Compendium Theologiae Dogmaticae Tomus I: De Christo Legato Divino, De Ecclesia Christi, De Fontibus Theologicis

Cf. St. Thomas, Quaest. disp. de verit. q. 12; Suarez, De fide disp. 8, sect. 3 sqq; H. Denzinger, Vier Bücher von der religiösen Erkenntnis II 402 sqq; I. B. Becker, Die Weissagungen als Kriterien der Offenbarung, Mainz 1890.

Proposition IX. Prophecies, too, can be suitable criteria of revelation.

98. Position of the question. Prophecy and prediction are sometimes taken in the same sense. But prophecy in a broader sense signifies any message brought by a human being in God's name (cf. Cornely, Introductio in libros V. T. II, n. 242 sqq). A prediction is a certain foretelling of a future event that cannot be foreknown from natural principles. Its object is chiefly the free acts of God or of creatures. Cardiognosia, by which someone knows the secrets of hearts, open to God alone, may be referred to this category.

A prediction is a miracle of the intellectual order. A miracle more clearly manifests divine omnipotence; a prediction manifests omniscience. In a prediction, as in a miracle, three things must be distinguished: the historical fact of the prediction and its fulfillment; judgment about the prediction's supernatural character; and its power to prove the truth of revelation. There is, however, this difference: a miracle, as soon as it is performed, is an object whose character can be investigated and whose power of proof can be discerned; a prediction, in itself, can be known as a true supernatural fact and as certain proof of revelation only once it has been fulfilled.

Just as a miracle, insofar as it is a sensible effect, is usually a natural thing, so in a prediction both the foretelling and the fulfillment can also be natural things. But just as in a miracle the manner in which the event proceeds from its cause is supernatural, so in a prediction the manner in which the prophet receives knowledge of future things is supernatural. Moreover, since supernatural knowledge of future things is revelation, what was said above (n. 54 sqq) about revelation applies here.

99. Argument. For a prediction to be a suitable criterion of revelation, it must be possible, it must be possible to know it as a supernatural fact, and it must have the power to prove revelation. But all three conditions are met. Therefore.

Proof of the minor premise, part I. A prediction is possible. For God, being an infinite intellect, knows all things, including future free acts, and can reveal to a human being some of what he himself knows about future contingents, as is evident from what we established above (n. 62 sqq) concerning the possibility of revelation.

100. Proof of the minor premise, part II. A prediction can be known as a supernatural fact. It needs no proof that one can hear a human being foretelling future events and afterward see whether what was foretold actually happens or not. We assume that the events in question are sensible and can be known by human beings. Knowledge of both the prediction and its fulfillment can also be transmitted to posterity by witnesses, so that certain knowledge of the matter may be obtained under the same conditions in which other historical facts can be known.

A prediction is known to be a supernatural fact if knowledge of the future event could have been acquired only through God's praeternatural intervention. Under the proper conditions, a judgment about this can be made with certainty.

For when the future free acts of creatures are in question, their prediction is either fortuitous, conjectural, or certain. The fulfillment of a purely fortuitous prediction is more surely excluded the more numerous and determinate the things predicted are. Someone who asserts without any foundation that something will happen may sometimes happen to say what later actually occurs, if the matter concerns some simple event that occurs often—for example, if someone were to say, “A year from today, on this very date, it will rain.” But even in such matters he will often be mistaken. The more numerous and minute the circumstances specified, however, the less likely it is that the event will correspond to a rash prediction; for things that happen by chance happen rarely. Therefore, if future free acts are rashly predicted with many specified circumstances, it is wholly improbable that the event will correspond to the prediction. Least of all can effects that depend on God's free will be predicted in this way (cf. Ottiger, Theol. fundam. I, n. 233 sqq).

The same holds for a conjectural prediction. A human being can sometimes infer from previous observations, with a certain moral certainty, how other human beings will act, but only when the matter is a bare and simple fact and not very remote in time. But no one can ascertain through psychological conjectures with certainty what this or that person will do after a long time, on a certain day, in a certain place, and under certain circumstances.

Accordingly, a prediction is a certain sign of divine revelation when complex events, remote in time, are foretold with certainty, together with circumstances that here and now are not determined in their causes, but depend in every way on the free will of God or human beings (cf. St. Thomas 2, 2, q. 171, a. 6 ad 2 and q. 172, a. 1).

Angels, whether good or evil, naturally know many things that human beings do not, and so they can foretell certain things that are prophecies with respect to us, as was said above (n. 80) about miracles. Perhaps this is how various events recounted about the oracles of the pagans are to be explained (cf. Act 16, 16 sqq), although many of them must be attributed to fraud, as even the ancients themselves observed, for example, Cicero (De divinat. 2, 56). Moreover, angels do not naturally know future free acts with certainty, least of all God's decrees about future things (cf. Is 41, 23 sqq; 46, 9 sq). Good angels can be employed in prophecies, as in miracles, as instruments of God. If this happens, God himself acts as the principal cause. But evil angels, too, are subject to divine providence, which does not allow rational human beings to be led invincibly into error; the malice of demons will appear either in the thing predicted, in the circumstances of the prediction, or in its end. For the devil does nothing that is simply good.

