If Aristotle Had Not Been a Student of Plato, He Would Have Founded the Lyceum: A Critical Evaluation of the Dilemma of Counterfactuals of Creaturely Freedom

Abstract

The problem of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom is a perennial one. Counterfactuals of freedom presuppose that what is now could have been different if a different state of affairs were to obtain. But there are some objections to the plausibility of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom. There is the Biblical, theological and philosophical objection. Further, there is the argument that counterfactual knowledge places God’s knowledge at the determination of the agent’s free action via His free knowledge. This again, poses a problem to philosophers. There is also the problem of determinism, which some have argued, is entailed by counterfactual knowledge. The idea here is that if God knows all the possible or metaphysical worlds that can be and creates or allows a set of circumstances in which the individual could act according to His purpose, then, to say that the individual is free to act otherwise, is to say the least, an illusion. These problems and many others form the fulcrum of this study. The study is anchored on the middle knowledge theory developed with great ingenuity by the Jesuit priest, Luis de Molina. The study upholds the view that God has exhaustive knowledge which encompasses those of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom and that He exercises providential control through His middle knowledge while not violating the freedom of the will.