De auxiliis divinae gratiae et humani arbitrii viribus et libertate

Whether the knowledge of God is adequately divided into merely natural knowledge and merely free knowledge, or whether, besides both, middle knowledge must be posited in God with respect to conditionals about future things dependent on the human will.

I. Since the chief foundation of those who do not admit the efficacy of the predetermining help of grace consists in a certain middle knowledge that they posit in God, from which they derive the infallibility of the future consent of free choice and the certainty of predestination as regards the attainment of its effects, it is necessary, for a full understanding of what must be said about the efficacy of the helps of divine grace, to examine more closely whether such knowledge is possible and, consequently, whether it exists in God.

To make the title of the question clear, we must note that the issue here is not the name “middle knowledge,” but the reality signified by that name.¹ This must be observed on account of those who call this knowledge now knowledge of vision, now knowledge of simple understanding, now middle knowledge, now conditional knowledge, and now knowledge of conditionals about contingent future things dependent on the created will—things that in fact are not future absolutely, but would nevertheless be future if this or that condition were posited—confusing all these terms, although in reality they are not the same. For it is most certain that God knows certainly and infallibly not only what is future absolutely, but also what truly would be future by a decree of the divine will if this or that condition were posited. The controversy, then, is whether, before every decree of his will predetermining Peter’s consent as future absolutely, or on the hypothesis that he were placed in such and such circumstances, God knows with certainty in the particular case whether Peter will consent once that condition is posited or will instead dissent. The same difficulty applies to all other similar conditionals. For if it were the case that, before every free decree of the divine will, the propositions just mentioned had a determinate truth or a determinate falsity, it could not be denied that God foreknows this certainly and infallibly, since his knowledge is infinite and extends to every knowable object. But if it is said that it is not certain toward which side Peter’s will would incline in a determinate way once that condition were posited, but only that it could incline either way if it wished, then it must consequently be said that, before the aforesaid decree of his will, God does not know with certainty and infallibly whether Peter, once that condition had been fulfilled, would in the particular case consent or dissent; rather, he knows only what Peter could do.

Accordingly, some theologians teach that the aforesaid middle knowledge must be posited in God before the decree of the divine will, as was seen in Disputation 4, nos. 1 and 2. Others regard this opinion as so certain that they assert it was handed down in the sacred writings, recognized by the holy Fathers and the ancient Scholastic doctors, and hence must be taught by all who think rightly about divine things. They add that now scarcely anyone dares deny that this knowledge exists in God. But this disputation’s course of argument will demonstrate how groundlessly these claims are made. They prove their opinion by the following arguments.

First, they argue from many testimonies of Sacred Scripture, from which they think it can be inferred that the aforesaid middle knowledge, or knowledge of conditionals about future things, exists in God before the decree of the divine will. The first testimony is found at 1 Reg. 23, where David consulted the Lord whether Saul would come if he remained in the city of Keilah, and whether, if he himself remained and Saul came and besieged the city, the people of Keilah would hand him over. God answered both questions: “Saul will come, and these men will hand you over.” On hearing this, David fled; neither did Saul come nor did the people of Keilah hand David over. The whole truth of that revelation, therefore, lay in those conditionals: “If you wait, Saul will come”; “if Saul comes, they will hand you over.” Therefore God infallibly knows conditionals about future things. But he does not know them through natural knowledge, since this concerns only necessary and possible things; nor through free knowledge, since this concerns only things existing at some division of time or at some higher measure. Therefore they are known through middle, or conditional, knowledge.²

The second testimony is Matthew 11: Woe to you, Chorazin; woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works that were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes,³ where the Lord Christ revealed this conditional future: “If the miracles done in Chorazin and Bethsaida had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have converted.” Therefore the Lord Christ knew these conditional future things with certain knowledge, although in reality they were not future. Therefore conditional, or middle, knowledge must necessarily be posited in God.

The third testimony is found at Matthew 24: Unless those days had been shortened, no flesh would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect they will be shortened.⁴ Therefore Christ knew with certainty this conditional future: if the persecution of Antichrist lasted for a notably longer time, the elect who would then exist would fall away and be damned. Therefore the conclusion follows.

The fourth testimony is Wisdom 4: He was taken away lest wickedness should alter his understanding, and lest deceit should beguile his soul.⁵ These words include a certain conditional future known by God, namely: if this elect person is not now taken from life, he will later fall into sin and be damned. Yet that future is conditional. Therefore the conclusion follows.

A fifth testimony is found in Isa. 1: Unless the Lord of hosts had left us a seed, we would have been like Sodom, and would have resembled Gomorrah.⁶ In these words is included this conditional future known to God: if a remnant, that is, some just people in Israel, did not remain, they would be utterly destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah.

A sixth testimony is read in Luke 16: If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they believe if someone should rise from the dead.⁷ Behold, it is shown that this conditional future is certainly known to God: if someone should rise from the dead and preach to them, they will not believe. Similarly, in Ezekiel 3 the Lord said to the Prophet: You are not sent to a people of profound speech and an unknown tongue; and if you were sent to them, they would hear you.⁸ There it was revealed as certain that, if Ezekiel were sent to a people of an unknown tongue, they would hear him.

A seventh testimony is drawn from 4 Kings 13,⁹ where Elisha said to Joash, king of Israel: If you had struck five times, or six times, or even seven times—that is, had struck the ground—you would have struck Syria to utter destruction. Here a conditional future is manifestly revealed as certain on the hypothesis that the king would have struck the ground with his staff five, six, or seven times. But all these conditional futures are known by God through middle knowledge, since they cannot pertain to the knowledge of simple understanding, which is only of possibles, nor to the knowledge of vision, whose objects are only things actually existing. Therefore middle knowledge must necessarily be posited in God.

II. Second, they prove this by the authority of the holy Fathers, who seem to attribute this middle knowledge of conditional futures to God, especially St. John Chrysostom, Homily 31 on Matthew, where he says: Just as he then approached and called others when he knew they would obey, so too he called Matthew at the time when, subdued by the report of the miracles, he saw that he would not resist. For this reason he also caught Paul after the resurrection: for he who searches hearts and sees the secrets of minds did not fail to know when each person was ready to obey. Therefore he did not call Paul immediately at the beginning, when he was more obdurate, but after a thousand miracles and a remarkable and widely spread reputation had already made him more disposed to obey.¹⁰ And in Homily 65 he asks why Christ the Lord did not call Paul earlier, and answers: because he foresaw that Paul would resist the call; and he says the same about the thief. Chrysostom’s words are these: But why, he says, did he not bring them all in at once? He would indeed have wished to bring them all in from the beginning; but if they did not all obey at the same time, this difference arose from the will of those called. Therefore some are called in the morning, others at the third hour, others at the sixth, others at the ninth, others at the eleventh, because they would then obey, as Paul also plainly indicated when he said: “When, however, it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb.” When, then, did God will it? Certainly when he was going to obey. For God had wished it from his earliest infancy as well; but because he knew that Paul would resist, he willed it then, when he knew the call would penetrate his mind. So too, when he later called the thief, he could have called him earlier, but the man, had he been called, would not have obeyed.¹¹¹²

They say that St. Augustine likewise establishes this same middle knowledge in God, in his book On Six Questions of the Pagans, q. 2, where he says: Christ then willed to appear to human beings and preach his teaching among them, when and where he knew there would be people who would believe in him; for he foresaw that at those times and in those places there would be such people at his preaching as there were—not all, indeed, but many—during his bodily presence, who nevertheless did not wish to believe in him, even when he raised the dead.¹³ And in q. 2 To Simplicianus he says: He whom he has mercy on, he calls in the way he knows will be fitting for that person, so that he will not reject the one calling.¹⁴ In these words he teaches clearly enough that God has certain knowledge of this conditional future: if I call this person at such a time with such a call, he will consent; but if I call him at another time with the same call, he will not consent. Again, in bk. On Correction and Grace, ch. 12, speaking of the foreknowledge by which God foresaw that the first parent, placed in paradise, would sin, he says: God foresaw what that man would do unjustly, yet he foresaw it without then compelling him, while at the same time knowing what he himself would do justly with respect to him. And in On Nature and Grace, ch. 26, discussing how God permits the fall of a predestined person because he knows that the person will become more cautious, he says: This the proud mind does not understand, but the Lord is great, and persuades as he knows how.¹⁵

The same is proved from St. Ambrose, commenting on Rom. 9, who says: Those are called according to the purpose whom God foresaw would, as believers, become fit for him, so that they were known before they believed.¹⁶ They draw the same conclusion from St. Gregory, Moralia, bk. 23, ch. 23, where he speaks thus: God sometimes presses his own with scourges and burdens, because by his pure power he foresees that, if they remained in tranquility, unable to bear the enemy’s temptations, they would lie prostrate, wounded in mind.¹⁷ He therefore holds that God has foreknowledge of this conditional future: if the just remained in tranquility, they would succumb to the enemy’s temptations.

Finally, they think this same middle foreknowledge was handed down by St. Thomas, 3 p., q. 1, art. 5, ad 2, and q. 24, On Truth, art. 14, in the body of the article, when he says: All external motions, however, are governed by divine providence, insofar as he judges that someone is to be roused to good by these or those actions.¹⁸ And in Against the Gentiles I, chs. 66, 67, and 68, he says that God knows future things in their causes. From these words of the holy Fathers they wish to infer that middle knowledge, explained above, must altogether be posited in God before the free decree of his will.

In confirmation of this same teaching, they adduce almost innumerable other testimonies of the ancient Fathers and Scholastics, who unanimously teach that God foresaw that our first parents would consent to sin if they were tempted by the serpent, and also knew the way in which he was to bring them a remedy; and that, knowing this beforehand, he created them. They say the same about other contingent conditional futures of this kind. Therefore.

III. Third, they prove the same opinion and the necessity of this conditional knowledge from the perfection of divine providence and its effects. For this kind of knowledge is most useful for prudently applying means proportionate to the intended end. This can be conjectured from human affairs: if I wish to persuade another of something, then, in order to do so prudently, it greatly helps to know at what time and under what circumstances that person is usually better disposed, what things usually affect him more, and the other circumstances of this sort. And if one could foresee exactly what he would do when entreated in this or that way, such knowledge would be most useful for determining what one ought to do and for applying suitable means. But one must posit in God whatever can contribute to the most perfect prudence and providence. Therefore this knowledge is most necessary to God, and therefore it must be posited in him before every decree of his will.

First, this is confirmed because God does not have an efficacious decree to do something unless he foreknows the way in which he can carry it out, and unless he first knows the means by which he will attain what he intends. But God knows these means through middle, or conditional, knowledge, by which he knew that the Tyrians and Sidonians would have done penance if the miracles that were done among the Jews had been done among them. Therefore such knowledge must be posited in God.

