o blasphemy to assert that the perfect, holy and just God is the author of evil or sin. Evil is a deprivation or a lack of something that ought to have been otherwise. The lack of sight is, for a person, an evil whereas it isn't for a tree. When the Bible speaks of God creating disaster or clamity (evil in Hebrew, cf., Is. 45:7) it is in the context of divine judgment upon a nation who ought to have behaved otherwise. He is the efficient cause of judgment upon sin! One other aspect of God's omniscience must be broached as it relates to human freedom. This is probably one of the most controversial facets of divine omniscience. It has been called various things such as contingent knowledge or middle knowledge. Put simply, God knows not only what will occur at all times by all people, but he knows what might occur given other variables which may have been different. If God's knowledge of all things actual and possible is simultaneous, then middle knowledge is nothing more than a heuristic means for understanding the logical processes of God's thought. Whether or not Augustine held to any kind of middle (or contingent) knowledge of God is difficult to know. It is only mentioned to illustrate the scope of possible relationships between God's knowledge and human choices. Craig says: Since God knows what any free creature would do in any situation, he can, by creating the appropriate situations, bring it about that creatures will achieve his ends and purposes and that they will do so freely . . . Only an infinite Mind could calculate the unimaginably complex and numerous factors that would need to be combined in order to bring about through the free decisions of creatures a single human event.40 Middle knowledge could serve to bridge the gap between God knowing all things simultaneously and the order of events which occur in the world that God foreknows will happen. Moreover, there are other kinds of relationships...
