Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

ON THE SPIRITUALITY OF GOD, AND ON DIVINE KNOWLEDGE CONSIDERED IN ITSELF.

God is spirit.

« It is contained in the complex of perfections which we have declared, that God is infinite spirit: therefore, when in Scripture God is said to be spirit, this must be understood in the most proper sense. This is demonstrated expressly from the context of Io. IV. 24., and from the dependence of created spirits and of all spiritual perfections on God the spirit. »

I. By the name spirit we understand a substance which a) negatively has no real parts, whether constituent or integral; but is simple and one in itself, without distinction and dispersion into several components, at least substantial. This simplicity, however, we understand in spirit not only as the negation of parts, but positively as the intrinsic essential nobility of being, which surpasses, in some sense at least infinitely, the grade of substances having perfection in the composition and from the composition of parts; so that, of course, no intensification of such perfections can attain to that nobility, but it is a nobility superior in its whole order. For spirit is, and is understood to be, a b) substance immaterial, that is, negatively not inert, nor acting only outside itself, nor in intrinsic action restricted to composites and dependent on composition; but which positively has life in itself, and that intellectual life: namely, from its very essence it is so ordered that by a vital act it understands the true and has formal truth in itself, and by a vital act tends toward the good known under the aspect of good, and embraces it with love, and is blessed in the good. Moreover, in all these inner vital acts the spirit at the same time has an inner consciousness of its acts, and a consciousness of itself as substantial principle. Finally, c) from the very simplicity, nobility, and intellectuality of being and life of spirit, it is by its nature immortal, in its substance unchangeable, and with respect to place exempt and superior to the modes of existing to which bodies are subject in space. The more perfect this simplicity and intellectuality is, the more perfect is the nature of spirit.

Now from what has been demonstrated in the preceding theses: a) God is most pure act, in whom, on account of his essential perfection, not only physical composition from real parts but also metaphysical composition from parts considered according to reason is absolutely repugnant. b) He is not only an intellectual substance, having the faculty of embracing the true and the good by his vital acts; but he is essentially one substantive act, which is identically both absolute truth and infinite understanding of truth, and absolute good and infinite love of good, and thus in himself and in the fullness of his perfection is an absolute infinite beatitude. c) Just as God is absolute unchangeable truth, goodness, substantial active power and pure act; so every succession, and every limitation of presence, is wholly repugnant to his perfection: he himself is his eternity and his immensity.

This life of infinite understanding, will and beatitude is not only an inner act of the divine substance; but it is the eternal and immense divine substance itself. « He is wholly thought, wholly will, wholly mind, wholly light, wholly eye, wholly hearing, wholly the fountain of all good things » Iren. 1.I. c.12. n.2.¹. Hence the divine understanding and will is not only independent of all things which are, or can be thought, outside itself, but is the principle, exemplar and cause from which depends every truth, every good, every life, every understanding, every love of good, every beatitude. God is therefore infinite spirit, because he is the intellectual life of infinite perfection, ἡ ζωὴ, τὸ φῶς, ἡ ἀγάπη, ἡ αὐτοζωὴ, ἡ αὐτοσοφία, ἡ αὐτοαγαθότης (Dionys. div. nom. c. 2. 5.); he is spirit in an eminent sense, to whom created spirits, and whatever spiritual thing is conceived apart from him, are only images and likenesses. Hence the nearer creatures are to the image and likeness of God, the more properly they are spirits. In the Scriptures themselves the human soul, according to its intellectual faculties, is called spiritus πνεῦμα, to distinguish it from the sensitive faculties, according to which the same substance, informing and animating the body, is called anima ψυχή. Hence, moreover, those intellectual substances which are not ordered to the body through such sensitive faculties are of a nobler order and are pure spirits. Further, the soul elevated by supernatural gifts, which are and are called spiritual, is called spiritualis πνεῦμα; the whole man through this elevation is πνευματικὸς in comparison with the purely natural condition, according to which he is called carnal σαρκικὸς². If therefore the thing itself is considered, which we wish to express philosophically and theologically by the name spiritus, God is and is called spirit in the most proper sense, although, with regard to the imposition of the name, it is said of creatures before it is said of God, which it has in common with nearly all the other names by which we designate the divine perfections (see above Coroll. 1. ad th. XIII.).

II. It is utterly absurd, as is clear from what has been said, what George Hermes taught, that the spiritual nature of God cannot be demonstrated by any other valid argument except that which is supplied in the text Io. IV. 24: God is spirit. Indeed the whole force of this very saying of the Saviour cannot be sufficiently understood unless the other chapters of revealed doctrine, concerning the simplicity and intellectual life which God is, are compared at the same time. Yet with this comparison made, it is most true that in those words of Christ there is comprehended, as it were, a synthesis of all those things which have been demonstrated in the preceding theses concerning the essence, truth, goodness and simplicity of God; for that the nature of God is wholly spiritual is indeed proved from the context, this clause being stated.

In this discourse with the Samaritan woman, Io. IV. 20–24., Christ the Lord deduces from the spiritual nature of God that the worship of God must be spiritual: « God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. »

Therefore, that it may be proved from the context itself in what sense God is called spirit, it must be inquired in what sense the divine worship which the Lord promises is said to be « in spirit and truth. » Again, that we may understand this other point, it must be defined what opposition is, and what is not, there established between the worship of the old dispensation and the worship promised by the New Testament.

Here one must distinguish between the things which are opposed, and the formal reason under which they are opposed. The things which are opposed are not merely external worship and merely internal worship, as the pseudo-mystic heretics asserted, and as impious men now say, who would wish all external worship removed. The woman asks not about any adoration of God whatever, but about that which the Samaritans gave in the temple of Mount Garizim, and the Jews in the temple of Jerusalem only; this was the adoration of public and sacerdotal worship, carried out specifically through sacrifices. Whence also in the opposition public and sacerdotal worship of the New Testament must be understood. This sense is proved both from the question, which concerned public adoration, and from the identity of the word in each member. « Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. » « The hour comes, when neither on this mountain nor at Jerusalem will you worship..... The hour comes, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father also seeks such to worship him: God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth »³. But public and sacerdotal worship cannot be merely internal. Therefore the things which are mutually opposed cannot be the merely external worship of the Old Testament and the merely internal worship of the New Testament. But the formal reason under which the opposition is set up must be understood as that which in each worship corresponds to the proper character of the dispensation to which it belongs. In the old dispensation this is indeed external, ceremonial, typical, in itself ineffective, and, as the Apostle speaks (2. Cor. III. 6. sq.; Heb. IX. 10.), a ministry of the letter, deformed, and a justice of the flesh; but in the worship of the New Testament the proper character, arising from the very nature of the dispensation of grace, is that which is internal, spiritual, efficacious unto justification in spirit. Christ the Lord therefore sets over against the typical worship, and so far imperfect, a perfect worship prefigured by it; for in this sense adoration is said to be in truth, and the worshippers are said to be true⁴. With the imperfection of the type coheres the fact that worship, insofar as it is proper to that typical dispensation, is external; and under this formal reason the worship of the New Testament is set over against it as adoration in spirit: « the hour comes, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. » But adoration in spirit, consisting in dispositions, thoughts and affections of the soul, in faith, hope and charity, under this formal reason is something spiritual, freed from all material things; it is an entirely intellectual life in acts which in the proper sense are and are called spiritual; from this spirituality worship has its perfection, so that it is adoration in truth.