Second, the same antecedent is confirmed and explained. No one prudently makes a decision about an end unless he first knows suitable and proportionate means by which he will attain that end; otherwise his providence would be ridiculous, like that of the man of whom it is said in Luke 14: Which of you, wishing to build a tower, does not first sit down and consider whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise they will say, “This man began to build and was not able to finish.”¹⁹ Therefore, before God perfectly decrees to bring the elect to eternal life, he foreknows the means by which, if they are bestowed on them, they will effectively attain it. Therefore God certainly knows this conditional future: if I give Paul such help of grace, he will be justified and saved. But God has not only those means which he bestows on the predestined so that they may be saved; he also has almost infinitely many others which, if he bestowed them on those same people or on others, they too would be saved. Therefore, before the decree of his will, he certainly knows the conditional futures that would obtain if such means were applied.

IIII. Fourth, an argument is made. Through theological knowledge we know many conditional futures that would in fact obtain if this or that condition were applied. Such is the example given by St. Thomas, 3 p., q. 1, art. 2: if Adam had not sinned, the Son of God would not have become incarnate; and 1 p., q. 97: if man had persevered in the state of innocence, he would have been immortal. Therefore an infallible knowledge of every conditional future must also be posited in God. But this is middle knowledge. Therefore.

Fifth, after God has decreed to create Peter and to permit him, placed in this order of things, to sin, he foreknows absolutely that Peter will sin. Therefore, before he decides to create him and place him in that order of things, he foreknows that if Peter were created and placed in it, he would sin; and the same applies to other cases. Therefore in God there is knowledge of all conditional futures, which is also called by another name “middle knowledge.”

Sixth, there is a middle between what is absolutely future and what is possibly future, namely, what would be future if this or that condition were posited. Therefore, between purely natural knowledge, by which God knows all possibles, and purely free knowledge, by which he knows all things existing in some division of time, there is middle knowledge, by which he knows all conditional futures.

Seventh, every conditional future is knowable in itself; therefore it is the object of some knowledge. For knowledge and the knowable, being correlatives, are said of one another convertibly. Therefore such knowledge will be in God, since the knowledge of God, being infinite, in fact extends to every knowable thing and to every kind of being, whether it is being in act or in potency, as St. Thomas expressly teaches, 1 p., q. 14, arts. 5 and 9. But that knowledge is middle, or conditional, knowledge. Therefore.²⁰

This is confirmed. Before every decree of the divine will, these two propositions are contradictories: “If Peter is created and placed in this order of things, he will sin”; “If Peter is created and placed in this order of things, he will not sin.” Therefore one of them is true. The inference is evident, since, as Aristotle teaches in the book On Interpretation, of two contradictories one must be true and the other false. Therefore a true conditional about the future is certainly known by God. For God certainly knows every truth, as was said above. Therefore, before every decree of his will, God knows conditional futures of this kind.

V. Eighth, with this middle knowledge posited, the freedom of our free choice is easily and clearly reconciled with divine foreknowledge, providence, and predestination, and a way is opened by which Pelagians and Lutherans may return to the unity of the Catholic Church. Without it, however, it is scarcely intelligible how the freedom of our free choice coheres with those three. Therefore middle knowledge must necessarily be posited in God.

Ninth. For, as the authors of the contrary opinion admit, the motion of prevenient grace that is efficacious is efficacious of itself, as it comes from God antecedently to the free consent of our free choice. Therefore, before decreeing to give such a motion, God knows with certainty that, if he grants it to some person, it will infallibly obtain its effect. But the knowledge by which God knows this is middle, or conditional, knowledge, since it concerns a conditional future. Therefore middle knowledge is truly given in God, between knowledge that is merely natural and knowledge that is merely free.

VI. Tenth, there is an argument that some magnify and consider probative: knowledge of conditional future things that will never occur, but would nevertheless be future if this or that condition were posited, presupposes no actual decree of the divine will, but rather wholly precedes it. For in God there can be no actual free decree without some real effect produced at some division of time by that same decree. But no effect was, is, or will be produced in the conditional future contingents that would be future if the condition were fulfilled; for in fact they are not future. For example, no real change has occurred in the Tyrians and Sidonians because they would have done penance if the signs performed in Chorazin and Bethsaida had been performed among them. Therefore the truth of that conditional proposition and of others like it does not depend on any actual decree existing in God; consequently, such things are infallibly known by God before the aforementioned decree. The major premise is proved: between two absolute extremes, there cannot be a different relative comparison without some real change in one extreme that provides the foundation for the different relative comparison. For two quantities cannot be compared differently with one another unless one of them changes. But, by willing something freely through an actual decree, God is related to it differently than if he had not had such a decree. Therefore this different relation must be founded on a real change in the other extreme. But it cannot be founded on a real change belonging to God, since God is wholly immutable. Therefore it must necessarily be founded on a real change in the creature; consequently, every free decree of God posits some real change in things.

First, they confirm the same major premise. Every actual free decree existing in God connotes something that could have failed to exist; otherwise God’s decree would not have been free but necessary. But what it connotes cannot be something intrinsic to God himself, for all things that exist formally and intrinsically in him are uncreated and consequently absolutely necessary. Therefore it connotes something existing in a creature that could have failed to exist. Therefore it always entails a real change in a creature.

Second, they confirm this same point by the authority of St. Augustine, On Grace and Free Choice, chapter 8, near the end, where he says: Why did God not snatch them away before they sinned? Was it because he²¹ could not, or because he did not know that their evils were future? To say either of these is most perverse or insane. There he clearly teaches that God knows conditional future things. Likewise, in On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 8, he says: If he had wished to teach the word of the Cross to those for whom it is foolishness, without doubt they too would come. There Augustine treats of a conditional contingent that is certainly future, as those words indicate: Without doubt they would come. He also treats of a contingent having this truth as a conditional future before the decree of the divine will, as these words indicate: If he had wished to teach. For the truth of any conditional proposition obtains before the positing of its condition, since a conditional proposition posits nothing as actual. Finally, St. Augustine is cited to establish the same middle knowledge in On the Gift of Perseverance, chapter 14, where he says: From this it is evident that some have, in their very natural disposition, a divine gift of understanding, by which they are moved to faith if they hear words suited to their minds or see signs.

Third, they confirm the same point as follows. The truth of a conditional proposition does not require that the inference be valid; therefore, even if no divine decree precedes it, by reason of which the consequence is infallible, an intelligible truth in conditional future things will still be preserved. The antecedent is proved from 3 Kings, chapter 12: If today you will obey this people, yield to their request, and speak gentle words, they will be your servants all their days.²² For those who gave this counsel thought that they were speaking truth and giving good counsel; yet there was no necessity of the consequence between the king’s gentleness and the people’s obedience. Therefore the conclusion follows.

On the contrary, as will be clear below, neither St. Augustine nor St. Thomas nor any of the other ancient Doctors ever mentions this middle knowledge, between knowledge that is merely natural and knowledge that is merely free—not only as to the name “middle knowledge,” but even as to the very thing signified by this name. Nor is there any necessity or compelling reason for positing such knowledge in God. Therefore the conclusion follows.

VII. To understand this difficulty, we must assume that a conditional proposition can be taken in two ways. First, in the sense of an inference, so that the particle “if” is taken inferentially. In that case, for the truth of a conditional proposition it is sufficient and necessary that the inference be valid, even if both the consequent and the antecedent are impossible. Thus, in the proposition “If a stone were a human being, a stone would be a rational animal,” the proposition is true because the inference is valid, although both consequent and antecedent are impossible, since a conditional proposition posits nothing as actual. St. Thomas expressly teaches this, 1. p. q. 25. ar. 3. ad 2, q. 44. art. 1. ad 2, and q. 1. de potentia. art. 6. ad 3. In a second way, the conjunction “if” can be taken to signify a concomitance of the antecedent with the consequent of the conditional proposition, founded not on the validity of the inference in itself, but on some promise or intention of a person, or another cause, by which, if the antecedent were posited as actual, the consequent would also be posited. Such are these conditional propositions: “If you had come to your friend’s house yesterday, you would have dined with him”; “If you intercede for me with the king, I will give you a horse.” Some invent a third interpretation of the conditional future, in which the particle “if” is taken according to a certain unrelated denomination or concomitance, as in this proposition: “If there is rain in Rome tomorrow, Peter will dispute in Spain.”

Second, we must assume from the principles of dialectic that every inferential conditional proposition, if true, is necessary, and, if false, is impossible. The reason is that the truth of an inferential conditional consists in the validity of the inference; but an inference that is once valid and formal is always valid, and one that is invalid is always invalid. Therefore a true conditional is necessary, and a false one is impossible. Hence no conditional is contingent.²³ Alphonsus Mendoza holds the contrary of this principle in his Quodlibets, q. 7. ad 4. But our opinion is expressly that of St. Thomas, Opusculum 48, Treatise on Propositions, chapter 14, where he says that it is certain that this conditional—“If a human being is white, a human being is musical”—is false, because “musical” does not necessarily follow from “white.” From this the holy Doctor concludes that every true conditional is necessary and every false one is impossible, because, as was said, the term of the consequent necessarily follows from the term of the antecedent.²⁴

But if the particle “if” is not taken in the strict sense of a formal inference, but in the second way, insofar as it signifies the concomitance of the consequent with the antecedent, then for a conditional to be true it is sufficient and necessary that the foundation of that concomitance exist in reality and that, if the antecedent were posited as actual, the consequent would be posited as well—even if it were posited freely or contingently, such that it could fail to be posited, namely, because, even if the condition were posited, it could still be impeded by other secondary causes. For example, the promiser must have an intention to give what he promised on condition that the condition be fulfilled, as in the example given: “If you intercede for me with the king, I will give you a horse.”

Third, we must assume that conditional future things (so far as concerns the present point) are of two kinds. Some have a consequent that in fact will be posited as actual by a decree of the divine will, though dependently on the antecedent. Such was the case before Adam’s sin; indeed, from eternity God knew this conditional future: “If Adam sins, the Son of God will assume human flesh.” For by the divine decree that consequent had a concomitance with the antecedent and depended on it: God had decreed to send his Son as a remedy for sin, and not otherwise, as St. Thomas proves, 3. p. q. 1. art. 3. Hence, if sin had not existed, the Incarnation would not have occurred. But just as the Incarnation itself, and foreknowledge of the future Incarnation, presupposes God’s decree willing the Incarnation, so proportionally Adam’s future sin, and foreknowledge of it antecedent in the order of reason to the decree of the Incarnation, presupposes in God another decree, by which he determined to permit the first parent’s sin and to concur as the first and universal cause in its positive act, with respect to all its being, because, as Augustine says: Nothing happens unless the Almighty wills it to happen, either by permitting it to happen or by doing it himself.²⁵ Other conditional propositions, however, are those whose conditions will in fact never be fulfilled, and thus they will never be posited as actual; they would nevertheless be posited if the condition had been fulfilled, as is clear in the examples given above concerning the Tyrians and Sidonians and the men of Keilah.

