Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of EvilLeibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von
Religion
Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von
Free will and determinism; Theism; Theodicy
40. As for himself, he thought to have found another way. He considers that
there are three objects of divine knowledge, the possibles, the actual
events and the conditional events that would happen in consequence of a
certain condition if it were translated into action. The knowledge of
possibilities is what is called the 'knowledge of mere intelligence'; that
of events occurring actually in the progress of the universe is called the
'knowledge of intuition'. And as there is a kind of mean between the merely
possible and the pure and absolute event, to wit, the conditional event, it
can be said also, according to Molina, that there is a mediate knowledge
between that of intuition and that of intelligence. Instance is given of
the famous example of David asking the divine oracle whether the
inhabitants of the town of Keilah, where he designed to shut himself in,
would deliver him to Saul, supposing that Saul should besiege the town. God
answered yes; whereupon David took a different course. Now some advocates
of this mediate knowledge are of opinion that God, foreseeing what men
would do of their own accord, supposing they were placed in such and such
circumstances, and knowing that they would make ill use of their free will,
decrees to refuse them grace and favourable circumstances. And he may
justly so decree, since in any case these circumstances and these aids
would not have served them aught. But Molina contents himself with finding
therein generally a reason for the decrees of God, founded on what the free
creature would do in such and such circumstances.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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