101. Proof of the minor premise, part III. A prediction can be known as a certain criterion of revelation. For God can predict that a human being will appear at a certain time and place, distinguished from all other human beings by these and those signs, and that this person will be his envoy and a truthful witness to divine revelation. This was done concerning Christ, as we shall see later, and the ancient Fathers often and effectively used this argument to convert the pagans. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of a more evident argument for demonstrating that a human being predicted in this way is God's envoy.

In another way, a fulfilled prediction can be an argument for revelation when a prophet says: “So that you may know that I truly announce divine revelation to you, behold, I foretell to you in God's name this or that, which no one can now foresee except God alone, so that when it has happened you may know that I have spoken the truth.” For in this way God is invoked as a witness, just as in other miracles; and if what was predicted is then fulfilled, he testifies that the person spoke in God's name. God can no more permit someone to abuse knowledge received from him to deceive people than he can permit someone to abuse a miracle for deceiving them. The more evidently an envoy appears to be endowed with the gift of prophecy, the more forceful this argument is (cf. what I wrote in «Theologische Zeitfragen» V, 110 sqq).

102. Objection I. The prediction of future things is impossible precisely because free acts would thereby occur necessarily. Therefore, it must not be admitted.

I answer. I distinguish the antecedent: they would occur necessarily by consequent necessity, I concede the antecedent; by antecedent necessity, I deny the antecedent. Consequent necessity, however, does not hinder freedom. Just as an act, when it is done freely, cannot at the same time not exist, so an act that is going to happen cannot at the same time not be going to happen. This necessity is called consequent because it follows the present or future existence of the act; in this way even free acts are necessary. Antecedent necessity, on the other hand, exists when an act is already determined antecedently to its existence in its causes, as happens in all nonfree agents, which always produce the same effects under the same conditions. We will discuss this further later in the treatise on God's foreknowledge.

103. Objection II. Predictions are usually so indeterminate that we cannot judge with certainty whether they have been fulfilled. Therefore, they are useless.

I answer. This is a question of fact, which we shall examine later. For now, however, it is useful to note a certain trick of rationalists. When a prediction seems less determinate, they say, “It proves nothing.” When it is very determinate, they say, “This could not have been known so precisely before the event; therefore, it is a prediction made after the event.” They speak in this way for no other reason than that they hate predictions a priori just as much as miracles.

104. Objection III. The pagans, too, had oracles and other predictions, yet their religion was not divine. Therefore, predictions do not prove the divine origin of religion.

I answer. There is a great difference between the oracles of the pagans and true predictions, because those oracles were often ambiguous, as in this one: «Croesus, by crossing the Halys, will destroy a great kingdom» (that is, either he will overthrow the kingdom of his enemies or his own); they were often false. Cicero writes: «You [Apollo] have filled an entire volume with your oracles, partly false, as I think, partly true by chance, as often happens in every kind of speech, partly equivocal and obscure, so that an interpreter needs another interpreter and the oracle itself must be referred to other oracles, partly ambiguous and of a kind that must be brought before the dialecticians» (De divinat. 2, 56). True predictions, however, as we have said, must be certain and determinate.

There is another difference between true prophets and the pagan seers. The Pythia and other seers, raging in madness, uttered things they themselves did not understand. A true prophet is enlightened by God so as rightly to perceive what has been revealed and to be able to teach others. St. Paul already indicates this difference (1 Cor 12, 2; 14, 32 sq). The many shameful things that occurred in the oracles of the pagans sufficiently show that if some higher power was present there, it was a diabolical power, as many Fathers teach; this is supported by the fact that the oracles fell silent at the presence of Christ's servants (cf. Praelect. dogm. III, n. 414). For the rest, it is difficult to judge which things there were human frauds and which were operations of demons (cf. Fr. Leitner, Die prophetische Inspiration, Freiburg 1896, 29 sq).

It is not incompatible with reason that God gave revelation to the pagans, not to confirm idolatry but to lead them to the truth. Not a few Fathers judge that the Sibylline books truly contain divine prophecies about the future Messiah. But those books, in the form in which they now exist, are partly Jewish and partly Christian in origin. Hence we learn scarcely anything from them about the prophecies of the pagans (cf. C. Alexandre, Oracula Sibyllina, Parisiis 1856).

Somnambulism, magnetism, spiritism, and similar phenomena are not to be compared with prophecies, because the doctrine of the prophets is sound and promotes the moral and religious order¹, and is directed to ends worthy of God; those phenomena, by contrast, are morbid, harmful to soul and body, and often joined with evil moral effects. Magnetism and the more obscure phenomena of psychic life are usually treated in philosophy (cf. T. Pesch, Institutiones psychologicae II, Friburgi 1897, n. 695 sqq) and in moral theology (cf. Lehmkuhl, Theologia moralis I¹¹, n. 499 sqq). Therefore, it seems that nothing further need be added here.