Hence this is the conclusion: adoration in spirit and truth is required from the proper nature of God, because God is spirit: « God is spirit, and (by Hebraism, the particle of inference = ergo) those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. » Now in the phrase « to worship in spirit » the word spirit is necessarily taken in the negating sense of what is material and corporeal, and affirming supernatural intellectual life in faith, hope and charity. Therefore also when God is called spirit, as the demonstration why spiritual worship is due to him, Christ the Lord understood, and wished to be understood, spirit in the negating sense of what is material, and in the affirming sense of intellectual substance and life, according to the concept of spirit set forth a little before, in n. I.

By a nearly similar reasoning, 2. Cor. III. describes the Christian dispensation, in its goods and gifts, as spiritual, to which is opposed the external dispensation and the legislation written on tables and in letters. But the principle of the charisms is called « the Spirit of the living God; » consequently the ministry of the New Testament is « the ministration of the Spirit. » Now the author of the charisms is understood to be not indeed a quality, but a subsisting and personal substance; for the Apostle concludes: « Now the Lord is the Spirit » (ὁ δὲ κύριος τὸ πνεῦμά ἐστιν). Moreover, there is no need to appeal to the texts of Scripture by which the spiritual nature and essence of God is set forth, since the whole revealed doctrine concerning the relations of God to creatures demonstrates this very thing evidently.

III. God is not only, as Creator and Conserver, « God of the spirits of all flesh » (Num. XVI. 22; Iob XII. 10.) and « lover of souls » (Sap. XI. 27.); but he is described more distinctly as the sun of intelligible things (ἥλιος τοῖς νοητοῖς), as Gregory Nazianzen says (or. 21. n. 1; or. 28. n. 30. Cf. supra th.XI.n.II.). For God is the principle, in general, of all life, Ps. CIII. (heb. 104.) 30; Iob XXXIII. 4. Specifically he is the fount of intellectual life, « an illuminating light, » first indeed in the natural order also: he himself « gave the heart to think and created the knowledge of spirit » Ecclesi. XVII. 5. 6. Then he is the fount of intellectual life in the supernatural order; for what has not come up into the eye, the ear, the heart of man, that is, into natural knowledge, this « God revealed through his Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God » 1. Cor. II. 9.10. « The Spirit of the Lord is the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and fortitude, the Spirit of knowledge and piety » Is. XI. 2. He alone is the principle of all spiritual charisms, which are referred either to the intellect or to the will: « all these things are wrought by one and the same Spirit » 1. Cor. XII. 4. sqq.; « there are diversities of graces, but the same Spirit; » and in the same Spirit is given wisdom, knowledge, the working of virtues, prophecy, discernment of spirits, 1. Cor. 1. c. Finally the same Spirit, by his very gifts, transforms created spirits into the same image, from glory to glory, 2. Cor. III. 18.⁵, so that finally they are made one spirit with the Spirit himself, who is for them the principle and ultimate end, not indeed in substance but by union and likeness, 1. Cor. VI. 17. All these things, however, are wrought by one Spirit, abiding in himself without any change in himself. « The artificer of all things, wisdom… for in her is a spirit of understanding, holy, unique, manifold… having all power, overseeing all things, and passing through all spirits that are intelligent, pure, most subtle… and, since she is one, she can do all things, and remaining in herself she renews all things, and through the nations passes into holy souls, and makes friends of God and prophets » Sap. VII. 21-27.⁶

Thus God is declared to us as absolute understanding and substantial will abiding in himself, or he is declared as personal spirit abiding in himself, so that by no division or emanation of himself, but by his free volition, he is the principle and cause of intellects, wills, finite spirits, and of all substances, powers and spiritual faculties; and so he is said to be principle, because and insofar as he is himself creator of spirit. Therefore not only from the metaphysical principle, that the perfection of an effect necessarily pre-exists in its cause either formally or eminently, but also from the express declarations of Scripture, the dependence of all spiritual effects on God as on an exemplar and efficient cause demonstrates that God is spirit according to all the senses by which these simple perfections, without limitation, can be designated by this name.

The divine essence itself is infinite understanding and comprehension.¹

That God is absolute perfection, and consequently absolute truth, and that he is most simple, and that he is spirit infinite in perfection, has been proved in the preceding theses. Because therefore he is spirit, he is understood to be a substance whose life is understanding; because he is most simple, his understanding is the divine substance itself; and likewise he neither is nor can be conceived to be in power, but of necessity is ἐντελέχεια and the purest act of understanding.

Yet because the concept of essence is other than that of understanding, the one is distinguished from the other according to reason. Therefore Being absolute, in comparison with understanding, has the character of knowable object; and because it is Being of infinite perfection, it is infinite also in the character of knowability, or in the character of truth, to which no understanding except an infinite one can be perfectly adequated.

Further, the divine act of understanding is as infinite as the object of understanding is infinite, because it is really the divine essence itself and that object. The act of understanding is therefore perfectly proportioned to its infinite object.

Since, finally, understanding is the adequation of the intellect to the object, where actual infinite understanding is really identical with the infinite object itself according to every aspect of its infinite knowability, there is certainly a perfect adequation of the intellect with the object, as far as the object is knowable. This adequation is and is called comprehension. We understand God, therefore, insofar as he is an act of infinite understanding adequated to himself as the infinitely knowable truth, to be the perfect comprehension of himself; and because the act of understanding is the divine substance itself, he is substantial comprehension of himself.

So that such abstract names may be rightly understood, what we said about the divine simplicity above on p. 306 must be recalled. We use abstract names, namely, to express the divine perfections in some measure, for a double reason: both that we may signify the fullness of perfection, and that we may declare simplicity with every composition, even metaphysical, excluded. We say, e. g.: God is wisdom; because in God there is no wisdom restricted to some degree, but he is the whole reason of absolute wisdom, and because wisdom is not, as in creatures, something superadded to substance and essence, but essence itself, from its intrinsic nature, is wisdom. Therefore in the same way we also use those abstract names which in creatures signify immanent action. God is infinite understanding, volition, efficacy (ἐνέργεια). By these names we signify that understanding and will and omnipotence, just as the essence itself is, so are in intrinsic reason in the perfection of act; not, however, as a faculty which proceeds to the act of understanding, willing, effecting. When therefore it is said that God is substantial comprehension of his essence, this means that the divine essence is the divine intellect, and that the intellect is essentially in the perfection of act, and so is understanding; whence it comes about that the infinite divine understanding is adequated to the infinite divine essence, according to which adequation the understanding is called comprehension.

Corollary. If the divine understanding is considered insofar as in reason it is distinguished from its object, which is the divine essence, it can be compared, by analogy with our knowledge, with direct knowledge; but if understanding is viewed insofar as it is the divine essence itself, and so is object to itself, there corresponds to it analogically reflex knowledge, by which we know our own act of knowing.

God, from his essence and from the infinity of his understanding, necessarily knows every truth.

