. Here are some definitions:
“God knows all possibilities, including all necessary truths (e.g., the laws of logic), all the possible individuals and worlds he might create, as well as everything that every possible individual could freely do in any set of circumstances in which that individual found itself and everything that every possible stochastic [chance] process could randomly do in any set of circumstances where it existed…God knows his natural knowledge…as indispensable to his very nature, such that God could not lack this knowledge and still be God.” —Kirk R. MacGregor, Luis Molina: The Life and Theology of the Founder of Middle Knowledge (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI, Kindle Edition, p. 92)
“With natural knowledge God knows everything that could logically happen.”—Max Andrews, An Introduction to Molinism (Kindle Edition, pp. 38-39)
“God’s natural knowledge includes knowledge of all possibilities. He knows all the possible individuals he could create, all the possible circumstances he could place them in, all their possible actions and reactions, and all the possible worlds or orders which he could create. God could not lack this knowledge and still be God; the content of God’s natural knowledge is essential to him.” —William Lane Craig, The Only Wise God.
The following quote is from the Reformed theological perspective:
“Natural knowledge is God’s knowledge of all necessary truths. What this means is that God’s natural knowledge includes those things that are impossible not to be true, such as the law of non-contradiction (LNC) and God’s attributes. For example, there is no possibility that an object while being a rock is not a rock (LNC), or that God can be other than holy (divine attribute). We might observe up front that objects of natural knowledge are true without God willing them to be so. Rather, objects of natural knowledge are true because they are grounded in God’s unwilled nature. In addition to these sorts of necessary truths, God also knows all possibilities according to his natural knowledge. From a distinctly Reformed perspective, God’s natural knowledge of all possibilities correlates to God’s self-knowledge of what he can do. Which is to say, God can actualize all possibilities, which is not a tenet of Molinism.” —Ron DiaGiamo, “The Reformed Doctrine of Divine Foreknowledge – A Call for A Coherent and Unified Voice (https://philosophical-theology.com/2024/07/01/the-reformed-doctrine-of-divine-foreknowledge-a-call-for-a-coherent-and-unified-voice/)
This is an excellent point. Everything that God could have decreed (i.e. absolutely everything you could ever imagine having been decreed that is not illogical) and God’s natural knowledge of all possibilities are two ways of looking at the same body of possibilities. One limitation of Molinism is that there may be no feasible worlds in which person A would freely do act B at time C. But, provided A, B and C are not illogical nonsense, there is always a possible world in which God could decree that A would do B at time C in a Calvinist paradigm where free will means compatibilist freedom. There is less constraint on God—thanks to compatibilist free will—in Calvinism than there is in Molinism.
Also of interest are Paul Helm’s views found in his blog article “Shunning Middle Knowledge” (http://paulhelmsdeep.blogspot.com/2009/05/shunning-middle-knowledge.html)
Helm’s views have been influencing on me (as they have been on theologians like Terrance Tiessen I believe) that in Reformed theology with a determinative decree and compatibilist freedom, there is no need for the concept of middle knowledge at all. All we need is natural knowledge (the knowledge God has in himself by his own nature as God) and the free knowledge of everything that will be in line with what he himself has decreed.
I believe this is correct and I think some Calvinists muddy the waters by arguing that all counterfactual truths and possibilities are also part of the decree and are dependent for their existence on the decree. I can see no need why anything other than what comes to pass needs to be part of the decree.
Finally, look at Terrance Tiessen who seems to hold a view similar to what I am proposing: https://www.thoughtstheological.com/introducing-calvinism-and-middle-knowledge-a-conversation/
It is interesting that it seems to be always Molinists who talk about God’s natural knowledge. Why don’t Reformed theologians make greater use of this concept?
Linking God's natural knowledge of all possibilities by way of the eternal decree to God's exhaustive free knowledge of what will come to pass seems to me to be a very fruitful way of approaching subjects such as God's sovereignty over evil and his power to decree evil to occur without in any way being the author of sin.
