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Molinism, named after 16th Century Jesuit theologian Luis de Molina, is a religious doctrine which attempts to reconcile the providence of God with human free will. William Lane Craig and Alvin Plantinga, despite not being Roman Catholic, are some of its best known advocates today, though other important Molinists include Alfred Freddoso and Thomas Flint. In basic terms, Molinists hold that in addition to knowing everything that does or will happen, God also knows what His creatures would freely choose if placed in any circumstance. == God's types of knowledge == Kenneth Keathley, author of "Salvation and Sovereignty: A Molinist Approach", states that Molinists argue that God perfectly accomplishes His will in the lives of genuinely free creatures through the use of His omniscience. After Luis de Molina, Molinists present God’s knowledge in a sequence of three logical moments. The first is God's knowledge of necessary truths or natural knowledge. These truths are independent of God's will and are non-contingent. This knowledge includes the full range of logical possibilities. Examples include statements like, "All bachelors are unmarried" or "X cannot be A and non-A at the same time, in the same way, at the same place" or "It is possible that X obtain". The second is called “middle knowledge” and it contains the range of possible things that would happen given certain circumstances (thus, it is limited and does not include all possibilities). The third kind of knowledge is God's free knowledge. This type of knowledge consists of contingent truths that are dependent upon God's will; or truths that God brings about, that He does not have to bring about. Examples might include statements like "God created the earth" or something particular about this world which God has actualized. This is called God’s “free knowledge” and it contains the future or what will happen. In between God’s natural and free knowledge is His middle knowledge (or ''scientia media'') by which God knows what His free creatures would do under any circumstance. These are truths that do not have to be true, but are true without God being the primary cause of them. "If you entered the ice cream shop, you would choose chocolate" is an example of a statement God knows via middle knowledge. This is very difficult for some to grasp. Molinists support their case with Christ's statement in : :And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. The Molinist claims that in this example, God knows what His free creatures would choose under hypothetical circumstances, namely that the Sodomites would have responded in such a way that Sodom would still have been in existence in Jesus' day. Matthew 11:23 contains what is commonly called a counterfactual of creaturely freedom. But counterfactuals are to be distinguished from foreknowledge. The Bible contains many examples of foreknowledge such as , where God tells Moses that the Israelites will forsake God after they are delivered from Egypt.〔The Bible also contains several examples of counterfactuals, such as and Wisdom of Solomon 4:11.〕 Some opponents of Molinism claim that God's foreknowledge and knowledge of counterfactuals are examples of what God is going to actively bring about. That is, when Christ describes the response of the Sodomites in the aforementioned example, God was going to actively bring it about that they would remain until today.〔This is the stance that Gregory Boyd takes, among other places, in his book ''God of the possible.''〕 Molinists have responded to this objection by noting that scripture contains examples of God's foreknowledge of evil acts. For example, the Israelites forsaking God, or Peter's denial of Christ, are both examples of what one would call overt acts of sin. Yet, according to opponents of Molinism, God is actively bringing about these overt acts of sin. This is obviously fallacious according to the Molinist. In order for this account of prophecy to be valid all prophecies must be wholly good, and never contain evil acts; but this is not what opponents believe to be the case. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Molinism」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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