Cursus Theologicus, Tomus I: In Primam Partem

73 Because Augustine and Thomas are the two lights of the Church, by whom true Theology shines forth to us, therefore, after we have explained what is to be said about the possibility of middle knowledge according to Augustine's mind, it is necessary that we explain what is to be thought on this very matter according to the mind of the Angelic Doctor. In the heading, however, we inquire not about the mind of St. Thomas in just any sense, but about his mind as drawn from his own testimonies and (so to speak) proved a priori. For as we hunted down Augustine's mind in the double difficulty, in one of them indeed as it were a priori, but in the other as it were a posteriori, so we shall take care to do the same for this very matter of the mind of the Angelic Doctor.

§ I. Affirmative opinion.

The affirmative side is upheld by Suarez, prol. 2. de scientia conditionata cap. 6, Herice, tractatu 1. in 1. part. disp. 7. cap. 6, and others among the more moderns. It is proved, first, that St. Thomas, 3. part. quaest. 1. art. 3. ad 4, says: predestination supposes the foreknowledge of future things; but this foreknowledge, which predestination supposes, cannot, on the way of the holy Doctor, be other than middle knowledge; therefore, etc. The minor is proved. Because absolute foreknowledge of future things follows rather upon predestination, according to the opinion of St. Thomas, infra quaest. 23, and the common way of his disciples.

74 Secondly, that the same holy Doctor, in the aforesaid quaestione, art. 2 and 6, in order to give the reason of the decree by which God provided that the Incarnation should neither be ordered to be carried out immediately at the beginning of the world, nor be deferred to its end, says: that it is to be taken from the foreknowledge of the future free effects which would be in the human race, if in one of those last times Christ were to assume flesh, or were not to assume it: but this knowledge cannot be other than middle knowledge, that is, conditional knowledge: therefore, etc.

The minor is proved. Because there belongs to the aforesaid knowledge that which is proper to middle knowledge, namely, that it is understood before the decree about the time of the future Incarnation, on which the aforesaid effects would have depended if they had been ordered into execution; and that it is terminated in the conditioned effects: and so many of those effects did not in fact come about: because the condition was not fulfilled, that faith should be abolished in the world, if the Incarnation were deferred to the end of the world itself: which yet afterwards did not come about, for want of the fulfilment of the condition.

75 Thirdly, it is proved from the same St. Thomas, quaest. 24. de verit. art. 14, where he says: All external movements, however, are governed by divine providence, according as He Himself judges that someone is to be moved to good by these or those actions. In these words the holy Doctor is speaking of that judgement of God by which He knows the will to be moved to a good, and by which He governs it so that it is moved: but that this judgement is not absolute foreknowledge of the movement is clear from the fact that absolute foreknowledge supposes a decree of moving; whereas the judgement, by which the human will is duly moved and directed, precedes the decree, since through it God sets before His will the manner in which the human will is to be governed by Him, so that afterwards through the decree He carries that out: therefore such foreknowledge will be conditional foreknowledge, whose property it is to precede the decree and to move about future things.

76 Fourthly, it is proved from the same St. Thomas, 3. part. quaest. 1. art. 5. ad 2, where, asking why the Incarnation of Christ was made at such a time and not earlier, he brings forward first a certain answer of Augustine, epistola 49. de 6. quaestionibus Paganorum, quaest. 2, namely, that He then willed Christ to appear, when and where He knew those who were going to believe in Him. That same Augustine reproves this answer, lib. 1. de Dono perseverant. cap. 9, by the example of the Tyrians and Sidonians, who were going to believe in Him: and yet Christ willed not to preach to them, and willed not to appear at that time: where Augustine gives another solution in the same book, chapter 11, which St. Thomas also approves, namely: That it is not of one willing, nor of one running, but of one pitying God, who came to the help of those whom He foreknew would have believed, if His miracles had been worked among them, and with such miracles as He willed; but He did not come to the help of others, about whom in His predestination, hidden indeed but justly, He judged otherwise: therefore St. Thomas holds with Augustine that, before the efficacious decree of assisting and predestining, God foreknew that some would believe through His miracles, if these were worked among them, and not by the force of the decree: because the decree of predestination to assist was not yet understood even then: therefore, prior to the decree of God, there is given in this a foreknowledge of the future conditioned.