« The divine essence, as infinite truth and first intelligible, from which no truth can be independent, and as the exemplary idea both of all possibles and of all those that at some time really exist, objectively presents to the divine intellect whatever has the character of truth; and moreover, understanding itself, considered formally, is by its infinity the representation of every truth. God therefore, through his own essence and from the infinity of his understanding, is determined to the comprehension of every truth. •

1°. We can consider the divine essence in three ways: a) as absolute being and truth, on which all things depend and by whose analogical participation are all things that have the character of being and of truth. See above th. XXVIII. n. II. Now, while absolute Being and absolute truth are understood by a perfect comprehension, both intensively and extensively, by that very comprehension there are necessarily understood all things which, depending on him, either are in act or can be. Therefore God, comprehending his essence as absolute Being and first truth, from which all being and every participated truth depends, by the same act of understanding necessarily comprehends every truth.

b) The divine essence may be considered more expressly, insofar as it is the idea and exemplar, imitable externally through all the grades, reasons and relations of participated being and participated truth. Moreover, that infinite exemplar may be considered as it were in first act, so that its adumbrations outside it are only possible. In this way it is evident that comprehension of the exemplar is at the same time comprehension of all the possible adumbrations of it, or comprehension of the whole participated being in the metaphysical order and in the ideal state. This imitability of the divine essence in first act is as necessary as the essence itself. Wherefore this understanding of imitability, and of the whole being through which it is imitable, is necessary by that very fact, because the term of understanding is necessary. But if the divine exemplar is considered in second act, insofar as some imitation is actual and some existing ectype of that intelligible and intelligent exemplar or divine idea, this actual imitation is not necessary but contingent; yet on the hypothesis that it really exists, the divine understanding cannot comprehend the exemplar itself, from which the ectype depends by real, continuous and essential dependence, under every aspect of knowability, without at the same time comprehending all its actual expressions and imitations depending on it.

c) The divine essence is also infinite, insofar as it is the representation of truth, that is, wisdom and understanding formally representing truth. But it would not be an infinite representation, unless in it there shone forth and were represented every truth, both in the order of essences and of ideal possibles, and in the order of the actual existences of all participated being.

2°. Although this whole account of the divine knowledge is manifest from the principles handed down above concerning absolute perfection, simplicity, and truth, it can nevertheless be directly confirmed from the teaching of Scripture.

In the Scriptures it is declared above all as a proper perfection of divine wisdom that it knows and beholds all things from eternity, before they come to be in time. « The eyes of the Lord are far brighter than the sun, looking round about on all the ways of men, beholding the hearts and the hidden parts.»¹ For to the Lord God all things are known before they are created, and so also after they are made he regards all things « Ecclesi. XXIII. 28. 29. (graece 19. 20.). The intrinsic reason of this perfection is set forth in the sacred books in this way: that all things depend upon wisdom itself, or that she herself is the artificer, and therefore contains the reasons of all things, or that the efficacy of the divine gaze penetrates all things. « You have understood my thoughts from afar..... you have foreseen all my ways... Behold, O Lord, you have known the last things and the things of old: you have formed me² and laid your hand upon me » Psalm. CXXXVIII. 3. sqq. « What is richer than wisdom, which works all things? If, however, sense (φρονησις) works, who of those things that are is more the artificer than she? And if anyone desires the abundance of knowledge, she knows the things past, and estimates the things to come... she knows signs and wonders before they come to pass, and the outcomes of times and ages » Sap. VIII. 5-8. In almost the same way Ecclesiasticus joins the knowledge of all things with creating omnipotence. « The works of the Lord are all very good... The works of every flesh are before him, nor is anything hidden from his eyes: from age to age he looks, and nothing is wonderful in his sight. It is not to be said, What is this? or What is that? for all things shall be sought in their time »³ Ecclesi. XXXIX. 21-26. (graece 16-21.). Cf. Psalm. XXXII. 15; Is. XLI. 22-23; XLIV. 7. 8; XLV. 21; XLVI. 9. 10; Baruch III. 31. 32; Dan. XIII. 42. This same reason, why God knows all things, is contained in those places in which all things are said to depend on God under the aspect of wisdom, or on the Word, and all things to have been made and to consist through him. Wisdom is « a spotless mirror of God's majesty » (Greek: a mirror of the power and efficacy of God, or rather of the purest act, from which all things depend, ἐσοπτρον ἀκηλίδωτον τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ ἐνεργείας) Sap. VIII. 26; wisdom is « the beginning of the ways of the Lord, before he made anything, from the beginning » Prov. VIII. 22; through the Word which was in the beginning with God, all things were made, Io. I. 3. 4.

Therefore, as far as the omnipotence of God extends, so far extend his wisdom and knowledge. As in God omnipotence and wisdom are one simple Being: so in objects outside God, whatever depends on the divine Being and whatever is subject to omnipotence, that is, whatever in any order has the character of being, is necessarily subject to divine wisdom and knowledge. For « he who planted the ear, shall he not hear? or he who formed the eye, shall he not consider? » Psal. XCIII. 9. If, however, the most pure Being and the omnipotence of God are distinguished by reason from his wisdom, in this as in a most clean mirror shines forth the whole reason of being, or the universal truth, which depends on the power of the first and absolute Being.

3°. The doctrine of the Fathers explicitly declares the mode of God's knowledge from his essence as from the principle, exemplar, and representation of every being, and consequently of all truth. « It is not possible, says Pantaenus in the second century, that he who is above beings should receive knowledge of beings according to beings; but we say that beings know him as his own wills » Routh Reliq. sacr. T. I. p. 340.⁴. Most eloquently Dionysius, de div. nom. c. 7. §. 2., discusses this whole matter. « The divine mind comprehends all things by a certain eminent knowledge, by which, according to the cause of all things, it anticipates in itself the knowledge of all things (πάντων εἰδῆσιν προειλήφως)… and this, I think, Scripture signifies when it says: he who knows all things before they come to be (Dan. XIII. 42.). For the divine mind does not learn beings and know them from beings themselves; but from itself and in itself, according to the reason of cause, it has beforehand and comprehends before all things the knowledge and cognition and essence of all things (προεχει και προσυνειληφεν), not attending to each thing's species singly (divided), but knowing all things and containing them by one complex of cause….. Therefore divine wisdom, knowing itself, knows all things: in an immaterial way the material, in an undivided way the divided, and the many in a unified way, knowing and producing all things through the one (which is the divine essence)⁵. Therefore God does not have a separate knowledge of himself and another which comprehends all beings in common….. Thus God knows beings not through a knowledge of beings (derived from beings as cause), but through a knowledge of himself »⁶.

