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Jacob Brown's avatar

I had been meaning to read your paper on Molinist, Thomist, Calvinism for a while now. I had been reading your substack for a couple months and was independently reading papers on Molinism and middle knowledge on phil papers when I saw your paper pop up and was like "hey I know that guy". lol I enjoyed the paper and independently had come to a lot of the same positions that you affirm there like the grounding of the truths of ccf's in divine ideas (supercomprehension ftw), middle knowledge as a subset of natural knowledge, and how the contingency of ccf's are not in their content (which being grounded in God's necessary nature could not have been otherwise) but in whether or not God actualizes or does not actualize the particular creature and circumstances they are true of. I'm glad to see another reformed brother making use of middle knowledge and libertarian freedom (as opposed to compatibilist versions like Bruce Ware's or Tiessen's hypothetical knowledge Calvinism), I consider myself a middle-knowledge-affirming Calvinist but see the merit in showing the ways Thomism is involved in the synthesis as well.

That being said I really like the last paragraph of your paper where you point out that Plantinga's feasible world defence would not be open to a proponent of MTC and you go on to write

"According to MTC, there was no confrontation with possible creatures that rendered it infeasible for God to create a world in which creatures always chose rightly. Indeed, there was nothing in the creature that prevented God from being able to bring about free goodness and even save all people. This poses a significant demand for an adequate theodicy."

I have written an article on my substack that I think would actually reconcile the feasible world defense with MTC while affirming that there was nothing in the creature that prevented God from being able to bring about free goodness and even save all people, while arguing for the presence model of hell. I'd love your thoughts on it if you get a chance.

https://jacobbbrown0527.substack.com/p/middle-knowledge-gratuitous-evil

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