77 Lastly, that St. Thomas, 2. 2. quaest. 174. art. 1, and quaest. 12. de Verit. art. 10, distinguishing the prophecy of predestination from that of foreknowledge, teaches that each prophecy looks to the future: but their fulfilment takes place in two ways. In one way, from the divine operation alone, such as the conception of Christ and the raising of Lazarus: and according to this it is the prophecy of predestination: because, as Damascene says, lib. 2. fidei cap. 3, those things which God predestines are not in us. Some, however, are fulfilled by the operation of other causes, whether natural or voluntary: and these, in so far as they are fulfilled by other causes, are not predestined, yet they are foreknown: whence it is said that the prophecy of these is according to the foreknowledge: therefore St. Thomas holds that those future things which do not depend on God alone, but are fulfilled by other causes, in so far as they are thus fulfilled, are not predestined, and are not decreed or established by the will of God. For predestination, taken in the common sense (as it is understood here), and the fore-definition of it coincide. Therefore, since according to that same Angelic Doctor those things are foreknown by God, it plainly follows that, according to his mind, some foreknowledge of future things must be admitted which is completed through our free choice and is not founded on the predefinition and decree of God; and consequently middle knowledge, which consists in this, as is clear from what has been said.

§ II. True opinion.

78 It must be said, however, that according to the mind of St. Augustine the Doctor, as drawn from his testimonies, middle knowledge, that is, conditional knowledge, or that which is found in God before the efficacious decree of His will and moves about things that are future in some way, is to be admitted for no reason. And so too all the Doctors whom we shall bring forward in favour of our opinion in this same disputation, in the last difficulty. It is proved, first, from St. Thomas, quaest. 6. de Verit. art. 3. ad 4, where, when he was asking whether predestination has certainty, and had objected to himself in the fourth argument, on the side of the negative, in these words: But on the contrary, all certainty which is with the supposition of something is not absolute certainty, but conditional, just as it is not certain that the Sun causes fruit in a plant, unless with this condition, that the generative virtue in the plant were well disposed; because the disposition of the Sun towards the aforesaid effect presupposes the virtue of the plant as it were a secondary cause. If, therefore, the certainty of predestination were with the presupposition of a secondary cause, it is not absolute certainty, but only conditional: just as in me there is the certainty that Socrates moves if he runs, and that this man will be saved if he prepares himself: and so there is not in divine predestination any other certainty about those who are to be saved than there is in me, which is absurd. Since, therefore, the holy Doctor had thus objected to himself, he answers in these words: To the fourth it is to be said that the secondary cause, which must be supposed in order to induce the effect of predestination, is also subject to the order of predestination: but it is not so in the lower powers with respect to some higher power of an agent: and therefore the order of divine predestination, although it is with the supposition of the human will, nevertheless has absolute certainty, even if the contrary appears in the example introduced. In these words, according to the holy Doctor, a manifest overthrow of middle knowledge, that is, of conditional knowledge, is contained. For the adversaries, positing it, strive to deny the absolute efficacy of the decree: and so far they admit only a decree which rests on conditional knowledge and awaits the operation of the secondary cause. St. Thomas, however, posits absolute certainty in the order, or causality, of divine predestination, that is, of the causally determining decree. For predestination imports causality, as the adversaries themselves also confess: and so he says that future things which depend on free secondary causes, such as the effects of predestination, are known by God's knowledge with absolute certainty and by an absolute decree, without that knowledge awaiting those things which happen from secondary causes, so as to see there the future effects according to a conditional certainty that is prior.

79 Secondly, it is proved. For the same holy Doctor, in this quaestione, art. 8. ad 1, and in the places cited in disp. 5. num. 29, and subsequently cited, expressly asserts that God does not foreknow something because it is future; but on the contrary, it is future because God foreknows it, namely by His own knowledge, conjoined with efficacious will, as we said there: therefore, according to the holy Doctor, prior to such foreknowledge, according as it has efficacious will conjoined to it, no futurition in things can be determinately and infallibly known by God: since before this, according to this doctrine of St. Thomas, there is no determinate and infallible futurition in things; and consequently middle knowledge, that is, conditional knowledge, cannot be given prior to the aforesaid decree, through which certain future things would be known, since before it there is no future thing which has the character of a determinate and infallible future.

