OPEN MOLINISM – “The future is open, but God knows what it will be anyway!”

I’ve ruminated on this concept before, trying to propose names for it like ‘Untethered‘.

But after a while, I’ve decided that Open Molinism actually works well as a description of a view of God’s attributes and how He interacts with creation that is somewhere in between Open Theism and Molinism.

OPEN – Like Open Theism, “The future is open” because God does not decide what events will unfold (for the most part, more on that later). God as sovereign creator could decide it all Himself, of course, but as is clear from the entire story of the Bible (e.g. giving dominion over the earth & animal naming rights to Adam), He wants His imagers to make those decisions ourselves! Therefore God allows, permits, delegates, sublets how future events will turn out (for the most part) to humans & supernatural beings such as angels.

MOLINISM – Like standard Molinism, God has Middle Knowledge and therefore knows what the outcome of every possible scenario would be – including what decisions His imagers will make to decide the future, despite those choices being fully & truly free! Punt to mystery for how, but that’s the way it is under this model. Using the ontological attribute of omniscience, God directly intervenes at certain points in history in ways that He perfectly & unfailingly knows will result in specific future outcomes (e.g. calling Abraham, appearing in a burning bush to Moses, taking on human flesh as Jesus Christ & challenging the Jewish leaders & speaking in parables which leads to the Crucifixion).

Open Molinism differs from standard Molinism where God sets up most of the future the way He wants it from the moment of creation, as in this proposed model it is necessary (rather than just preference) for God to directly intervene in Creation to achieve the specific outcomes necessary for His ultimate plan.
And clearly it differs from most Open Theism models which state that God doesn’t/can’t/chooses not to know the future, and knowing the future + truly free choices by agents is a contradiction according to logic & definition.

And yes, it does seem odd to still call it ‘Middle’ Knowledge if it isn’t being used in between God’s Natural and Free Knowledge to set up the actualized world the exact way He wants it. But I’m keeping the name of the concept for ease of understanding.

On the ‘apologetics’ aspect, Open Molinism avoids the common objections aimed at either end of the determinism spectrum – many Christians balk at either or both: the Open Theism view of God’s (non) knowledge of the future, and Calvinism’s view of God determining all outcomes including (non) ‘free’ human choices. With outliers and exceptions in both camps, of course.

And two last points…

First, I did consider whether this model actually falls under Mere Molinism (its two pillars being: God eternally possesses middle knowledge + humans possess libertarian free will), and I think it actually does! Despite leaning more into the ‘how’ of the future and especially God’s direct intervention being necessary.

And second, after going on a whole roundabout explanation, I realize that I might have just described what the common, layperson, no-philosophical-training churchgoer believes anyway! “God lets us choose the future, but somehow knows what we will freely choose without negating the freeness of it” – wouldn’t you agree that most non-theology-geeks would affirm this? Case in point, from 4:43 of this video, Dr Flowers says “The mystery I think we should adopt is, how does God know the future free choices of creatures? That’s a mystery beyond our comprehension.”

Perhaps like Provisionism, this proposal of Open Molinism just describes what has been plain & basic Christian belief all along before more philosophical delvings tried to parse things out in finer detail.
Anyway, that’s been a long rant. Thoughts and sharpening welcome!