St Augustine treats at length of the eternal reasons, according to which God knows all things. « That which was made through him, let it be understood to be life in him, in which life he saw all things when he made them; and as he saw, so he made: not seeing beyond himself but in himself, he so enumerated all the things which he made… Note, then: he made; he did not know made things. Therefore before they came to be, they both were and were not: they were in God's knowledge, they were not in their own nature….. He no longer needs messengers for the knowledge of lesser things, as though through them he might become more knowing; but by that simple and wonderful mode he knows all things stably and unchangeably » Aug. Genes. ad litt. l. V. cc. 15. 18. 19.⁷. « With him, in whom is highest power, is highest and secret knowledge… With him all things are established in the Word of God by a certain knowledge of ineffable wisdom, and the Word himself (exemplarily) all things… And why are all things with him? Because even before all things were or were created, all things were known to him » Id. in Ps. 49. n. 18. Following in the footsteps of St Augustine, St Anselm, Monol. c. 10., after saying that nothing can be known unless some expression of it and some word is in the mind, and that this is the most noble of all utterances, concludes: « It can not undeservedly be seen that with the highest substance such an utterance of things has both been before they were, so that through it they might be made, and is when they have been made, so that through it they may be known. » St Anselm declares a little later, in c. 12., that this utterance or reason of all things is not some accident, as the ideas are in us, but the very essence and substance of God. « But since it is certain, as reason teaches, that whatever the highest substance has made… it has made by its inner utterance, whether single things by single words, or rather by saying all things at once in one word, what can seem more necessary than that this utterance of the highest essence is nothing other than the highest essence? » We can comprehend the whole in the words of St Thomas, 1. q. 14. a. 6. « Since the essence of God has in itself whatever perfection the essence of any other thing has… God in himself can know all things by a proper knowledge. For the proper nature of each thing consists in this, that it participates the divine perfection in some way. Nor would God perfectly know himself, unless he knew in what way his perfection is participable by others (this is the knowledge of essences). Nor would he perfectly know the nature of being itself, unless he knew all the modes of being » (all of which depend on him, whence is the knowledge of existents).

Not only if by reason we distinguish the essence and the understanding does the divine mind, through the essence as the infinite object, become determined to know every truth; but understanding also, considered formally in its intrinsic perfection, must be conceived as determined to the comprehension of every truth. This is the living quality of unshaken truth, as St Augustine calls the knowledge of God (ad Simplic. l. II. q. 2.). « When I have left behind only the living quality of certain and unshaken truth, which illumines all things by one eternal contemplation, or rather do not leave it behind (by mere abstraction from human knowledge; for human knowledge does not have this), but, as far as I can, have thought, God's knowledge is somehow insinuated to me. » It is the same light without darkness, of which St Bernard speaks, Consid. V. 5: « God, the lord of knowledges, who alone knows no ignorance, who is wholly light, and in whom there is no darkness at all, is wholly eye and is never at all deceived, because he is never shut in, who seeks no light outside himself, to whom one draws near that he may see, he who sees, he from whom he sees. »

Corollary. Whatever God knows besides himself is indeed some term of divine knowledge, or is subject to divine knowledge; yet by any real influx it does not in God produce knowledge and science, or, as is commonly said, it does not determine divine knowledge as a cause. « God does not know beings by a knowledge derived from beings, but by the knowledge of himself » Pantaen. Dionys. August. Therefore, although God would not know, e. g., the world as existing, unless for some difference of time it really existed, because for God the true is the term of knowledge: yet the existing world does not exercise any action or influx upon God; but only if it is objectively true that the world exists at some time, the divine substance, under the aspect of knowledge, is terminated at this truth as well as at every truth, because by its intrinsic perfection it is determined to the comprehension of every truth. If therefore some theologians sometimes say that an object has the role of determining God's knowledge to know it, they take determination in the sense in which we speak of the term of knowledge. But when we deny the determination of God's knowledge by an object distinct from God, we deny an action and influx of the object into God by way of cause or principle. But when we affirm that the knowledge of God is determined by the divine essence itself, we wish three things: a)negatively that it is not the cause of knowledge outside God; b) positively, that the reason of knowledge is the intrinsic perfection of God himself; c) with the distinction made, according to our manner of understanding, between the divine essence and understanding, that the essence is conceived by us as prior in reason and as the object determining divine knowledge, the analogy being taken from the relation which exists between our cognitions and their object.

The divine essence is the object formal, all other truths are secondary object of God's knowledge.

« From the reason by which we have demonstrated that God's understanding relates to the divine essence, and through the essence to all other things, it follows of itself that the divine essence is, and is rightly called by theologians, the principal and formal object, while all other truths taken together are the secondary and material object of divine knowledge. »

Form and matter are properly said of composite substances, in which form is that which gives essential perfection of a certain order and species, and so constitutes a being distinct and different from other orders or species; matter, on the other hand, does not give a specific perfection distinguishing it from other orders, but is common to many, or rather to all orders of material substances. From this the denomination has been transferred to the object of knowledge, which is distinguished into material and formal. According to that analogy of matter and form, the formal object of knowledge is called that by which the proper perfection of knowledge, distinct and different from the knowledges of other orders, is constituted. But by the very fact that the object gives its proper perfection to knowledge, it determines it, and consequently it is known through itself and for its own sake (they call it the motive), and not on account of something else. The material object, on the contrary, underlies the science, which has its perfection not from the object but from elsewhere, and different from the knowledges of other orders; therefore it does not itself determine the science and the perfection of the science, although the science, having its perfection determined elsewhere, also has this object as its term. Therefore the material object is known not through itself and for its own sake as the motive of science, but through another and on account of another. From these very proper characters of the formal and material object it is easily clear that the formal object, in relation to the material objects subordinate to it, is at the same time the object of knowledge, principal, while the material objects are secondary.

Now indeed: a) the divine knowledge and understanding, from what has been said, is really the divine substance and essence itself. It therefore has its own perfection, different from any knowledge of another order, from nothing other than the divine substance itself, or from itself. For this is its own proper reason and perfection: that the infinite understanding act is really the divine substance itself and the infinite substantial truth itself, to which no perfection can accrue or be lost, however the objects of knowledge may stand, which are distinct from and different from that infinite truth. Hence b) if by reason we distinguish infinite truth and the infinite act of understanding, the infinite truth itself is not only knowable, but by its intrinsic reason it requires, and is (in our manner of speaking) the motive, that it be actually known through the infinite understanding itself (see p. 314.): and so we conceive infinite truth, or divine Being, with foundation in reality, as determining the divine intellect to comprehend it. Further, c) this substantial act of understanding, in the comprehension of the divine essence, is so determined that, in the essence as in absolute Being, in the infinite exemplar, in the actual representation of all truth, it comprehends at once whatever has the character of truth (th. XXXVII.). The divine essence, therefore, is the formal reason under which God comprehends any truth whatever; and an object distinct from God does not act upon the divine intellect, or induce in it any modification, which would plainly repugn to that substantial act. Therefore an object distinct from God neither perfects nor determines God's knowledge; but through the essence and in his essence, as through the formal object, God is determined to the knowledge of every truth, even of what is distinct from himself. The Scholastics meant this when they said: God does not understand things distinct from himself through proper species of things, but through his own essence as through an intelligible species (representation) of all things; and the same, after the other Fathers, St Anselm expressed more brightly in Monol. c. 32. « The word by which God speaks the creature is in no way similarly a word of the creature, for it is not its likeness (derived from it), but the principal essence; it follows therefore that he does not speak the creature by a word of the creature…. If therefore he says nothing by a word of the creature, whatever he says he says by his own Word.'» The same may be declared in another way. Just as the divine volition, which is of itself determined to love the absolute good that is the divine essence, can, without any change in itself, extend to loving in it and on account of it the participated goods; so the divine understanding, determined of itself to understand the absolute truth, extends, without increase of its perfection, to knowing every truth in the absolute truth itself. « He did not know created things otherwise than things to be created; for nothing accrued to his wisdom from them, but when they existed as they ought and when they ought, it remained as it was. Thus it is written in the book of Ecclesiasticus: before they are created, all things are known to him, so also after they have been consummated. Thus, he says, not otherwise, both before they are created and after they have been consummated, thus they are known to him » St Augustine, Trin. XV. c. 13. Cf. Genes. ad litt. V. c. 18; Civ. Dei X. c. 12. See the teaching of the PP. above in thesis XXXVII. Cf. what we have said on p. 307. sqq.

