(The following material is taken from Andreas J. Beck's monograph Gisbertus Voetius (1589-1676) on God, Freedom, and Contingency: An Early Modern Reformed Voice)
One of the most common arguments that Molinists make in favor of middle knowledge is concerning the passages in Scripture which speak of unactualized conditional future states of affairs (1 Samuel 23:11-12; Matthew 11:21-22; 26:53). God knows them, despite them never actually taking place. Molinists use this to prove that God has knowledge of counterfactuals logically precedes His decree and will. While it is true that God knows conditional future contingents, the Bible does not teach that this knowledge is antecedent to the decree. Even William Lane Craig (a well-known defender of middle knowledge) admits this when he says "At best, then, the biblical and philosophical arguments would succeed in showing that God possesses simple counterfactual knowledge, not middle knowledge. It is very difficult to see how one could prove biblically or philosophically that God has His knowledge of counterfactual conditionals prior to the divine decree." (Craig, Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom, pg. 243)
The usual response that the Reformed gave concerning passages like 1 Samuel 23 was that the Scripture is speaking of the intentions of the hearts of the men of Keilah, not about a conditional future state of affairs. However, this solution is more difficult when it comes to Christ's saying in Matt. 26:53 that if He were to pray to the Father, more than twelve legions of angels would be at His disposal. This is because the verse is about a conditional state of affairs that can't be traced back to any divine decree, such as is the case with 1 Sam. 23 (where the decree that David would escape included an implicit decree that if he did not escape, the men of Keilah would betray him and deliver him over to King Saul).
In responding to the argument from Matt. 26:53, Voetius starts by recognizing that entities have only two states; 1) the state of possibility, and 2) the state of futurition. There is no middle knowledge between God's knowledge of possibility and God's knowledge of actual future contingent events. However, Voetius posits three "structural moments" in the objects of divine knowledge:
1) God, through His potentia, knows what is logically possible.
2) God determines by His decree the modes and connections of all possibilities if He were to actualize them, even though they remain in a state of possibility. It is analogous to a person saying "If I go to Tokyo, I will do x," even though they never actually go to Tokyo. God's will does not remain undetermined when it comes to either actual entities or possible entities, regardless of whether these ever become actual or not (Gisbertus Voetius, Select Disputations, 1:292; Samuel Rutherford, Exercitationes apologeticae pro divina gratia, 16). Thus, there is in God an act of His will with respect conditional future contingents that are not actualized but remain in the state of possibility.
3) God determines which possibilities He will bring from a state of possibility into a state of futurition.
This "second structural moment" in God's knowledge accounts for conditional future contingents. God knows in detail all possible worlds, and this knowledge is based on act of His will whereby He links conditions and conditionals together with respect to possibilities that remain unactualized. Thus, the category of scientia media is rendered unnecessary.
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