Fourth, note that a decree to do something is twofold. One is absolute, as when someone determines without any condition firmly to fast on the following day. The other is a conditional decree, which can occur in two ways. First, on the part of the object willed, as when someone says, “Therefore, I wish to give alms to a poor person if he asks.” Second, a decree can be conditional on the part of the act of the will itself: as when the will truly has no determinate act concerning some object, but would have had one if this or that occasion had presented itself.²⁶

VIII. Finally, we must note that a decree to do something is twofold: one is formal and explicit, such as the decree by which God decreed from eternity to create the world at the beginning of time, and the decree by which he determined to bring his elect to glory; the other is a virtual, or implicit, decree, namely one included by virtue of another decree. Thus a sinner who, despite the commandment, wills to eat meat on Friday virtually wills to commit an offense against God. As to the absolute reality they imply, these decrees in God are identified with the divine Essence itself; but in reason they are distinguished by different relations, or relations of reason, to various objects. With respect to conditional future things that will at some time be actualized, a decree preceded them in God by which he determined that the condition be fulfilled if it is good, or decreed to permit it if it is evil, and by which he predetermined that, once the condition was fulfilled, the consequent of the same conditional would be actualized if it is good. Thus both antecedent and consequent, as well as the actual connection between them, are referred back to the divine will as their first cause, according to all the entity and goodness they possess. With respect also to conditional future things that will never be actualized, though they would be if the condition were fulfilled, a conditional decree is presupposed in God on the side of the object willed: by it he determined that the consequent would occur if the condition expressed in the antecedent of the future conditional were fulfilled. But because by an absolute and efficacious will he decreed that the consequent would not be future, by that same efficacious will he also determined that the condition of that same conditional not be actualized.²⁷ A clear example is the people of Tyre and Sidon, who, according to the Lord’s word, would have repented if the signs and mighty works done in Chorazin and Bethsaida had been done among them. But because God, by his hidden yet just judgment, decreed by an absolute will not to convert the people of Tyre and Sidon, but to leave them in the mass of perdition, he also determined that those signs and mighty works not be done among them, although, if they had been done, they would without doubt have believed. Hence St. Augustine, explaining this same passage, says: ²⁸ Therefore the eyes of the Tyrians and Sidonians were not so blinded, nor their heart so hardened, for they would have believed if they had seen signs such as these people saw. But it did not benefit them that they could believe, because they were not predestined by him whose judgments are inscrutable and whose ways are unsearchable; nor would it have harmed these people that they could not believe, if they had been predestined, so that God might illumine them while blind and might will to take away their heart of stone from them when hardened. And a little later: For they hear these things and do them to whom it has been given; but those to whom it has not been given do not do them, whether they hear them or not. Behold how Saint Augustine refers the determinate truth of that future to God’s free decree to give faith itself or a pious action. From this it is manifestly inferred that the truth of that conditional future—if signs such as those the Lord Christ worked among the Jews had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have converted—does not precede the decree of the divine will, but rather follows it and presupposes it. The same must be said of other similar conditional future things that are revealed in the sacred Scriptures or asserted by the holy Doctors to be future if this or that condition were actualized. This point must be observed above all, since some seek to enlist the passages of Scripture cited above and the testimonies of the holy Fathers to prove that middle knowledge, or knowledge of contingent conditional future things, must be posited in God as preceding every decree of the divine will, as is clear from the arguments made above. These foundations having been laid, the following conclusions settle the present controversy.

IX. First conclusion. All contingent conditional future things in which the particle “if” is taken inferentially, in the strict sense of consequence, are known by God through merely natural knowledge, which is knowledge of simple understanding, provided that the inference is valid and formal. Examples are these conditional future statements: “If God had wished to create another world, he would have created it”; “if Peter is predestined, he will be saved.” This conclusion must be conceded by all theologians, and its reason is evident. For God knows by his merely natural knowledge every truth or necessary inference; but every conditional proposition that is a valid and formal inference contains a necessary inference, however free and contingent its consequent may be. Therefore it is known by God through merely natural knowledge. The major premise is clear, because every necessary proposition is of eternal truth; therefore its truth does not presuppose a free act of the divine will, but precedes it; therefore it is known through merely natural knowledge, which precedes such a decree. The minor is proved as follows: as was shown in the third foundation, every true conditional is a necessary consequence; and for the truth of a conditional it is sufficient, and required, that it be a valid inference.

From this it follows that if an inferential conditional is an invalid inference, it will be false and hence will not be knowable, even by God himself. For what does not exist and has no foundation of truth is not knowable, much less can it be an object of knowledge.

X. Second conclusion. Conditional futures in which the word “if” is not taken inferentially, in the strict sense of a formal consequence, but concomitantly, in the second meaning explained in the first foundation—if they are taken as prior to every decree of the divine will predetermining that something of this kind be future once the condition is fulfilled—do not fall under knowledge as futures in any way, nor, as such, are they infallibly knowable even by God; rather, they are known only as things that can happen. ²⁹ For example, God certainly and infallibly knows that if he were now to create other angels in habitual grace and decree by an absolute and efficacious will that they persevere in grace, so it would happen, and in fact they would persevere; for he knows the power and omnipotence of his divine will, by which he does whatever he wills. Nevertheless, if such a decree is excluded, it is not knowable what those angels, if they were created in grace, would determinately do by their innate freedom; nor is it knowable by infallible knowledge, even to God, whether, in the particular case, those angels would persevere or consent to sin. Rather, only what they could do in such a case is knowable. The same must be said proportionately of other similar conditional futures that depend on a created will. This conclusion is directly opposed to the advocates of middle knowledge.

It is proved as follows: this is the express teaching of St. Augustine. For in Epistle 105 to Sixtus, explaining the words of John 6, For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who would believe, and who would betray him, he says: Lest anyone suppose that believers pertain to his foreknowledge in the same way as unbelievers—that is, that faith itself was not given to them from above, but only their will was foreknown—he immediately added and said: “And he said: Therefore I told you that no one can come to me unless it has been given to him by my Father.” By these words he teaches clearly enough that, before the decree of his will by which he decides to give faith to believers, God does not foreknow who will believe in him. He confirms the same point in On the Predestination of the Saints, ch. 17: This, he says, is the unchangeable truth of predestination and grace. For what does the Apostle say: “As he chose us in him before the foundation of the world”? ³⁰ If this was certainly said because God foreknew that they would believe, and not because he himself was going to make them believers, the Son speaks against this foreknowledge when he says: “You did not choose me, but I chose you”; whereas God rather foreknew that they would choose him, so that they might merit being chosen by him. They were therefore chosen before the foundation of the world by that predestination in which God foreknew his own future works; but they were chosen out of the world by that calling through which God fulfilled what he predestined. And a little later: He foreknew, then, says the Pelagian, who would be holy and immaculate through the choice of free will, and therefore he chose them before the foundation of the world in that very foreknowledge by which he foresaw that they would be such. He chose them, then, he says, before they existed, predestining as sons those whom he foresaw would be holy and immaculate; certainly, he himself did not make them; nor did he foreknow that he would make them, but that they would become so. And when explaining the words of Wisdom 4, He was taken away, lest wickedness should change his understanding, he says that this was said with regard to the dangers of this life, not with regard to the foreknowledge of God; for God foresaw, he says, what was going to happen, not what was not going to happen. ³¹ And in another place, arguing against those who said that God permitted many infants to die in original sin because he foresaw that they would be wicked if they lived, he says: Foreknowledge itself is altogether emptied of meaning if what is foreknown will not happen. For how can something that will not happen be said to be foreknown as future? ³² By these words he teaches plainly that it is not knowable, before the decree of the divine will, what those infants would have done if they had lived longer. Therefore, according to Augustine, before the decree of the divine will it is not knowable, even to God, what a person would do if placed amid these or those circumstances, with sufficient helps that do not predetermine his will to one side.

They reply that in the cited places St. Augustine is arguing against the error of those who said that God punishes or confers grace on account of the works a person would do if this or that happened, even if in fact he would never do them; and they say Augustine never denied that this kind of knowledge is in God. Had he held that view, they say, he ought to have stated it there, since no easier way could refute such an error. But this solution is insufficient. For in the words quoted St. Augustine clearly enough denies that God knows those conditional futures, because in reality, before the decree of the divine will, they were not future, even if that condition were fulfilled.

Moreover, an argument is made against the same solution. Although St. Augustine principally intends in those passages to argue against the error of the Semipelagians, who said that infants dying in this life without baptism are condemned on account of an actual sin they would have committed had they lived, nevertheless he attacks this view because in reality, before every decree of the divine will, it is not knowable to God as future that, if that infant had lived, he would have sinned mortally. He gives as the reason that God does not know as future what in reality was not going to happen, even if that condition were posited. For from the fact that the infant had lived, it does not follow that he would have sinned: by divine grace he could have been preserved from every mortal sin.

Moreover, the same second solution can be challenged, because the Massilians established this foreknowledge of the future cooperation of free choice, prior to the free decree of God who predestines, as a foundation for proving that there is a cause of predestination on the part of the good use of free choice foreknown by God, as is clear from Saint Prosper’s letter to Augustine, where he says: ³³ But they subject God’s election to all manner of fabricated merits to such an extent that, because past deeds are absent, they invent future deeds that will not occur; and thus, by a new kind of absurdity among them, both things not to be done are foreknown, and things foreknown are not done. Saint Hilary also mentions this very point, saying: ³⁴ But when they are asked why the Gospel is or is not preached to some people or in some place, or is preached now though at some time it was not preached to nearly everyone, as it is now to certain nations, they say that this is by divine foreknowledge: the truth was or is announced at that time, in that place, and to those people when and where it was known that it would be believed. And they claim to prove this not only by the testimonies of other Catholics, but also by an earlier discussion of Your Holiness. For in favor of their teaching the Massilians cited the passage from Augustine’s book On Six Questions of the Pagans introduced above, claiming that they proved such foreknowledge from it. The Arians likewise made use of the same foreknowledge to substantiate their error, as is clear from the letter of Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, to Alexander, bishop of Constantinople, which is found in the Nicene Council. ³⁵ In contending against the Catholic Church that the Lord Christ was not the Son of God by nature but had been chosen by grace alone for that dignity and excellence, when they were asked why Saint Peter, or Paul, or others had not been made sons of God in the way they contended the Lord Christ had been, they assigned the reason for the difference to foreknowledge of the future good use of free choice. Alexander’s words are: And when the following statement is brought up against them, “But they themselves rejected me,” which plainly conflicts with the nature of the Savior, who is immutable by nature, then, having cast off all piety and reverence toward God, they say: “Because God, by his foreknowledge and foresight, had known beforehand that he would in no way reject him, he therefore chose him from among all.” For they say that he had no prerogative by nature or anything beyond the other sons—for they affirm that no one is a son of God by nature, nor that anyone is joined to him by any peculiar relation—but that, since he was mutable by nature and did not turn aside to vice because of³⁶ his singular diligence and zeal in properly ordering his life and conduct, God chose him. Thus, if Paul or Peter had applied themselves with the same earnestness, they too would have been sons of God in the same way as he was. And to confirm their mad and pestilential teaching, they also do violence to Scripture itself, twisting to their own purpose the statement about Christ handed down in the Psalms, which runs thus: “You have loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions.” ³⁷ Thus far Alexander. Since, then, these fictions of heretics are refuted most effectively if we assert that foreknowledge of the future cooperation and good use of free choice—even future on the hypothesis that a person were placed in such circumstances—does not precede but necessarily presupposes God’s free decree, it follows that such foreknowledge must not be posited in God prior to this decree.

