Problems with Molina’s Account of the Scientia Media

Abstract

The Medieval problem of the compatibility of divine foreknowledge and contingent truths about the future can be expressed by posing two closely intertwined questions: (1) how can God infallibly know causally indeterminate future events? (2) how is divine foreknowledge, which is fixed and infallible, to be reconciled with the contingency of future events? Molina’s doctrine of scientia media (middle knowledge) is an attempt to provide a substantive and plausible answer to these questions. I briefly sketch Molina’s theory of the scientia media and then go on to assess the extent to which his approach satisfactorily answers the two questions about divine foreknowledge.