It is therefore most clear that the formal and principal object of the divine understanding, by which it has its own proper perfection, by which it is determined, through which and in which it knows every truth, is the divine essence itself; but that any truth whatever distinct from God is the secondary and material object of one and the same act of God, by which he understands himself, which does not give to that act its proper perfection, and which is known in another and through another, namely through the principal and formal object.

Corollary. From the declared mode of divine knowledge it is understood in what way faith and theology and mystical contemplation, and much more truly the beatific vision, imitate the divine knowledge itself, while all created things and all truth are considered in God, the supreme truth, as in their cause and their principle and end. Likewise it is understood how the divine understanding, both in respect of its principal object and in respect of its secondary object, is alone adequate theology in the most sublime sense of the name. See above p. 4. 5.

God knows all truths not only in the divine essence but also in themselves.

« Although God does not know the secondary objects of his knowledge in themselves, as in a cause determining and perfecting knowledge, he nevertheless knows them not only as they are eminently in the divine essence, but also as they are or can be formally in themselves. »

This saying, God knows things in themselves, is ambiguous in meaning. For if the particle in themselves is joined with the verb knows, so that it is understood that the perfection of knowledge depends on objects as on a determining cause, and thus things diverse from the essence of God are called the formal object of knowledge; it follows from the preceding thesis that in this sense things are not known by God in themselves but in the essence of God. « Something is known in two ways, in one way in itself, in another way in another. Something is known in itself when it is known through its proper species adequate to the knowable thing itself; as the eye sees a man through the species of man: but in another, that is seen which is seen through the species of the containing; as when a part is seen in a whole through the species of the whole… Thus, therefore, it must be said that God sees himself in himself, because he sees himself through his essence, but other things not in themselves but in himself, insofar as his essence contains the likeness of others from himself » St Thomas, 1. q. 14. a. 5. But if the particle in themselves is connected with the noun, so that things in themselves, not merely the exemplar and archetype of things in the divine essence, are understood to be an object, although only material, and known through the adequate knowledge of the divine essence; in this sense single things are known by God in themselves. For « if someone knowing knows the known according to the being which it has in the knower, nevertheless he knows it according to the being which it has outside the knower: as the intellect knows a stone according to the intelligible being which it has in the intellect, insofar as it knows itself to understand (reflexively); but nevertheless it knows the being of the stone in its own nature… Thus, therefore, it must be said that God not only knows things to be in himself, but through what he contains in himself of things he knows them in their own nature, and so much the more perfectly as each thing is more perfect in him » St Thomas, 1. q. 14. a. 6. ad 1; q. 20. a. 2. ad 2; q. 57. a. 3; de verit. q. 2. a. 4. ad 6.

Indeed, a) if God knew the being of things only as they are eminently in God, he would not know created or possible being itself, but only his own essence. For the eminent Being in God is not created or possible being, but is the divine essence itself, in which, as in the formal object, he knows all things; this he not only knows: «nor would he have those things which were not yet made, except as he himself is unmade» Aug. Genes. ad litt. V. c. 16. Hence in many places Augustine repeats that when all things are said to be in God, this is to be understood of the exemplar and living ideas, and of living knowledge, in which he does not hold the natures of things existing from eternity in himself, but nevertheless holds the things themselves in his knowledge. «If he knew them before he made them; certainly before they were made, they were known to him in the same way as they live eternally and unchangeably and are life, and they were made in the same way as each creature is in its kind» Aug. Genes. ad litt. V. c. 15. «Before they were made, they both were and were not: they were in the knowledge of God, they were not in their own nature» ib. c. 18. Indeed b) unless God perfectly knew the being of things as they are in themselves or can be, neither could he be considered to comprehend his own essence as the cause and exemplar of all. For the perfect comprehension of a cause includes the knowledge of its effects, whether possible or actually existing, as they are in themselves. Therefore, because God comprehends his essence under the reason of absolute Being, of infinite exemplar, and of infinite representation of every participated being and of every participated truth (th. XXXVII.), he comprehends this very participated being as it is in itself or can be.

It might seem to someone that, precisely because things, as they are in themselves, are constituted as the object of God's knowledge, this knowledge depends in some measure on the known things. The answer to this difficulty or question cannot be hard, provided we keep in mind what we have said about the divine simplicity. Surely God's knowledge is not an accident or modification of substance, but is the divine substance itself. This substantial understanding is in itself infinitely perfect, and therefore from its essence it is the understanding of every truth; hence it does not receive perfection in itself as our understanding does, through assimilation to the known object; but the divine essence itself, and the divine idea, is the exemplar to which it is assimilated and from which every truth has its perfection. Hence too it is that the divine substantial understanding is in no way changed in itself, if a contingent truth as its subject stands one way or another. «God's knowledge is most universal, because by one likeness, which is his essence, it knows all things» S. Th. 2. dist. 3. q. 3. a. 2. When divine knowledge is named, e.g., of the existing world, or knowledge of a human act, e.g., of Peter's denial, two things are named: namely God's knowledge in itself and the connotation of a non-necessary term. But because the term is something non-necessary, the connotation of this term rather than another (for example, of the existing world rather than of the merely possible, of Peter's denial rather than his confession) is not absolutely necessary, but only on the hypothesis that the contingent truth stands in this way rather than in another. Therefore, that God's knowledge is referred to this rather than to its opposite, depending on the term, does not arise from imperfection but from the perfection of knowledge, because every truth lies under that knowledge, which is always perfect in itself in the same way, as it really stands. «Knowledge of vision adds nothing within the genus of knowledge to the divine knowledge, but only the existence of creatures, which are said to be seen» S. Th. de veritat. q. 3. a. 3. ad 8. To the question therefore proposed, a distinction must be made: God's knowledge in itself and in its perfection depends on a term distinct from itself: I deny; the connotation of the term, whether this term rather than another underlies the knowledge, depends on the term and on the manner in which it stands: I subdistinguish: it depends on the term on account of an imperfection of knowledge: I deny; on account of the perfection of knowledge, which necessarily understands all truth as it is: I concede.

Corollary 1. From the fact that God knows all things from eternity, as they are or can be in themselves at any difference of time, it is not said that to possibles or to things not yet existing belongs some diminished being, of which some have spoken; but it is asserted that God understands the whole reason of being, as it would be in itself if it were produced, or as it actually is at the time when it exists. God therefore knows from eternity actual being, which creatures can have or at some time actually have; yet he does not know that they have that being actually from eternity; rather he knows that no being distinct from himself is actual from eternity. Supra th. XXXII.