Some respond that just as heretics abuse Sacred Scripture to establish their errors, yet Scripture must not on that account be denied, so too they abuse middle foreknowledge to confirm their errors, yet such foreknowledge must not on that account be rejected, although those who have used it wrongly rightly deserve censure.

This response, however, has no small difficulty, which consists in the following. For once it is admitted that such foreknowledge precedes, in the order of reason, the free decree of the divine will, it seems to follow that there is a cause of predestination on the part of the good use of free choice foreknown by God as future on the hypothesis that a person were placed in such circumstances. This appears to be implied by those words of Prosper, who says of the Massilians: ³⁸ For this is their definition and profession: that indeed every human being sinned when Adam sinned, and that no one is saved by his own works but by the grace of God through regeneration; yet the propitiation that is in the sacrament of the Blood of Christ is offered without exception to all human beings, so that whoever wishes to approach faith and baptism may be saved.

Those who are going to believe, and who are going to remain in that faith which thereafter is to be assisted by God’s grace, God foreknew before the foundation of the world; and he predestined to his kingdom those whom, called gratuitously, he foresaw would become worthy of election and would depart this life with a good end. And therefore every person is admonished to believe and to act according to the divine teachings, so that no one may despair of attaining eternal life, since a reward is prepared for willing devotion. St. Augustine, in his replies to Prosper and Hilary, teaches very often that the foreknowledge by which God foreknew the future good use of free choice does not precede the decree of God predestining in the order of reason, but follows upon it, as is clear from the passages of his cited above, nos. 10 and 11. Therefore this is a sign that Saints Prosper, Hilary, and Augustine held that foreknowledge itself of the good use, or cooperation, of free choice, even future on the supposition that it were placed in such circumstances, does not precede in the order of reason, but follows upon the decree of God predestining; so as to avoid assigning a cause of predestination³⁹ on the part of that same good use foreknown by God. Otherwise, if the aforementioned supposition were posited as actual, the good use of free choice would only be foreknown, and not predestined, by God; consequently, as St. Prosper argues against Collator, God would have to be called not our savior but a witness and observer of that same good use of free choice. Maxentius also uses this argument against Faustus when he says:⁴⁰ But if, as this man wishes, only the preaching that took place through Jesus Christ is to be believed to be God’s grace, then the same God and our Lord Jesus Christ (which God forbid) must be believed to be not a savior but merely a preacher.

Moreover, the same conclusion is proved by the authority of St. Thomas, who sufficiently divided God’s knowledge into natural knowledge, which he calls knowledge of simple understanding, and free knowledge, which is knowledge of vision, as is clear in 1. p. q. 14. art. 9; 3. p. q. 10. art. 2. ad 2 and art. 3. at the end of the body; q. 13. art. 1. ad 2; 1. con. Gen., and many other places cited in the preceding disputation, no. 5, when we treated of knowledge of simple understanding and of vision. Therefore he acknowledged no middle knowledge between the two.

XII. Second, this is proved by reason. Before every decree of his will, God does not know how many human beings or angels he would produce if he created another world. Therefore, likewise, before that same decree he does not know how many acts, or what kind of acts, each human being would produce if he were created and placed in such an order of things. Some proponents of middle knowledge grant the antecedent. The consequence is proved because just as everything God operates immediately through himself outside himself depends intrinsically on the decree of his will, so too whatever God operates through a secondary cause, and whatever the secondary cause itself does, depends intrinsically on the decree of the divine will, since his causality and providence extend to every particular being.⁴¹

Some reply by denying the consequence, and assign a reason for the difference: although God comprehends his own free choice, he does not comprehend it with a certain most eminent and highest comprehension, since his comprehension does not exceed his free choice but is equal to it, because each has infinite being. But God comprehends created free choice with a most eminent comprehension, because he infinitely exceeds it. To see into which direction a free thing will incline, however, its being comprehended is not enough, nor is any comprehension greater than the thing comprehended; rather, a highest and most eminent comprehension is necessary. For the same reason, they say, a human being and an angel do not know, before the free determination of their wills, in which direction they ought to incline, because the intellect in them does not infinitely surpass their essence and will in that manner.

But this solution does not seem satisfactory, because God comprehends his own free will no less perfectly than he comprehends ours. For the distinction they assign between an eminent and a less eminent comprehension pertains to the knower, not to the object known. For by either comprehension, if it is comprehensive, the object is known insofar as it is knowable, so that nothing in it, actually or potentially, escapes the knower’s awareness. Therefore, just as before the free determination of the divine will it is not knowable, even to God, how many angels or human beings he himself would produce if he created another world, so also before the determination of that same will it will not be knowable how many acts, or what kind of acts, a created will would produce on the supposition that it were created or placed in such an order of things. A human being or an angel does not know with infallible knowledge, before the free determination of their wills, in which direction they will incline, because, apart from divine revelation, they are ignorant of the counsel of God’s absolute will and of what in particular he has preordained and decreed concerning the future acts of those same wills. Hence, if God revealed this to someone, that person would without doubt know certainly and infallibly, before the determination of his will, in which direction he would incline. For example, if God had revealed to Paul that from eternity he had decreed efficaciously to convert him on the following day, then before the determination of his will Paul would know with certainty that on the following day he would consent to God calling him, because he knows with certainty that no one can resist God’s will, as it is said in Esther 13 and Romans 9.

Some, recognizing the force of this argument, try to satisfy it in another way. They say that the explanation of the difference must be given not on the side of the cognitive power, but on the side of the knowable object. According to them, the point is this: a proposition in which some free decree is attributed to God, such as his willing to create the world, does not have a determinate truth prior in the order of reason to the point at which God is understood actually to have that decree in his eternity. Therefore it is not presented to the divine knowledge as something to be presented, but as something already presented. The case is different with created wills, and therefore in them there is room for knowing futures, whether absolute or conditional, before they actually exist in themselves, though not in the free decree of God’s will.

XIII. This solution seems less than sufficient, because our argument does not concern a decree that actually is, or will be, in God, but a decree to create so many angels or human beings, which would be in God on the hypothesis that he wished to produce another world. For although this decree cannot be presented to the divine knowledge as something to be presented at some future time, it can nevertheless be presented to it as possible, with respect to its determination to create these or those creatures. For if God had wished to create another world, he would without doubt have decreed from eternity to produce these or those creatures in a determinate number. Our argument concerns this decree, which would be in God from eternity given that hypothesis. On that supposition, the argument proceeds as follows. The proposition “God would create so many angels if he were to produce another world” does not have a determinate truth before every decree of the divine will determining the future angels on the hypothesis that he wished to create another world. Therefore, in the same way, this proposition—“If Peter is placed in such circumstances, he will consent”—does not have a determinate truth before a decree of the divine will decreeing that this consent will be future on the hypothesis that Peter were created or placed in those circumstances. Therefore, in this respect the same reasoning applies in both cases.

This is confirmed, since, as Aristotle teaches in bk. 1 of On Interpretation, ch. 8, and as will be shown in disputation 13, propositions about a future contingent do not in themselves have a determinate truth, nor are they determinately false; otherwise contingency would be removed, since a contingent thing, precisely as contingent, is altogether indifferent to either alternative. Therefore, before a decree of the divine will predetermining the will to one side of the contradiction, it is not knowable what, in the particular case, a person will do, or what he would do if placed in such circumstances, but only what he could do. The inference is evident, since nothing is knowable unless it is determinately true. Therefore, if before a decree of the divine will it is not determinately true that Peter will consent if he is placed in such circumstances, this will not be knowable even to God. ⁴²

They reply that Aristotle’s statement is false, and give this reason: a cause is not said to act or to be going to act contingently because it is not going to act determinately, but because it is going to act in such a way that it could fail to act. And when it is objected that if the same proposition is determinately true, then it is necessarily true, and therefore what it states as future is necessarily future, so that the contingency of things would be removed, they reply that it follows only that, if propositions about a future contingent are once supposed true, what they signify must at some time be future by the necessity of the consequence and on a supposition, not absolutely; for it was not absolutely necessary that those propositions be true. Nevertheless, given that they are true, they cannot fail to be verified at the time for which they are supposed to be true. Thus contingency is not removed, since a necessity on a supposition consequent upon the cause of a thing is no obstacle either to freedom or to contingency.

This solution seems to beg the question. For we contend that before a decree of the divine will predetermining contingent causes to act contingently in their particular actions, there is no greater reason why a will placed in such circumstances will perform this particular act rather than its opposite, since, even when placed in those circumstances, it remains altogether indifferent to either alternative. This will be treated expressly in disputation 13; there we will show that propositions about the future do not have a determinate truth or falsity before the free decree of the divine will. Nor is it enough to reply that before a decree of the divine will the proposition “Peter, if placed in such circumstances, will consent” is determinately true, because a created will has this proper feature: by its innate freedom it can determine itself, when placed in those circumstances, to either side, and it does so because that is what it pleases. Yet, if it wished, it could fail to determine itself to that side of the contradiction and determine itself to the opposite. This reply, I say, is invalid. For although the will is a proximate cause that moves itself and determines itself to a particular operation, it cannot nevertheless be the first root simply, or the first cause, of its own determination. For a determinate act does not proceed from a contingent cause, insofar as it is contingent, unless it is determined to that act by something else, as St. Thomas proves from the Commentator, Physics 2, text 48. ⁴³ The reason is that a contingent thing, precisely as contingent, is altogether indifferent to either alternative. Therefore another prior cause must necessarily be assigned, on account of which a created will, if placed in these or those circumstances, will determinately will this object proportionate to it rather than the opposite. But no other prior cause can be assigned except the divine will. Therefore, before a decree of that will, it is not knowable what a contingent and free secondary cause will do in particular on the hypothesis that it is placed in these or those circumstances. ⁴⁴

XIV. The advocates of middle knowledge try to dissolve this argument. For they say that it comes from the object being suitably presented to the will and accommodated to the constitution and inclination of this individual that the will will consent to an object presented in this way rather than dissent from it. For example, someone may be inclined to eat food prepared in a certain way. If another person offers him food suited to his appetite while he is hungry, it is certain that he will eat it in order to preserve his life; yet he would not eat it if it were prepared differently and offered at a time when he had no inclination to eat, especially no inclination for that food, but would instead be provoked to nausea by any food offered to him.