80 Thirdly, it is proved by those several and diverse testimonies of St. Thomas with which we showed in disp. 7 and 8 that future things absolutely so called cannot, according to his own mind, be infallibly known by God before the efficacious decree of His will, nor their presence in eternity. For as is clear from them, in the order to this knowledge St. Thomas has recourse only to their real presence in eternity, in which the efficacious decree of God about such presence is also involved, as is clear from itself and from what is said there: and so there too he denies that any other objective presence is possible, as we expounded in the place cited: from the fact that, according to the holy Doctor and truth itself, just as no future thing can have a determinate and infallible being except either in itself or in its causes, which are (so to speak) made infallible in the order towards the production of such a thing; so likewise no future thing can be infallibly known by God except either if it has in itself really being, not indeed in its own duration, but in the common and surpassing duration, that is, in eternity, or in its causes, which are (so to speak) made infallible in the order towards its production: and since, according to the holy Doctor, in order for the infallible knowledge of conditioned future things one cannot have recourse to their presence in eternity, since according to his doctrine those things alone which are going to have existence in some difference of time are present in it; and one cannot have recourse to any objective presence prior to the decree, since, once future things absolutely so called cannot have any objective presence before the efficacious decree of God proportionate to them, neither will conditioned future things have it before the efficacious decree proportionate to them, that is, before the condition: it follows that, according to the mind of that same holy Doctor, for the aforesaid knowledge one can have recourse only to the efficacious decree, and under the condition under which God decrees their conditioned existence.

81 It is confirmed and explained. For according to the doctrine of the holy Doctor and of all theologians, conditioned future things will never be anything in themselves, even if they existed, should the condition be posited; and so they will not be able to found the knowability according to real being which they have in themselves: and then, in so far as they are precisely contained in their own proximate secondary causes, prior to the divine decree they do not have infallible being, nor can they found infallible knowledge, as we saw from that same holy Doctor in this article and in the places recently cited: therefore they can found it only by reason of the divine decree, efficacious and infallible: because no other head remains from which they may found it, as is clear from itself and from what has been said.

§ III. Solutions of the arguments of the affirmative side.

82 To the first it will be answered, by granting the major and denying the minor. Because there St. Thomas is speaking of absolute futures and of the knowledge of those, such as was original sin, whose foreknowledge the predestination of Christ supposes according to the doctrine of the holy Doctor. And in answer to the proof to the contrary it is to be said for the present, with Alvarez, lib. 1. suarum responsionum cap. 2, that there are two kinds of future things; one, which are the effects of predestination, for example, our Lord Christ; and the other, which are the effects of another providence, such as several of the natural effects, for example human nature, and the permission of original sin. Whence, although the former effects and the foreknowledge of them are not supposed in the predestination of our Lord Christ, the latter are so well; yet neither these nor those can be known as future before the efficacious decree involved in the predestination of Christ, or of that providence of which they are the effects.

We have said, for the present: because a deeper exposition of this testimony of St. Thomas depends on those things which we have to say more widely in the tractates on Predestination and on the Incarnation; yet whichever exposition be adopted, foreknowledge of future things must always suppose the efficacious decree of God.

83 To the second the major is to be granted and the minor denied. For those who were going to believe in fact, on Christ's arrival, could be known by God in the decree of the predestination of that same Lord Christ, provided it be explained in its own place: but that utterly the knowledge of God, and reverence, and the honesty of morals would be abolished, if the Incarnation were deferred to the end of the world, was known by God in the efficacious and conditional decree which He had concerning this.

84 To the third it will be answered, first, that St. Thomas is to be understood as speaking of the judgement which supposes the efficacious decree of the intention of the end: because in the doctrine of the holy Doctor, providence supposes the aforesaid intention of the end.