Corollary 2. It follows from what has been said how God's knowledge is, and how it is not, intuitive; whence it is further evident that the argument which Diego Alvarez (de Auxiliis l. II. c. 8.), with others, wished to prove, that the existence of all things according to their real being is in eternity from eternity — namely, that otherwise God could not see things from eternity by intuitive knowledge — is of no value. For intuitive knowledge requires, on the side of the manner of knowing: a) that it be immediate knowledge and not derived; b) that it be apprehension of the object as it is in itself, and not through the analogy of another; hence c) only accidentally is it required that the object of knowledge be formal, i.e., that it itself determine the knowledge and give it its specific perfection. Accidentally, I say, this is required for our intuitive knowledge, because we can know only the formal object in itself, as it is in itself; but if the vision of the divine essence, as the formal object, at the same time comprehends in the divine essence other things as they are in themselves, this will be the intuition of things so much the more perfect. These conditions, to which Marsilius of Inghen went before for the more recent authors (in 1. d. 38. a. 1. concl. 7.), are not unjustly held to be sufficient, as a rule, for knowledge to be called intuitive. In this sense, therefore, all knowledge of God is intuition. But the older authors for the most part demanded d) on the side of the object its real existence for some difference of time, in which sense Suarez (de Attributis div. 1. III. c. 4. n. 2.) calls knowledge of existing things intuitive, but the knowledge of possibles, even in God, abstractive, « because it abstracts from the actual existence of its object. »

CONCERNING DIVINE KNOWLEDGE ACCORDING TO ITS DIVERSE OBJECTS.

God's knowledge, one in itself, can be distinguished in many ways according to its diverse objects.

« Although God's knowledge, one in itself, is the most simple substantial act; nevertheless from the diverse reason of the objects that lie under it, the cause is drawn for which it is rightly distinguished according to the solemn partitions: knowledge absolutely necessary and necessary only on hypothesis; knowledge of vision in knowing, and knowledge pertaining to effecting (speculative and practical); knowledge of approval and disapproval, the latter of which in the Scriptures is also called ignorance. »

God's knowledge in itself is the divine essence itself under the reason of infinite intellectual act; therefore it cannot be manifold in itself, but is one eternal act and a single most simple understanding (th. XXVII.). Moreover, the divine understanding is constituted in its whole perfection through the divine essence itself as its formal object; but all other objects are known through the essence known by itself, in one and the same most simple act, and they introduce into that substantial understanding no perfection or change. It is the same understanding by which God comprehends himself and his essence, and at once the understanding of all things, without any multiplication or distinction in the understanding itself (th. XXXVIII.).

Although the divine understanding is in itself so simple, beyond any multiplication of acts or forms, nevertheless its objects and their relations to it are not of one reason but of diverse reason. Hence, if we consider knowledge according to the terms which it connotes and which lie under it, there is not only a ground but also a necessity, in one and the same knowledge, for our inadequate concepts to distinguish several diverse reasons.

The objects of divine knowledge can be distributed in such a way that 1° knowledge comprehends either actual existences or the essences of things according to mere possibility. The former, taking its name from our sensible knowledge, by which only existing things can be seen, has been called knowledge of vision¹; the other, to distinguish it from the former, has kept the name of simple intelligence².

Moreover, things that never exist in act, or that at least are regarded in the order of reason prior to actual existence, can be considered again under a twofold reason: according to essence, I mean, in the state of mere possibility, insofar as they are the object of simple intelligence; and according to existence, which they do not have absolutely, but would infallibly have if some condition were fulfilled. In this second sense the object is neither known as really existing for some interval of time, which is evident in itself, nor is only the essence and the mere possibility of existence known. For it is indeed far different to know, e.g., sin as possible, and to know that a man snatched away by death would certainly have committed these or those sins had he lived longer; which is the example used by Gregory of Nyssa, St Augustine and other Fathers, of whom we shall speak later. Rightly, therefore, according to the diversity of objects, there is distinguished, besides the knowledge of vision and of simple intelligence, the knowledge of future things under a condition. This agrees with the knowledge of simple intelligence in that the object is not intuited as absolutely existing in act; it differs, however, in that it is related not only to necessary essence but to contingent existence, which would infallibly obtain under some condition. In the inverse order, it agrees in some measure with the knowledge of vision in that it is related to contingent existence, and not only to necessary essence; it differs, however, in that it does not intuit existence as absolutely future in act. This object is therefore middle between the object of vision and the object of simple intelligence, agreeing with each in some respect and differing in some respect. Hence theologians, as the sixteenth century wore on, called the knowledge of God considered under this reason middle knowledge, naming it by a name derived from the properties of the object; it is indeed, as is clear from what has been said, middle between the knowledge of vision and of simple intelligence. It can, however, easily be reckoned under the common heading with either simple intelligence or vision, according as under a different reason it agrees with one or the other; according to this counting together, it is no wonder that among the older theologians only a twofold member of the division is found. The thing itself, however, we shall show in its place was very well known among the ancients; for now we are disputing rather from hypothesis. If indeed the existence of a thing, namely the actual existence of a free act of the created will, which under some condition would infallibly be future, can be an object of infinite knowledge; under this hypothesis, which we shall demonstrate afterwards, we affirm that to the twofold member of the knowledge of vision and of simple intelligence there is rightly subjoined a third, the knowledge of future things under a condition, and this is not inappropriately called middle knowledge³. Moreover, we think the dispute about the name is of little or no moment, but about the thing itself it is of the greatest. Of the name, therefore, nothing more; of the thing we shall speak shortly, at more length.

2°. The essences of things in the state of possibility, and the truth of essences, exist only because the divine essence is imitable in this way by beings and by analogous perfections and their mutual relations. This imitability, however, is natural to God, necessary, and independent of the free will; since in reality it is nothing other than the divine essence itself under the reason of the first and absolute Being, of absolute truth, and of the exemplar of every perfection. Whence the truth of essences in the state of possibility is absolutely necessary. But divine understanding necessarily comprehends every truth. Therefore knowledge of simple intelligence is absolutely necessary as regards the whole extent of its object. On the contrary, existence belongs necessarily to God alone; all other existence is contingent. Therefore the actual existence of all things which at some time are beside God is so much a truth that the denial of their existence could also have been absolutely true. Now, that they exist depends either on the free will of God operating through himself alone, or through the creature subject to him, or on the free will of God making or permitting, and at the same time on the free created will⁴. Whence the chief object of knowledge of vision is indeed absolutely necessary, namely the essence of God existing necessarily⁵: but the secondary object could also not be; if however it is, it necessarily lies under the divine intuition. Just as, therefore, knowledge of vision is absolutely necessary with respect to the existing divine essence, so with respect to all other things it is only necessary on the hypothesis that they really at some time exist.

To this last is referred also knowledge of future things under a condition, both in general and specifically that of the free acts of the creature, of which alone there is talk, where knowledge of this middle kind is in question. For that Titius, placed in certain circumstances, would sin and Caius would not sin, is so true that the opposite could also be true. But on the hypothesis of the truth, that Titius in those circumstances would sin and Caius would not sin — which hypothesis depends on their free will — God knows this truth necessarily; and if the opposite were true, God would again know this necessarily.

