Alpha and Omega Ministries on Molinism

http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/?itemid=4456

"The reason for having "middle knowledge" in the Molinistic scheme of things is a view that what a creature would do in any given situation is neither a matter of God's choice nor a matter of absolute necessity. In other words, God cannot (according to the Molinist) decide what man would do in any given circumstance, he can simply decide whether or not to let the circumstance arise.”

No thats not what Molinism is. I have seen this mischaracterization time and time again, how many times do I have to say it? For one thing Molinism is not like scrabble, where there God is restricted to a single collection of letters where He logically could create other letters and use them but is cannot for the sake of our freedom. On Molinism, God could have decided and can decide what man will do in any circumstance. Molinism operates on the assumption that God has chosen to give human beings free will (in a libertarian sense). Furthermore, the counterfactuals of man’s free will that God knows about includes every possible free action done in any possible circumstance. God, as calvinists generally admit, cannot do the logically impossible, so He could not simply “create new tiles” according to Molinism.

"In Calvinism, God also decides what the tiles will be. So, one might reasonably conclude, in Calvinism God's omnipotence is more expansive than in Molinism, because it extends also to the free choices of free creatures. It seems as though the Molinist's only answer is to assert that if God determines what the creature's choices will be, then those choices aren't really free.”

Yet again, Molinism doesn’t require one to believe that God couldn’t have decided what we would do in a given situation, it only requires that one hold that God could not determine what we do and still give us freedom of the will as such a feat would be logically incoherent. Unless the author proposes that God can do the logically impossible, I fail to see how Calvinism presents God as “more omnipotent” than Molinism does. The only way I can think of is by denying libertarian free and soft-compatibilism and holding to hard compatibilism which would allow God to determine our every action and still give us freedom. If this is the case it is a minor point indeed, especially since, again, Calvinists assume that God in His sovereignty must have absolute control over every event, atom and agent in the universe.

“… ultimately it comes down to a question of whether a will - in order to be free - must have an ability that it never, ever uses - the ability to do the contrary. This rationale seems to be what drives the engine of Molinism, and while many people accept this rationale, you'll never find it in Scripture.”

This bit is confusing, the ability to commit or not commit an action can never be fully “used” in the sense of making the choice to do something and not do something at the same time, that would be incoherent. The whole point of having free will is to have the capacity to do one thing or another with the determining factor being the agents will, it is not, as Calvinists seem to presume to have a desire to do one thing or another, with the determining factor being whatever or whoever controls our desires.