Secondly, it is answered that when the Angelic Doctor says that all external movements are governed by divine providence, according as He Himself judges that someone is to be moved to good by these or those actions, He is speaking of the imperative judgement, which is the same as providence itself, and supposes both the intention of the end and the choice of means, and what this involves, and as it were infers an efficacious decree about the execution of such a movement. Whence that is false which is added in the same argument, namely that the foreknowledge of which the holy Doctor speaks there is not absolute foreknowledge: and likewise that is false which is adduced there in support of this proof, namely that the aforesaid judgement is that by which God sets before His will the manner in which the human will is to be governed by Him, so as afterwards to carry it out by decree, if the sense of this is that the judgement of which St. Thomas speaks in the aforesaid words is before every efficacious decree of the divine will: but otherwise if the sense of it is that it is before some decree of God, that is, before the decree which corresponds, setting aside the perfections, to the act of the use of our will, whether that virtually or only on the part of our mode of conceiving, from the preceding decrees (about which a distinction is made elsewhere). Whence, although God through the knowledge of simple intelligence had a judgement prior to every decree, by which He judged the possibility of this movement to good by these or those actions; nevertheless the judgement by which He judged such a movement to be future, and which is practical and the cause of its futurition, must follow upon the efficacious decree of the divine will, as has been said.

85 To the fourth it will be answered, that those words of Augustine, and consequently the words of the Angelic Doctor, who embraces his opinion, are to be understood according to the rule which we have laid down in this disputation from num. 44 to 47, and num. 56, namely, either with prejudice to the hidden counsel, and the height of the wisdom and knowledge of God, or without prejudice of the efficacious divine decree. Whence, at least for the present, it is to be said that God knew all those future things of which there is mention in this argument in some one of these decrees, that is, either in the decree of the Incarnation, in which He knew the faith to be absolutely future of those who were going to believe absolutely, after the preaching of the Gospel of Christ and the ratification of His miracles had been actually made in their presence, or in the other conditional decrees, by which, those future things being considered in a state of condition, God decreed that some would believe, if they had seen the miracles of Christ; but that others would not believe, even if they had seen them. Nor is that true which is said in this argument, namely that the faith cannot be absolutely future of those who were going to believe in fact to be known in the decree of the Incarnation, on the ground that the aforesaid decree is posterior to such faith. For, as will be clear from what has been said elsewhere and from what is to be said in tom. 5. tract. de Incarnat., the decree of the Incarnation is absolutely and simply prior to such faith, even as it is present in eternity.

86 To the last it will be answered, that when St. Thomas distinguishes the prophecy of predestination from that of foreknowledge, He is not speaking of predestination taken generally, in so far as it is the same as the predefinition and the decree that is prior concerning any thing whatever; but strictly speaking, of the predestination of that which is from God alone, as He Himself explains in the same place in the answer to the third and the fourth. Whence predestination can be taken in a threefold sense, namely, either most universally, in so far as it means only this, that a creature is transmitted to some end, whether that end be natural or supernatural, which acceptance is not proper, but abusive and loose, as the same holy Doctor notes, infra quaest. 23. art. 2. ad 2. In a second sense it is taken more strictly, in so far as it means the transmission of the rational creature alone to a supernatural end: and since this transmission takes place by the grace of God, and grace is from God alone, therefore, as we shall explain in tractate 5. disp. 1, it is called properly predestination, although it also touches our own free acts, by which we are transmitted to that end. In this sense the same holy Doctor teaches, quaest. 10. de Veritate art. 10. ad 4, that our merit is not subject to the predestination of God, except according as it is from grace, which is from God alone. Whence that which is from our own free choice is said to be subject to predestination accidentally.

Lastly, predestination is taken most strictly for the predestination, or the predetermination, of that which is done by God alone and has a necessary effect, no freedom of ours intervening: in which sense the Angelic Doctor teaches, infra quaest. 23. art. 1. ad 1, that Damascene speaks when he says that God does not predetermine those things which are in us, that is, by a predetermination which imposes a necessity. Whence, when the Angelic Doctor says in the argument adduced in that place, that some things are foreknown by God which are not predestined, this must be understood of predestination taken in those last two senses, as He Himself explains there; but not of predestination taken in the first sense, in so far as it is the same as the efficacious decree, prior, of the divine will.