XV. This solution can nevertheless easily be challenged. Although a suitable object, proposed to the will as fitting, determines it as to specification—that is, if the will proceeds to act through that presentation of a fitting object, such an act will be the pursuit of that same object, since the will rejects nothing presented to it as good and fitting—it is nevertheless impossible for any particular good, however fittingly presented and in due circumstances, to determine the will as to the exercise of its act. The reason is the one St. Thomas gives, 1. p. q. 105. art. 4. in corp.: For something cannot sufficiently move a mobile thing unless the active power of the mover exceeds, or at least equals, the passive power of the mobile thing. But the passive power of the will extends to the good in general, for its object is the universal good, just as the intellect’s object is universal being; whereas every created good is a particular good. God alone, however, is the universal good. Hence he alone fulfills the will and sufficiently moves it as its object.⁴⁵ From this principle, in the same work, 1. p. q. 106. art. 2, he concludes: An angel does not sufficiently move another’s will, either as an object or by showing an object; rather, he inclines it as something lovable and as one who manifests certain created goods ordered to God’s goodness. In this way he can incline it to the love of a creature or of God, by way of one who persuades. He teaches the same in q. 111. art. 2. Indeed, even the universal good, which is God, however fittingly it is presented to a human will while the person is on the way, cannot, as an object, move it efficaciously as to the exercise of its act; it can do so only in the homeland. First, because only in the homeland, where the blessed gaze clearly upon God’s essence, is God himself presented to the will as universally good under every consideration; nor can he be represented to those who see him under any aspect of evil. Hence the will cannot fail to love him. But while on the way, God can be represented to the will as bringing the evil of punishment or as prohibiting some pleasurable good toward which the will is inclined; likewise, ceasing from actually loving him can be represented to it as a good, and therefore the will can fail to love him. St. Thomas touches on this reason, 1. 2. q. 10. art. 2. in corp. and 1. p. q. 106. art. 2. in corp. Second, as long as a human being is on the way, he can refrain from thinking about any object, whether it is a particular or a universal good, and consequently can refrain from willing it. This too is St. Thomas’s reason, in the cited 1. 2. Therefore it follows that the first root and cause determining the will to the exercise of an act and to the pursuit of any good presented to it is God alone, and his efficacious decree; he alone can change the will he created, according to Proverbs 21: The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord; like streams of water, he will turn it wherever he wishes. Therefore, before God’s decree it is not knowable what, in particular, a created will would do if it were created or placed in these or those circumstances, but only what it could do.⁴⁶

XVI. Third, our conclusion is proved principally as follows: there appears to be no necessity or utility in positing in God, before the decree of his will, foreknowledge of the cooperation and good use of free choice that would occur on a hypothesis; therefore it must not be posited before that decree, but after it. The antecedent is proved thus. If there were such a necessity or utility, it would be chiefly for reconciling freedom of choice with the infallibility of divine providence and predestination, and with the efficacy of the helps of grace. But it is not necessary for this, since these things cohere very well with one another without it, as will be clear in Disputation 121; nor is it useful or apt for achieving this reconciliation. For it does not resolve the difficulties they seek to avoid in that reconciliation; rather, it runs into them all the more. For if such foreknowledge is posited antecedently to God’s decree predestining the good use of free choice as future absolutely or on a hypothesis, it seems to follow that this good use of choice must ultimately be reduced to something natural—namely, a celestial constellation, an individual temperament, or some property of this free choice—which is not in a person’s power. On account of this natural feature, the call in the same circumstances is asserted to be so congruous and suited to this will that, if it is moved beforehand by that call, it will infallibly give its consent.⁴⁷ I prove this as follows. That Peter, for example, will consent rather than dissent when an object is proposed to him, if he is placed in such and such circumstances, cannot be referred to any decree of the divine will predetermining that a person consent if placed in those same circumstances, because the object of middle knowledge and middle knowledge itself precede every divine decree. Nor can it be reduced to the help of grace itself: for, as is presupposed, that help does not move the will efficaciously toward either side, but leaves it altogether indifferent to opposites. Yet in a cause altogether indifferent, insofar as it is indifferent—that is, not efficaciously inclined toward either side—a determinate effect cannot be known certainly and infallibly, as was said above. Nor can it be reduced to the free will itself, placed under that help and in those circumstances, for the same reason: for the will, placed under the same help and in the same circumstances, still remains undetermined and altogether indifferent to opposites. Nor can it be reduced to the object proposed to the will, because, as is clear from the premises, no object moves the will of a wayfarer efficaciously with respect to the exercise of an act. Nor can it be reduced to some prior free act of the will, for let us suppose that this is the first free act. Nothing, then, remains to which the aforesaid consent of free choice in such circumstances can ultimately be reduced except the natural temperament or property of this individual, or some other natural cause. Yet this must in no way be conceded, for it would follow that the will of this person, placed in such circumstances, is determined by nature, or naturally, to one thing; and that is a grave difficulty.

If it is said that the will itself has this power of itself, namely, that it can determine itself and does determine itself toward whichever side it pleases, the same difficulty arises against this. For although the nature of the will consists in a faculty for either alternative, it does not have, nor can it have by its nature, the ability to determine itself to consent to this particular object proposed to it rather than to dissent from it; otherwise it would be determined by nature to one thing, at least when placed in such circumstances. Since all these difficulties are easily avoided if we say that foreknowledge of the good use of free choice, even on the hypothesis that a person were placed in such circumstances, does not precede the free decree of the divine will in the order of reason but follows it—and that the creature derives all its freedom from that decree—it follows that such foreknowledge of the future good use of free choice must not be posited in God before that decree, even on a hypothesis.

This is confirmed: for, as some advocates of middle knowledge admit, if God knew before the determination of his will how many angels he would produce on the hypothesis that he wished to create another world, he would not be free in producing them, because their production would then be determined by nature and in itself. Therefore it seems that, by the same reasoning, Peter’s future consent would not be free but necessary if, before every decree of the divine and human will, God knew certainly and infallibly that Peter would consent on the hypothesis that he were placed in such circumstances—especially since it is not within Peter’s power to remove or posit that condition and supposition, once that supposition is posited, they say it is infallible that he will consent. For they very often presuppose as certain this foundation—which we do not admit—namely, that an act which follows necessarily from some supposition antecedent to the consent of a created will is simply necessary and not free whenever it is not within the power of that same will to remove or posit the supposition. Therefore they do not escape by means of middle knowledge the difficulty of reconciling free choice with divine grace and predestination, which they intend to resolve; rather, they seem to entangle it further and make it more difficult. The force of this argument will become clearer from what will be said in Disputation 13.

Fourth, our conclusion is proved by deriving another inadmissible consequence. For, if this middle foreknowledge is posited, the efficacy of grace seems to be weakened, and a ground or at least a necessary condition of predestination is assigned on our part. Therefore it must not be admitted. As to its first part, the antecedent will be clear in disputations 73, 90, and 91. The second part is proved as follows. Conditional, or middle, foreknowledge does not pertain intrinsically to predestination, but is presupposed to it, as the authors of the contrary opinion admit. Therefore the object of that same knowledge does not pertain intrinsically to predestination itself, nor is it a part or effect of it. Therefore, before the decree to predestine Peter to grace and glory, it is necessarily presupposed, on Peter’s part, that by his innate freedom he will consent to God calling him, on the supposition that he is placed in such circumstances and given such helps that do not efficaciously apply his will to consent. For this is the object of middle knowledge. Therefore it is prior in the order of reason that Peter, placed in those same circumstances and given those same helps, will consent by his innate freedom than that he be understood to be predestined. Consequently, Peter’s predestination would depend on his future cooperation, foreknown by God through middle knowledge, as a necessary condition for God’s predestination of Peter, or for the efficacious decree to predestine Peter. Therefore a ground or condition can be assigned on our part, necessarily presupposed, by which the order of means to a supernatural end—through which God determines to help this or that person—would have the character of predestination, or retain only the character of common supernatural providence. For if Peter in fact will consent by his innate freedom, with such helps of grace reaching him, and persevere to the end, he will remain predestined; but if he will not consent with those same helps, he will not remain predestined, but will be reprobate.

This is confirmed. Precisely because, before every decree of the divine will, it is supposed that Peter will consent by his innate freedom to God calling him, on the supposition that he is placed in such an order of things, given that supposition and with everything else excluded, Peter’s cooperation would in fact occur. Consequently, such cooperation would be exempted from predestination and divine causality; and thus something that contributes greatly to attaining eternal life—such as the aforesaid cooperation of free choice—would be attributed to nature, by reason of its innate freedom, and would not be an effect of predestination but rather a necessary condition for it.

The authors of the contrary opinion try to overcome the force of this argument with two replies. The first is an argument from an inadmissible consequence: they say that the same argument could be made against us, who admit this foreknowledge of a conditional future in the predetermining help. For before God predestines a person through such helps, he foreknows that the same person will merit glory if such predetermining helps are given to him; nevertheless, it does not follow that God predestines the person because of such merits, but rather predestines him through such merits. Therefore neither does that follow on the contrary opinion, since for the force of the inference it makes little difference whether that foreknowledge is in the cause or in the very truth of the future event. But this reply first presupposes something we do not admit: namely, that the aforesaid middle knowledge exists in God in the predetermining help. For the foreknowledge of this conditional future—“If God were to move Peter to conversion by a predetermining help, he would be converted”—which we assert to be in God, is purely natural and is founded on the omnipotence of the divine will, which, as Scripture teaches, no one can resist.⁴⁸ But the middle foreknowledge we oppose is not purely natural; it is partly natural and partly free, and rests on the free cooperation of the human being, which is said to be future before every decree of the divine will, on the supposition that the person is placed in such circumstances. Hence, in our opinion, the cooperation of free choice that God foreknows as future on the supposition that he himself wills efficaciously to convert Peter, or to premove him by a predetermining help, once that supposition is posited as actual, is ultimately reduced to divine predestination as its per se efficient cause. Hence it cannot be a cause or ground of predestination, or a necessary condition for it. But according to the opinion we oppose, the free cooperation of free choice said to be future on the supposition that it is placed in such circumstances would not be an effect of predestination; nor would the cooperation of our free choice be reduced to God as its prior efficient cause, but would be founded on the innate freedom of free choice. Hence, since such cooperation is a necessary condition without which the order of means to a supernatural end preexisting in the divine mind would not have the character of predestination, but would retain the character of common supernatural providence in relation to that person, it follows that, if middle knowledge is posited, a cause, ground, or necessary condition of predestination is assigned on our part. This will be treated expressly in disputations 36, 37, and 38.

The second solution is this: the aforesaid knowledge of the cooperation of free choice that would occur on a hypothesis, which is posited prior to predestination, is not a necessary condition on the human side, but on God’s side. That is, it is not necessary because it applies or presents to the divine will some consideration on the human side that moves God, by way of a merit of the human being, to predestine him. For in a thing that neither exists nor is known as going to exist at some time, no such motivating consideration can be founded. Rather, it is necessary only so that this object may be presented to God as predefinable, as infallibly future, and so that it may have the character of an efficacious means in God’s mind, so that it may be chosen under that character, or even intended as a proximate end. Hence it does not follow that there is in that object another moving reason besides the final one, which is not incompatible with predestination. For God predestines a person not because he has or will have merits, but so that he may have them and be holy, in keeping with the words: He predestined us to be holy.