If God has natural or necessary knowledge in himself of all possibilities, this means he has such knowledge of all possible evils, as well as all the matrices and nodes of secondary causation, free choices, and the circumstances that precede any evils as well as the impact or outcomes of any evils. If God has such knowledge, his ability to sovereignly decree evil to occur is entirely possible by a purely permissive decree.
In other words, by way of natural or necessary knowledge of all possibilities and by a permissive decree, God can allow evil to certainly occur without in any sense having to be the author of sin. He merely has to let creatures act in ways of their own choosing. This concept destroys criticism of Calvinism from Arminians and others who mistakenly think that if God decrees an evil to take place this means God somehow has to positively bring that evil about.
A "Calvinist" God who knows all possibilities and chooses to allow certain evils to take place is no more blameworthy than a "Molnist" or "Arminian" God who does the same thing.
I believe this approach is fully in line with the relevant teachings of the Westminster Confession of Faith as outlined in these excerpts:
WCF, II.2: “In His sight all things are open and manifest; His knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent upon the creature, so as nothing is to Him contingent, or uncertain.”
WCF, III.1: “God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.”
WCF, III.2: “Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions, yet hath He not decreed anything because He foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions.”
WCF, III.3: “By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death.”
WCF, V.1: “God the great Creator of all things doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by His most wise and holy providence, according to His infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of His own will, to the praise of the glory of His wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy.”
WCF, V.2: “Although, in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, the first Cause, all things come to pass immutably, and infallibly: yet, by the same providence, He ordereth them to fall out, according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently.”
WCF, V.4: “The almighty power, unsearchable wisdom, and infinite goodness of God so far manifest themselves in His providence, that it extendeth itself even to the first fall, and all other sins of angels and men; and that not by a bare permission, but such as hath joined with it a most wise and powerful bounding, and otherwise ordering and governing of them, in a manifold dispensation, to His own holy ends; yet so, as the sinfulness thereof proceedeth only from the creature, and not from God, who, being most holy and righteous, neither is, nor can be, the author or approver of sin.”
I don’t think Calvinists make enough use of God’s natural knowledge in our theology. I have heard Calvinists say that the reason God knows what will happen is because God decreed it to happen. That is true as far as it goes, but it is like looking at a cropped picture. This is where I think natural knowledge, which is prevolitional and logically before the decree comes in.
God’s decree does decide what will happen. As the Confession says: “God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass” (WCF, III.1). But God’s decree does not simply come out of nowhere. God has natural knowledge logically prior to the decree and the decree flows out of God’s natural knowledge. We might even say that God’s natural knowledge of all logical possibilities includes knowledge of all possible decrees God could have put into effect. From all these, he chose one to be the decree that ordains everything in this world.
I think the important point, in terms of God not being the author of sin, is that God does not have to actively decree anything evil to happen. He can decree is permissively, genuinely permissively, as long as he has natural knowledge that an actor will behave in a certain way in certain conditions. While this is similar in some respects to the Molinist explanation of foreordination via middle knowledge of libertarian choices, this Reformed providential mechanism is different because it is based only on natural knowledge of all possibilities along with a compatibilist view of freedom. Compatibilist freedom or free will is the view that free will and divine determinism are compatible. The explanation for this is because the view accepts a choice was made freely as long as (a) the actor did what he wanted to do, (b) he was neither forced nor coerced so to act.
If God has natural knowledge of all possibilities, this must include knowledge of what any creature would choose to do in any possible matrix of characteristics, desires, conditions and situations, and all causal linkages from the first nanosecond of creation. That knowledge, in combination with a compatibilist view of human free will, is enough to account for a providential model in which God can decree everything which comes to pass yet is in no sense the author of sin.
And this is the Reformed or Calvinist model of providence I believe best accounts for the entirety of scriptural teaching.