Therefore the same knowledge, which is distinguished with respect to the existence or non-existence of objects into the threefold member declared in n. 1°, when the necessity or contingency of these same objects is considered, is rightly divided into knowledge absolutely necessary and knowledge necessary only on hypothesis.

3° Knowledge of simple intelligence, understood in the sense declared, can be conceived as concerned with its object in two ways: either as simply the knowledge of objective truth, or insofar as it comprehends the natures, ends, goodness, order, relations, etc., of all things, formally insofar as things are apt to receive existence from God himself. In this second way knowledge is the reason of things to be effected, after the manner of art, and is not merely theoretical knowledge of essences and of truth; but it is the understanding of things to be done under the formal reason, insofar as they can be effected by God knowing them, and therefore the knowledge is practical.

It can, however, be regarded a) per se insofar as it comprehends all the reasons and modes of things to be produced: thus it is practical in the first act, yet it is not the cause of things in the second act; for otherwise the production of things would not be free but absolutely necessary, and all possibles would be actually produced. This was the error of Wycliffe, and in our age it is that of many sophists, who in a perverse sense call creatures thoughts of God. Indeed the holy Fathers also said: «God creates by thinking, and the thought (or rather the thing conceived by thought) becomes a work»⁶; but in a far different sense. For b) this same practical knowledge must be regarded insofar as it shines forth as art and as director to the free will commanding, so that for some difference of time things may actually be, whose natures and reasons divine art comprehends and sets forth in advance⁷. In this second way knowledge is practical in the second act (cf. above p. 315.). Thus, indeed, divine wisdom in the Scriptures is called «artificer of all things,» and God is said «to have made all things in wisdom» throughout. «Wisdom, says Dionysius (div. nom. c. 7. §. 3.), can be known from all things, since according to the divine oracle it is the maker of all things, and always fitting all together, and the cause of the indissoluble harmony and order of all things, and always connecting the ends of the former with the beginnings of the latter, and adorning the one agreement and harmony of the universe»⁸.

But knowledge of vision, taken in the sense declared above, does not indeed presuppose an existence already produced by a passing action, but it does presuppose the truth of existence for some difference of time, prior in reason. This knowledge of vision, therefore, is not referred to operating; but, the operation being supposed, it is the intuition of the existence of the work. The same is nearly to be said of middle knowledge, or of the intuition of an act which would exist if some condition were posited. This does not, however, prevent that both knowledge of vision and especially the knowledge of those things which would be under some condition may be mediately practical, not indeed after the manner of art but after the manner of providence. For although in God there is not one volition on account of another, since there is one most simple act by which he wills all things, whatever he wills; nevertheless the things which God wills are in mutual dependence, and he wills that one be on account of another. Whence the vision of the existence of one thing can, in our manner of conceiving, shine upon the divine counsels for willing another, and in that sense be a director in acting. That middle knowledge shines upon the divine providence especially in disposing rational creatures is easily understood.

It is therefore evident that God's knowledge, considered universally under the reason by which it is referred to operation, is rightly divided into speculative and practical knowledge.

4°. Approval and disapproval properly pertain not to knowledge but to the will. Thus knowledge of approval is the knowledge of good things, which please the divine will; knowledge of disapproval is the knowledge of evils, which displease. «The knowledge of approval, says St Bonaventure (in 1. dist. 39. a. 1. q. 2.), connotes complacency of the will. By this, God does not know all things, since he knows neither evils nor evil persons, but only good things and good persons.» Whence it is evident that of God's speculative knowledge only some is knowledge of approval, but the knowledge which is practical after the manner of art is all of it, and in its whole extent is knowledge of approval.

Knowledge of approval therefore extends more widely in its whole extent than practical knowledge; nevertheless, because all practical knowledge is knowledge of approval, St Thomas (1. q. 14. a. 8.) simply says that practical knowledge has been customarily called knowledge of approval. For the works of the Lord can be nothing but good. «With you is your wisdom, which knows your works, which was present when you made the world, and knew what was pleasing in your eyes, and what was right in your commandments» Sap. IX. 9. Especially, however, God is said to know his friends, whom he both anticipates and follows with his graces; whence in most places where this knowledge is treated, knowledge, both of vision, practical after the manner of providential wisdom, and of simple intelligence, practical after the manner of efficacy, are joined together. «I know you by name, and you have found grace before me» Exod. XXXIII. 12; and in the reverse order: «you have found grace before me, and I know you by name» ib. v. 17. «The Lord knows the way of the just» Ps. I. 6. «The Lord knows the days of the unspotted» Ps. XXXVI. 18. «Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you» Ier. I. 5. «The eyes of the Lord are upon those who fear him» passim. Cf. Io. X. 14; 2. Tim. II. 19.

Speculative knowledge, insofar as it is of vision, and supposes the existence of good things, has approval conjoined with it simply. «God saw all the things that he had made, and they were very good» Gen. I. Insofar as speculative knowledge is of simple intelligence or middle, approval coheres with it in a less proper sense, namely of what is only possibly good, or what would be good under some condition.

Moreover, speculative knowledge, whether of vision, or of simple intelligence, or middle, also refers to those things which are simply evil⁹; and this is knowledge of disapproval. But disapproval includes the negation contrary to knowledge of approval; therefore, since God is said in the Scriptures chiefly to know those whom he follows with his benefits and graces in effect, and whom he deigns to befriend, the contrary negation of this benevolent knowledge is in the same Scriptures often called ignorance. «I do not know you, whence you are» «I never knew you» Matth. VII. 23; Luc. XIII. 27. «Your eyes are too pure to see evil, and you cannot look upon iniquity» Habac. I. 13. Cf. Aug. ep. 169. ad Evod. n. 2; ep. 215. ad Valentin. n. 6; Fulgent. ad Trasimund. l. II. c. 8.

From what has been said, approval pertains both to practical and to speculative knowledge. Nevertheless the older Scholastics, distinguishing two members as mutually excluding one another, knowledge of simple acquaintance and knowledge of approval, took the former, of simple acquaintance, in a wider sense for speculative knowledge (both of vision and of simple intelligence), and the latter, of approval, on the contrary they took in a narrower sense for practical and effective knowledge alone, as we indicated a little before from St Thomas. Hence it appears that those theologians accomplish nothing who, on the authority of the old Masters, wish to persuade that knowledge of vision is practical and effective of those things which are subject to it. According to the common teaching of the older Scholastics, they say, knowledge of approval is practical and efficient. But knowledge of approval is knowledge of vision. Therefore knowledge of vision is practical and efficient. The answer is contained in the above declaration. Namely: I distinguish the major: every knowledge which is called knowledge of approval by more recent authors is, according to the teaching of the ancients, practical, I deny; in the narrower sense in which by the ancients knowledge of approval was opposed to speculative, I concede. Likewise: I distinguish the minor: knowledge of approval as it was understood by those ancients is of vision, I deny; if vision is taken according to the usage of speaking of somewhat more recent authors, as it is now commonly understood, thus some knowledge of approval, speculative however and not practical, is knowledge of vision, I concede.

The objects of knowledge of simple intelligence are all possible things; the secondary object of vision is chiefly all things existing independently of created liberty.