But this solution does not remove the force of the argument. For although the foreknowledge of the cooperation of free choice belongs on God’s side, the cooperation of free choice itself, which is asserted to occur on the hypothesis, belongs on the human side. Hence, if on the human side a ground or condition is assigned without which the ordering of means to an end would not have the character of predestination but would retain only the character of common supernatural providence, a ground for predestination is indeed assigned on the human side. Nor is it enough to say that this cooperation, future on the hypothesis, does not apply or present to the divine will any consideration on the human side that moves God by way of merit to predestine that person. For we contend not only that this reason for predestination on the human side must be excluded, but also that reason which is in fact a condition without which the ordering of means to the supernatural end, preexisting in the divine mind, would not have the character of predestination but would retain the character of common providence. Otherwise, as will become clear in disputation 37, predestination, formally speaking in its character as predestination, would depend on the free cooperation of free choice.

Nor is it an obstacle that a thing which does not exist and is not known as going to exist at some time cannot be a cause or a condition without which predestination would not obtain. For once it is asserted that, before every decree of the divine will, it is certain that Peter, by his innate freedom, will consent to the divine call and persevere to the end, on the hypothesis that⁴⁹ he is placed in such circumstances, then, with that hypothesis posited in reality—as it is posited in the case of all the predestined who are or have been, and will be posited in the case of those who are to be born—the cooperation of free choice persevering to the end would in fact be a condition without which predestination would not obtain. Consequently, it would not have the character of a final cause of that predestination, since such a cause is an effect of predestination.

XVII. Fifth, this is proved as follows: the object of middle knowledge is not knowable; therefore, with respect to it, there cannot be true knowledge. The antecedent is proved because something is knowable only if it is necessary by some necessity; but before every decree of the divine will, it is not necessary by any necessity, not even by the necessity of the consequence, that Peter, placed in such circumstances and with such helps that do not efficaciously apply his will to conversion, infallibly be converted. Therefore it is not knowable even to God that he will be converted. The minor premise is proved: it is impossible for an effect to follow necessarily, by the necessity of the consequence or the necessity of infallibility, from a cause liable to fail and to be impeded by the concurrence of other causes, unless that cause is determined to that effect by another, superior cause that cannot fail or be impeded by other causes. But God does not determine causes liable to fail to particular effects except by a decree of his will. Therefore, before such a decree, it is not necessary by the necessity of the consequence, or by the necessity of infallibility, that a created will—which is by its nature liable to fail and to be impeded—will consent to the object presented to it if it is placed in such circumstances.⁵⁰

This argument is confirmed by the authority of St. Thomas, 1. p. q. 14. ar. 13. in the body of the article, where he says: A contingent thing as it is in its cause is considered as future and as contingent, not yet determined to one outcome, because a contingent cause must be related to opposites; and thus a contingent thing is not subjected with certainty to any knowledge. Hence whoever knows a contingent effect only in its cause has no more than conjectural knowledge of it.⁵¹ He teaches the same in q. 57, art. 3; q. 88, art. 3, in the body; art. 4, in the body; and q. 16, On Evil, art. 7.

XVIII. Sixth, it is proved as follows: it is impossible for an effect to exist or be understood as future in some case except dependently on its efficient cause. But the decree of the divine will is the first and most universal efficient cause, on which effects depend more than on their proximate cause, as is said in the book On Causes, proposition 1. Therefore, before a decree of the divine will, nothing will be or would be future, whatever condition is posited; and consequently, before that same decree, it is not knowable that, if Peter’s will is placed in such circumstances, it will consent to the object presented to it.⁵²

This is confirmed first. An absolute decree of God stands in relation to an absolute future just as a conditional decree stands in relation to a conditional future. But it is contradictory for something to be absolutely future unless an absolute decree of God deciding that it come to be precedes it, as Augustine says in the Enchiridion to Laurentius, ch. 95. Therefore it is likewise contradictory for something to be conditionally future unless a decree of God deciding that it come to be if the condition is fulfilled precedes it. Therefore, before such a decree, it is not knowable that Peter will consent on the hypothesis that he is placed in these or those circumstances.

This is confirmed a second time. A conditional future, once its condition is fulfilled, passes into an absolute future. Therefore, if before a decree of his will God knows certainly and infallibly that, if Peter is placed in such circumstances, he will consent to such an object presented to him, then, once that condition is fulfilled and before God decrees anything about the future act, he will know that act as an absolute future. And thus in that case something would be absolutely future independently of the decree of the divine will, which is incompatible with the perfection of divine causality.

They reply that both the conditional and the absolute future, in order to be posited in being, depend intrinsically on the decree of the divine will as their efficient cause, by which a thing is principally brought into being. They say, however, that when the secondary cause is free, God does not have an absolute decree to produce a free effect with it unless he presupposes foreknowledge that, if the secondary cause is placed in such circumstances, it will, by its innate freedom, contribute its own free influx, without which a free act cannot be produced. Hence, precisely by God’s fulfilling the condition through a decree of his will and placing the created will in circumstances in which he foreknows it will contribute its influx to free consent, he consequently wills at the same time to concur with it as a universal cause, from whose influx the effects of a free secondary cause, like those of any other cause, principally depend. According to these authors, therefore, before God decides to create a human being in such circumstances and before he decrees anything in particular concerning that person’s free acts, he foreknows certainly and infallibly that, if that person’s will is placed in such circumstances, it will by its own free influx determine itself to consent to the object presented to it. Then God, by his free and efficacious decree, places that person in those circumstances with that object presented, and consequently wills at the same time to act together with the will determining itself, and produces a free effect with it. Thus the effect depends principally on the decree of the divine will and does not proceed from the secondary cause alone. But if the created will were going to dissent in those circumstances, as it could, God likewise, by the very fact that he wills to place it in those circumstances, decrees to produce dissent with it. They say the same about other conditional futures which in fact will not be brought into being, but, as they claim, would be if the condition were fulfilled.⁵³

XIX. Nevertheless, this solution brings with it many difficulties and inconveniences, which will be treated expressly below. For an argument is made against it. First, even if we grant that it saves the operation of the secondary cause as depending on the decree as its efficient cause of the divine will—a point to be discussed elsewhere—it does not save the claim that the influx of the created will itself, by which it contributes to a free act, depends on that same decree as its efficient cause. This is shown as follows. Every efficient cause must precede its effect; but the decree of the divine will does not precede the future free influx of the created will once the condition is fulfilled. For, according to the authors of the opposing opinion, God does not decide that the will will contribute and cooperate before he foresees that by its innate freedom it will cooperate on the hypothesis that it is placed in such circumstances. Therefore, formally speaking, that influx, insofar as it is the influx of the created will, does not depend on God as its efficient cause, but on the created will alone. Thus, with respect to it, the created will would be the first cause simply, which is impossible, as St. Thomas proves in Sentences II, dist. 37, q. 2, art. 2, in the body; and we will show the same in disputation 25.⁵⁴

Second, it would follow that this causal proposition must be granted: “Because the created will wills to contribute to this act in particular, God contributes to the same act in particular”⁵⁵; and thus the human will and operation would be prior, while the divine will and operation would be posterior and would be the attendant of that same created will. Consequently, the creature would act and God would cooperate with it. It would also follow that God’s influx is determined to this act by the influx of the created will, and that the divine will and its help are subordinated to the human will. All of this seems greatly to detract from the causality of the first cause and from the efficacy of the helps of divine grace, as will become clear in Disputations 18, 23, 86, 97, and the two following ones.

Finally, the argument made above presses against this teaching, and it is necessary and useful to repeat it often, lest it be thought trivial, as Prosper says, if it is not frequently argued:⁵⁶ for a determinate act does not proceed from an indifferent cause insofar as it is indifferent. But before a decree of the divine will, the created will, placed in any circumstances whatsoever, is altogether indifferent to opposites. Therefore, before that same decree, it cannot be certain with infallible certainty that the will will determinately produce consent rather than dissent, or vice versa.

XX. There is no need to dispute here about unrelated conditional propositions, whose consequent has no connection with the antecedent even by a decree of the divine will, but is altogether accidentally joined to that antecedent; for these will be treated specially in Disputation 13. This one point must be established with certainty: if they are considered as conditional propositions, they have no truth. For it is necessarily required for a conditional proposition to be true that the consequent follow from the antecedent if the antecedent is posited as obtaining. But when the consequent is altogether unrelated to the antecedent, as in this proposition, “If Peter will debate tomorrow in Spain, there will be heavy rain in Rome,” the antecedent in no way entails the consequent. Hence, even if both are posited as obtaining together, the conditional is not true, although both the antecedent and the consequent are true as simple propositions.⁵⁷

Third conclusion. No other middle knowledge is to be posited between God’s purely natural and purely free knowledge. This conclusion remains sufficiently proved from the foregoing, and will become clearer from what is to be said in disputation 37.

To the first argument, it is answered that the conditional propositions discussed in the cited passages of Scripture are not known by God, nor knowable as future, prior to a conditional decree of the divine will, but as following upon it. Hence there is no middle knowledge of them, since middle knowledge precedes every decree of that same divine will, as was said.

XXI. Specifically, as to the first passage cited from 1 Kings, ch. 23, it is answered that by those words the Lord wished to indicate to David the certain danger threatening him from the proximate cause if he remained in Keilah and Saul came there. For the Lord knew that the people of Keilah were firmly resolved to hand David over. Hence the phrase “they will hand you over” is to be understood in this way: they have the will to hand you over. So explains the interlinear Gloss, which has very great authority; its author was Anselm of Laon, a most learned man.⁵⁸ Likewise, the phrase “Saul will come down” is to be understood conditionally, that is, if you remain in that city, Saul will come down. This explanation is gathered from the very context, where it is said that Saul did not come to that city because David had departed from it. We therefore grant that this conditional is true and consequently known to God: “If you wait, Saul will come; if Saul comes, the people of Keilah will hand you over,” even though neither the antecedent nor the consequent was posited as obtaining. For a conditional does not posit anything as obtaining; its truth requires only that the inference be valid, so that if the antecedent is posited as obtaining, the consequent must infallibly be posited as well. Thus this conditional is true: “If a stone is a human being, a stone is a rational animal,” although both antecedent and consequent are impossible. Yet God did not know the truth of the conditional “If Saul comes, they will hand you over” through middle knowledge, because he did not know it prior to every decree of his will, but in the decree by which he decided to permit David to be handed over and to concur in the handing-over itself insofar as it was an action, unless David’s flight had prevented it. But because God had decided by an absolute and efficacious will that David would not be handed over, David was warned to flee. Hence God knew these conditional futures by free knowledge.⁵⁹ When it is argued that free knowledge concerns only things existing in some division of time, the assumption is denied. For it is enough for free knowledge to concern things existing in some division of time, or things that would exist by a special decree of God if this or that condition were applied. For just as absolute futures are objects of free knowledge because they presuppose an absolute decree of the divine will, both on the side of the act of willing and on the side of the object willed, so too conditional futures of the kind discussed in the cited passage pertain to free knowledge because they presuppose a conditional decree on the side of the object willed, by which God decides to posit the consequent as obtaining if the antecedent is posited. Hence, by virtue of the decree explained above, that consequence was infallible: “If you wait, Saul will come; if Saul comes, the people of Keilah will hand you over.”⁶⁰

XXII. But an argument is made against this. It follows that this conditional future is known by God through free knowledge, namely, “If God had wished to create another world, he would have created it.” The consequent is false; therefore, so is the antecedent reasoning. The inference is proved as follows: this future too presupposes a conditional decree in the antecedent, expressed by the words “if God had wished.”

