Perhaps the most crucial divide for theories of providence is the presence or absence of
libertarian free will on the part of human beings. Theists who opt for compatibilism (i.e.,
for the view that free will and moral responsibility are compatible with causal
determinism) become theological determinists, a view associated historically with
Augustine, Calvin, Luther, and probably Thomas Aquinas (for a recent exposition, see
Helm 1994). On this view, God alone sovereignly determines each and every event that
occurs. In view of his infallible foreordination, God is able to know with certainty exactly
what will happen. This view, however, has extreme difficulty with the problem of evil; in
fact, it is likely that no rationally comprehensible explanation for evil, especially moral
evil, is possible. (Calvinists themselves often say that the relationship between God and
evil is an impenetrable mystery.) How is it intelligible that God has decreed the existence
of moral evil, and has then assumed toward what he has deliberately chosen to bring
about an attitude of utter, implacable hostility?
If libertarian free will is accepted, the question arises as to how, and whether,
end p.436
it is possible for God to know genuinely undetermined events before they take place (see
Hasker 1989; Fischer, 1989). Especially crucial is the doctrine of divine “middle
knowledge,” termed “Molinism,” for the sixteenth-century Jesuit theologian Luis de
Molina (1988). On this view, God knows, not only the actual free choices made by
creatures, but also the choices that would be made by actual and possible free creatures
under circumstances that never in fact arise. (These truths are commonly referred to as
“counterfactuals of freedom.”) Opponents of Molinism claim that there are no such truths
to be known. Truths about actual future decisions correspond to the actual making of the
decisions, but in the case of decisions that are never made, nothing exists in reality to
“ground” the truth of assertions about the free decisions that would be made. Discussions
of these matters have become both intense and extremely technical (see Flint 1998;
Hasker et al., 2000).
Divine middle knowledge, if its existence is granted, makes possible an extremely strong
doctrine of providence—probably the strongest doctrine available short of complete
theological determinism. God, by consulting his middle knowledge, knows precisely the
outcomes that would result from any decisions he might make concerning his own
creative actions. Thus, God is able to select the best among the available options and to
know with absolute certainty what the outcome will be; any need for divine risk-taking is
eliminated entirely. There may, however, be a price to pay for these advantages: it has
been argued that in such a scenario, God would be a manipulator of human beings rather
than engaging in a genuinely personal relationship with them. Furthermore, on this view,
it will arguably be the case that God specifically plans and intends each instance of evil
that occurs, resulting in a problem of evil second only to that which faces theological
determinism.
The remaining view of providence is variously entitled “free will theism,” “open theism,”
or the “openness of God” (see Sanders 1998). One significant, and quite controversial,
tenet of this view is that it is logically impossible for God to know with certainty the
future choices to be made by free persons. This should not be seen as a denial of
omniscience, any more than it is a denial of omnipotence to say that God cannot perform