It is answered that God knows this conditional through natural knowledge, and not through free knowledge, because the infallibility of that inference is not founded on some free decree existing in God, but on the omnipotence of the divine will, which belongs to God by nature. For from the fact that he is omnipotent, and no one can resist his will, it follows evidently that whatever he had wished to do, he would have done. But the connection of the consequent with the antecedent in the conditional propositions discussed in the cited passage from 1 Kings is not founded immediately on something that belongs to God by nature, but on his free decree explained above. Hence the cases are not alike.

XXIII. To the second testimony, from the authority of Matthew 11, we acknowledge that Christ the Lord knew with certain and infallible knowledge this conditional future: if the signs and wonders that were performed in Chorazin and Bethsaida had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have been converted. This would not have been because of those miracles and external signs alone. For, as even the authors of the contrary opinion admit, it pertains to the Pelagian heresy to say that internal help from divine grace is not required for conversion, but that external signs and wonders, by which the preaching of the Gospel is confirmed, are sufficient; for all these pertain to the law and teaching. They would therefore have been converted by the efficacious help of prevenient divine grace, which God mercifully determined to give them if those wondrous signs and miracles had been performed among them. Hence the truth of that conditional future does not precede that decree of the divine will, but rather follows upon it. Consequently, it is not known by God through middle knowledge, but through free knowledge, as was said above.⁶¹ This reply has strong support in St. Augustine, On the Gift of Perseverance, chapter 10, where, asking why Christ did not perform those signs in Tyre and Sidon, since they would have believed if the signs had been done, he replies that this must be referred to the divine will and the inscrutable judgments of God. In the following chapter 14 he confirms the same point, saying: The eyes of the Tyrians and Sidonians were not so blinded, nor their heart so hardened, that they would not have believed if they had seen signs such as these people saw. But it did not benefit them that they were able to believe, because they were not predestined by him whose judgments are inscrutable and whose ways are unsearchable; nor would it have harmed these people that they were unable to believe, if they had been predestined, so that God would illumine their blind eyes and wished to take away their heart of stone from those hardened. And after this he adds: For those to whom it has been given hear these things and do them; but those to whom it has not been given do not do them, whether they hear or do not hear. “To you,” he says, “it has been given to know the mystery of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.” One of these belongs to the mercy, the other to the judgment of him to whom our soul says: “I will sing of mercy and judgment to you, O Lord.”⁶²⁶³ By these words Augustine teaches most clearly that it proceeds from the divine will and mercy, which grants the good will, that these people believe when they hear and see the signs. Therefore, if the Tyrians and Sidonians had believed upon seeing those signs and wonders, they would have believed by God’s grace and will, which grants belief itself; consequently, that conditional future follows upon the decree of the divine will.

XXIIII. But you will say: why, then, are the Jews reproached, if they too would have believed had God given them efficacious help and willed to convert them?

It is replied that they are rightly reproached because they placed greater obstacles in the way of grace and proved more unworthy, being hardened by their own malice. Such hardening was not found in the Tyrians and Sidonians. For although the Tyrians and Jews could not by their own powers attain the help of grace or prepare themselves to receive it, they could nevertheless impede themselves more or less, so that it would not be given to them by God, according to Hosea 13: Your destruction, O Israel, is from yourself; only in me is your help.⁶⁴⁶⁵ St. Thomas treats this at length, Against the Gentiles, book 3, chapters 149 and 160.

To the third testimony, from Matthew 24, the first reply is that it was said with reference to the dangers of this life, not to foreknowledge, as Augustine says in explaining the authority from Wisdom 4, as will be clear immediately.

A second reply is that, in the decree by which God determined to confer on the elect efficacious help to overcome only this or that temptation—which he decreed to permit them to undergo, and not other temptations that could have occurred but did not—God knew with certainty and infallibly that, if they had experienced other, more severe temptations, they would have succumbed to them. And because by God’s mercy they had been separated by predestination from the mass of perdition, he therefore prevented them from being touched by those temptations. Hence God knew this not through middle knowledge but through free knowledge.

By this we also answer the other testimony from Wisdom, chapter 4. Let St. Augustine be consulted, On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 14, where he says: This is the whole reason why it was said—whoever said it—“He was snatched away lest malice change his understanding.” For it was said with reference to the dangers of this life, not to God’s foreknowledge: God foreknew what was going to be, not what was not going to be. That is, that he was going to grant him an untimely death, so that the person might be removed from the uncertainty of temptations, not that he would sin, since he would not remain in temptation.⁶⁶ By these words he signifies that God did not know as future the sin of the one who was snatched away, because in truth it did not have the character of something future in the divine decree or permission. He also confirms this in the words cited above from On the Soul and Its Origin, chapter 12. A second reply is that, in the decree by which God determined to confer on that person the gift of perseverance up to a certain appointed moment, he knew that if the person had lived longer, left to his own nature, he would have been overcome by the force of temptations and sinned.

XXV. To the fifth testimony from Isaiah, chapter 1, we answer in the same way: God knew by natural knowledge that unless, through the Apostles and other preachers of the Gospel, or immediately by himself, he made the mysteries of faith known to those Israelites who were saved, they would have perished altogether. We likewise know by natural knowledge that unless God preserved the world, it would at once be reduced to nothing, since it cannot subsist without his preservation. The reason is that no one can believe the mysteries of faith unless they are proposed by another, in accord with the saying: How will they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?⁶⁷ Therefore, by the seed in the passage from Isaiah cited here, the Lord Christ is understood, of whom it is written in Galatians 3: In your seed, which is Christ. The Apostles are also understood, in accord with Isaiah 61: These are the seed whom the Lord has blessed.⁶⁸ Second, one may say that just as, in the decree by which he determined to convert Paul through Stephen’s prayers and not otherwise, God knew by free knowledge this truth—that if Stephen had not prayed, the Church would not have had Paul the Apostle—so too, in the decree by which he determined to save believers through the preaching of Christ and the Apostles, he knew that unless that small seed had been left to the Jewish people—that is, the Apostles—the same people would have been destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah. For a negative is known by God through its positive, as Saint Thomas teaches. 1. p. q. 14. ar. 10. Hence God did not know that conditional by middle knowledge, but by merely free knowledge.

XXVI. To the sixth testimony from Luke, chapter 16, we answer in the same way: in the decree by which God determined by an absolute will not to confer efficacious help on the rich man’s brothers so that they might be converted, he knew that they would not believe even if someone rose from the dead.⁶⁹ To the other testimony from Ezekiel, chapter 3, we answer that this way of speaking is a phrase of Sacred Scripture, which people commonly also use when, reproaching a friend for his hardness, they say: “If I had begged this with so many entreaties of a stone or of an enemy, he would have done it.” For Scripture often adapts itself to the common manner of human speech.

To the seventh testimony from 4 Kings, chapter 13, we answer that God had decreed to destroy Syria entirely, on the condition that the king strike the ground five or six, or even seven, times without interruption, as the Gloss teaches on the same passage. Hence that conditional was known by God in the aforesaid decree of his will; accordingly, he knew it not through middle knowledge but through free knowledge.

To the second argument from the authority of the holy Fathers who wrote before the Pelagian error, we answer that they taught little about divine grace and chiefly sought to establish those things that seemed necessary for refuting the error of the Manichaeans, who denied free choice. Hence Saint Augustine says in On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 14: Why, then, is it necessary for us to scrutinize the little works of those who, before this heresy arose, had no need to engage with this question, which is difficult to resolve? They would certainly have done so if they had been compelled to answer such people. Consequently, they briefly touched on what they thought about God’s grace in certain passages of their writings and in passing, while they devoted themselves to the matters they were disputing against other enemies of the Church.⁷⁰ Nevertheless, they never taught that middle knowledge which we oppose. And to the words cited from Saint Chrysostom we answer that it is most true that God knew with certainty and infallibly that Matthew would consent, and likewise Paul, if they were called at the time when they were called. Yet he knew this because from eternity he determined and decreed in his predestination to convert them at that time and not earlier. Thus he foreknew such conditional future things, and others like them, by free knowledge, not by middle knowledge.

XXVII. We apply the same solution to the words cited from Saint Augustine’s On Six Questions of the Pagans, question 2; the same Doctor also expressly teaches it in On the Predestination of the Saints, chapter 9, where he explains at length what he had said in the aforesaid book and turns against those who charged him with teaching that knowledge which precedes the decree of the divine will. For he says: Did I perhaps intend to say this about Christ’s foreknowledge, without prejudice to God’s hidden plan and other causes, because it seemed sufficient for refuting the unbelief of the pagans who had raised this question? For what is truer than that Christ foreknew who would believe in him, when they would believe, and in what places? But whether, once Christ had been preached to them, they would have faith of themselves or receive it as God’s gift—that is, whether God merely foreknew them or also predestined them—I did not then think it necessary to ask and discuss. Accordingly, what I said—that Christ then willed to appear to human beings and his doctrine to be preached among them when and where he knew there would be people who would believe in him—could also have been said in this way: Christ then willed to appear to human beings and his doctrine to be preached among them when and where he knew there would be people who had been chosen in him before the foundation of the world. But because saying it in this way would have made the reader attentive to questions that, now that the Pelagian error has prompted us, must be discussed more fully and laboriously, it seemed to me that what was then sufficient should be said briefly—except, as I have said, for the depth of God’s wisdom and knowledge, and without prejudice to other causes, which I thought should not be discussed then but later, at a more suitable time.⁷¹ Saint Thomas pursues this solution in 3 p., q. 1, a. 5, ad 2.

XXVIII. To the other passage from Augustine, Questions to Simplicianus, q. 2, it is answered that when he says that God “calls him in the way he knows will be fitting for him, so that he will not reject the one calling,” he wished to signify nothing other than that God is not ignorant of the power and energy of his grace, by which he secretly calls some people in such a way that, by calling them, he converts them and makes them obedient; and for this reason he sees that those called in this way will follow, because by calling them he will bring it about that they follow. Thus he knows his gifts and benefits by which he has deigned to free us, as Augustine himself admits in the cited On the Predestination of the Saints, ch. 9, a point he repeats in the following ch. 10 when he says: For by predestination God foreknew those things that he himself was going to do; hence it was said, “He made the things that are to be.” And in ch. 22: They were therefore chosen before the foundation of the world by that predestination in which God foreknew his own future works. And in ch. 19: When, therefore, he predestined us, he foreknew his own work, he who makes us holy and immaculate. And in On the Gift of Perseverance, ch. 14: Will anyone dare to say that God did not foreknow to whom he was going to give the gift of believing, or whom he was going to give to his Son so that he would lose none of them? If he foreknew these things, he certainly foreknew the benefits by which he deigns to free us.⁷² He repeats the same in the same book, chs. 17, 18, 21, and 24.

To the authority from On Correction and Grace, ch. 12, it is answered that, as will become clear in disputation 11, in the decree by which God decided to permit the sin of the first parent placed in paradise and to concur in its positive action insofar as it was an action, God knew that he would sin if placed in paradise. Hence he knew this through free knowledge and not through middle knowledge. The same answer is given to the other passage from On Nature and Grace, ch. 26: God wished through the fall of the predestined person, which he permits, to make that person more cautious; therefore, through free knowledge he knows this conditional future: if he sins, he will thereafter become more cautious.⁷³

By these answers the objections from St. Ambrose, St. Gregory, St. Thomas, and the other saints and Scholastic Doctors are met. For St. Thomas in particular very often attacks that middle knowledge, though under another name, as is clear from the passages cited above.

XXIX. To the third argument it is answered that middle knowledge is not only useless for the perfection of divine providence, but also impossible in itself, as was shown above.⁷⁴ As to the objection, it is answered that human providence and will are not efficacious for moving another’s will and bringing about whatever one wishes. For it is said in Wisdom 9: The thoughts of mortals are fearful, and our providence is uncertain. Hence, to persuade another prudently of what one intends, one must observe the circumstances and wait for a time when the other is more disposed. But this reasoning does not apply to the divine will, which is most efficacious and has done all things whatsoever it willed in heaven and on earth. Thus St. Prosper, Against the Ungrateful, ch. 15, says: But when the Almighty saves a person with grace, grace itself completes its work. It always has time to perform what it wills to be done; no dispositions delay it, nor is it suspended in doubt by any causes. Nor does it carry out by the care and service of a minister what it alone can do, or entrust to a servant the function of acting.

To the first confirmation it is answered that, prior in the order of reason to having an efficacious decree to do something, God, he foreknows by his natural knowledge his omnipotence and the efficacy of his divine will and motion. For by that knowledge, and not by middle knowledge, he knows that if he wills to convert a person and give him efficacious help, he will convert him, as was said above. The second confirmation is answered in the same way.

To the fourth argument it is answered that the conditional future “If Adam had not sinned, the Son of God would not have become incarnate” is true and known to God in the decree of his divine will by which he decided to become incarnate on the supposition of the sin of the first parent, and not otherwise, as is clear from St. Thomas in the cited third part.⁷⁵ Hence God knew it through free knowledge. The same must be said of that conditional future, “If man had persevered in the state of innocence, he would have been immortal,” for its truth is founded on the decree of the will by which God decided to preserve man from death for as long as the state of innocence lasted. But other conditional propositions whose consequent has no infallible connection with the antecedent either by the nature of the thing or by a decree of the divine will are not true, and consequently are not knowable even by God, as was explained above.

XXX. To the fifth argument it is answered that, as will become clear in disputation 11, after the decree of the divine will by which God decided to permit Peter, placed in such circumstances, to sin, and to concur in the act of sin insofar as it is an action, he foreknew absolutely that Peter would sin. Likewise, before he decided to create Peter and place him in the aforesaid circumstances, he foreknew certainly and infallibly that if Peter were placed in those same circumstances, and God permitted Peter’s sin and decreed to concur in the act of sin insofar as it is a positive action, Peter would sin. But this conditional is not an object of middle knowledge, nor is it known by God through that knowledge, but through purely natural knowledge, or the knowledge of simple understanding; for every possible thing would be future if God had willed:

To the sixth argument, the antecedent is denied. In proof of it, the reply is that all possibles would be future on the supposition that God willed to bring them about, if they are good, or to permit them, if they are evil.⁷⁶ Hence something’s being future on the supposition that God willed to bring it about does not remove the aforesaid object from the account of the possible; therefore it is known through natural knowledge. But if the antecedent is not supposed to include a divine decree, at least a conditional one,⁷⁷ by which God decreed that something of this kind occur if that condition is posited as actual, nothing would be future by force of that supposition. For an effect cannot be understood as future in any way antecedently to the decree of the first cause, as was said above. Thus that conditional proposition would not be true, and consequently it would not even be knowable by God.

What was said already makes clear, in reply to the seventh argument, how conditional future things are not knowable in the sense posited by the proponents of middle knowledge: for in reality they would not be future if that condition were posited, unless a decree of the divine will were supposed in that condition, without which decree, whether absolute or conditional, no conditional future exists at all. Hence we, in denying and opposing middle knowledge, do not deny that God has knowledge of conditional future things, but only of those things that, since they will in no way be future even on a supposition, are said to be conditional futures.

In reply to the confirmation, it is said that for those two propositions to be contradictories, the negation must precede the copula “if” in the negative proposition. Then, before every decree of the divine will decreeing a future act, the affirmative proposition is false, since it is a bad inference. For the truth of a conditional proposition requires that the inference be good; consequently the negative conditional is true, for it has this sense: “It does not follow that, if Peter is placed in such an order of things, he will sin.” This sense is true, since the will, even when placed in those circumstances before the decree of the divine will, is wholly indifferent to producing an act of sin or an act of the contrary virtue.

XXXI. A second reply is that when propositions concern contingent matter, it is not necessary that, of two contradictories, one be determinately true in itself and the other determinately false;⁷⁸ it is sufficient that, if one is true, the other be false, so that it is impossible for both to be true together or false together. And because sinning or not sinning belongs contingently to Peter, the proposition “Peter, placed in such circumstances, will sin” is not more true in itself than its opposite.

To the eighth argument, the antecedent is denied. It can more truly be said that this concord of free choice with divine grace and predestination through middle knowledge gives rise to very many difficulties concerning the freedom of free choice, the efficacy of the helps of grace, and divine causality, providence, and gratuitous predestination,⁷⁹ as is clear from what has been said and will become still clearer from what is to be said below.

XXXII. To the ninth argument, it is replied that, since efficacious help is an effect of the divine will decreeing that a person be converted, his conversion has an infallible connection with that same help, just as it does with the absolute will of God, who wills that the person whose heart he moves be converted.⁸⁰ For St. Thomas says: It is impossible for both of these to be true at once: that the Holy Spirit wills to move someone to an act of charity and that the person himself loses charity by sinning.⁸¹ And again he says that if it is God’s intention in moving that the person whose heart he moves should attain grace, he infallibly attains it, according to John 6: “Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.”⁸² Hence, before the absolute decree of his will, God knows certainly and infallibly that if he had given efficacious help to Judas, he would have been converted. But God does not know this conditional proposition through middle knowledge, but through purely natural knowledge, by which he comprehends the omnipotence of his will and the intrinsic power of efficacious help, as was said above and will become clearer from what is to be said in disputation 25.

To the tenth argument, it is replied that it not only fails to demonstrate what it intends, but does not even make it probable. For the principle assumed in the major premise is gratuitous and manifestly false, even on the opinion of those who defend middle knowledge. They themselves admit that God decreed to concur with the created will in free acts by an indifferent general concurrence, if the will itself should wish to exert its influence. Yet this decree does not necessarily posit a real change in anything: for, on their opinion, God has this decree even with respect to those who do nothing, in whom no real change is made by that decree. In proof of the argument, the reply is that when God’s decree is absolute on the part of the object willed, a real change in a creature results from it at some time; but when it is conditional on the part of the object willed, it need not entail a real change in a creature. It is sufficient that, by force of that decree, the creature would be changed differently if the condition were fulfilled. This real change, which would be future if the condition were fulfilled, is also sufficient for the divine will to be related differently to creatures after that actual decree than before it. This is especially so because the relation of reason involved in God’s actual decree in relation to the objects willed secondarily, as objects, is not a categorical relation but a transcendental one; nor is it a real relation but a relation of reason, even on the part of creatures when creatures do not exist but would exist if the condition were fulfilled.

A second reply is that it is not necessary even in God’s decree that is absolute on the part of the object willed that it always entail a real change in a creature at some time. For the decree by which God wills, through his natural law, to bind a rational creature under pain of mortal sin is absolute on the part of the object willed; yet no real change in that creature results from this decree.

XXXIII By this we also answer the first confirmation: when God’s actual decree is absolute on the part of the object willed, it connotes something existing in a creature at some time that could fail to exist. But when the decree is conditional on the part of the object willed, it only connotes something that would exist in a creature by force of that decree if the condition were fulfilled, but which could nevertheless fail to exist. For when the condition was fulfilled, it would be produced by God, not with absolute necessity, but only with necessity on the supposition of the immutability of the divine decree, as will be said below.

To the second confirmation, it is replied that the passage of Augustine from On Grace and Free Choice, chapter 8, is not relevant to the present point. For there he speaks expressly about things that truly were future, namely the future sins of those who were not snatched away while they were in grace. These sins were indeed known with certainty and infallibly by God as future before they occurred, but they were not known before the actual decree of the divine will, as the objector claims; rather, they were known after the decree by which God determined to permit those future sins and to concur with the very act of sin insofar as it is an action, in the manner to be explained in disputation 25. It is most perverse and insane to say of these future things that God did not know them before they occurred, just as it is most perverse and insane to say that God could not have prevented them. But of the other conditional future things, which are at issue in the present controversy, it is said not perversely and insanely, but most rightly and truly, that before the decree of the divine will they are not knowable as determinate future things, even on the supposition that the created will were placed in such circumstances; they are knowable only as things that can come to be, as was said above. If it is said that St. Augustine teaches not only that God knew future sins, but also this conditional future: “If these people live longer, they will sin,” the reply is that God knew that conditional proposition too, but after the actual decree of his will, as was said.

Likewise, the passage cited from chapter 8 of On the Predestination of the Saints is not relevant. For in the very condition expressed in the antecedent—namely, “if he had wished to teach them”—a conditional will of God is included on the part of the act of willing, so that the sense is: “If God had willed efficaciously to draw them to himself, they too would certainly have come.” God certainly knows this conditional proposition through purely natural knowledge, by which he knows the efficacy and omnipotence of his will, just as he knows with certainty that if he had willed to create another world, he would have created it. No theologian denies that God has infallible knowledge of these and similar conditional propositions that are simply necessary, because, as St. Thomas teaches, their consequent follows infallibly, or with necessity of the consequence, from the antecedent if it is posited as actual.⁸³ The other passage of Augustine, from chapter 14 of On the Gift of Perseverance, has already been answered above.

To the third confirmation, it is replied that, as was said above from St. Thomas, for a conditional proposition to be true it is necessarily required that, if the antecedent is posited, the consequent also be infallibly posited as actual. In reply to the objection, it is said that this counsel signifies that the king’s kindness has great force for morally attracting and drawing the people to his service and obedience. Those who gave the counsel spoke truly, because this is what usually happens morally. In fact, however, that conditional proposition does not have infallible truth antecedently to the decree by which God determined to make the people his servants through the king’s kindness. For, setting aside such a decree, it can sometimes happen that the condition is posited and that the people are ungrateful and rebel against the king. The same must be said proportionally about other similar consultations and counsels.