«¹The adequate object of knowledge of simple intelligence, and of what is absolutely necessary, is all possible things according to the formal reason of objective possibility; but to the secondary object of knowledge of vision, and of that which is necessary only on hypothesis, there pertain chiefly all those things which, God operating either immediately or through secondary causes, at some time really exist independently of the free acts of the created will.»

1. The statement of this proposition is required by the order of things rather than a special demonstration. For the reason why essences according to the state of possibility are called the adequate object of simple understanding, whereas contingent existences constitute not an adequate but only a partial and secondary object of vision, is manifest from theses XXXVIII. and XL.

Moreover, the truth of the former part, that all possible things, according to their natures not only specific but individual, according to all possible perfections, relations, orders, ends, actions, limits and imperfections, are perfectly comprehended by divine understanding, not by many distinct acts but by one substantial act, by which he comprehends himself²; this truth is demonstrated by all the arguments by which, in thesis XXXVII, we declared the manner in which God knows all things through his essence.

Just as, in considering the intensity of divine comprehension, by which God comprehends the primary object, namely the infinite essence, so here too, in contemplating the extension of the secondary object, our mind fails: «your knowledge is wonderful to me (above all my understanding), it is strengthened (it is high and unattainable, and so) I cannot attain it (by my understanding)»³⁴ Ps. CXXXVIII. (139.) 6. For we cannot fix the weak eyes of our mind upon infinite series, in each of which there is again an infinite variety of possibles; and so the multitude is not indeed of things actually existing, but of truths comprehended in act by one divine gaze, infinitely infinite.

Hence here there arises a question very troublesome to many, concerning infinite multitude. We cannot distinctly know singulars in any multitude except by distinct acts (attending distinctly to each, as Dionysius says). But taking the acts distinct, one after another, that is, by numbering, «the infinite cannot be traversed,» as Aristotle said; and therefore a number such as we conceive is repugnant to being infinite. For any multitude which we distinctly and definitely conceive is always a number, to which, however great it be, something is lacking; indeed an infinite multitude is lacking for the number to be infinite. When therefore we ask what the multitude is, e.g., of worlds and of orders, each of which is objectively possible, we cannot conceive it except in such a way that, for any determinate number, there is always another greater of these possibles, without the whole multitude ever being included. For this is the reason of the infinite as it is conceived by us, that «however much of it is taken, there is always something outside.» Hence we conceive distinctly only a finite number, with a confused signification of an infinite multitude, which as a whole is outside and above the number comprehended by us. But God distinctly comprehends each possible thing as it would be if it were produced, so that nothing is outside the multitude distinctly comprehended by him; otherwise ignorance, or what is nearly the same, a confused understanding, would have to be admitted in God, which is most absurd. Yet that whole multitude is plainly infinite, not certainly in the reason of perfection, as is evident, but in the reason of multitude.

For in the first place it is not a finite multitude; for there is no limit beyond which something else is not possible. Nor is it an indefinite or infinite multitude in power. For that which is infinite in power is either really something finite, having its ultimate term, to which another and another can always be added, as the multitude of really coexisting things is infinite in power; or it is something indefinite, which is conceived by the mind as confusedly greater than any determinate number, as mathematicians assume infinite quantities. But God conceives the many possibles singly, not in such a way that other and other things could be added to his concept; but he conceives all things plainly, beyond which and outside which nothing is possible: nor does he understand them confusedly as a multitude greater than any number which God himself might distinctly conceive; but rather he comprehends them all most distinctly, beyond which there is nothing that could be comprehended. Therefore, as «there is no number to his wisdom» Ps. CXLVI. 5; so of those things which he understands and comprehends singly, as they would be in themselves if they were produced, there is not a number but an extension and multitude that is infinite. «As for that other point which they make, that the knowledge of God cannot comprehend things that are infinite (and therefore the same times and the same vicissitudes of number recur always, lest there be infinite things, which not even God could comprehend), it remains for them to dare to say, and to plunge themselves into this profound whirlpool of impiety, that God does not know all numbers. For it is most certain that they are infinite..... The infinity of number, although there is no number of infinite numbers, is nevertheless not incomprehensible to him whose understanding has no number. Wherefore, if whatever is comprehended by knowledge is finished by the comprehension of the knower (that is, it is so comprehended that nothing is outside, nothing remains beyond to be comprehended); then indeed every infinity is also in some ineffable way finite to God» S. Aug. Civ. Dei XII. 18.

Among the theologians who declare and prove that the objects which God knows by knowledge at least of simple intelligence are an infinite multitude in act, not indeed of things actually existing but of things actually known, consult S. Thomas 1. q. 14. a. 12. coll. 3. q. 10. a. 8; de verit. q. 2. a. 9; cont. gent. 1. c. 69; compend. theol, c. 133; 1. dist. 39. q. 1. a. 3; Alexander Hal. 1. P. q. 23. m. 3. a. 2; S. Bonav. 1. dist. 35. q. 5; dist. 39. a. 1. q. 3; Valentia in 1. P. q. 14. puncto 6; Vasquez in 1. P. disp. 63; Suarez in 3. P. disp. 26. sect. 4; Lessius de perfect. div. 1. VI. c. 2. n. 17; Franc. de Lugo ad 1. q. 14. a. 12; Ruiz de scient. Dei disp. 20; Sfortia Pallavicinus de Deo c. 33; de Fide, Spe et Char. cc. 18. 19; Ripalda (iunior) opusc. philosoph. XI. Indeed this doctrine is that of almost all the ancient theologians.

Most theologians, however, defend the same concerning the objects of knowledge of vision. And indeed, if rational creatures exist throughout all future eternity and their acts are multiplied without end, the arguments which demonstrate that the multitude of possible essences known in act is infinite also persuade that the multitude of actual existences, as they are under the eternal eye of God, is infinite without any last term⁵. For if of those acts, of each of which it is true that they will be, none is outside the actual divine intuition, the multitude of things actually known through knowledge of vision is infinite. For the multitude of the terms of all things to be future in eternity is of such a kind that no term is last, and so on the side of what is after, as they say, or formally of things future in eternity, there is no limit, but a multitude altogether infinite, not to be closed by any number. But none of all those acts is outside the actual divine intuition. Therefore the multitude of things actually known through knowledge of vision is infinite.

But note the greatest difference between these two propositions: «the multitude of things actually known is infinite» and «the multitude of things known for some future instant is actually infinite.» The first is most true from what has been said; the second, in the successive future things of which we speak, is absurd. What God actually sees, therefore, is an infinite multitude (κατηγορηματικῶς) under the eternal intuition of God; but he does not see a multitude which in itself at some time exists as actually infinite; rather he sees it in itself always only infinite in power (συγκατηγορηματικῶς), that is, existing so that it is always finite in itself and always increases, without ever reaching an ultimate term. If therefore knowledge of vision is considered with respect to the terms which for any future instant will be past, God does not see terms which are infinite, except by the infinity of power; but if knowledge is considered with respect to future terms, which all together lie under his vision, the multitude of things known is actually infinite, not by an actuality of existence which already is, but by the actuality of being known in the eternal intuition of God (cf. th. XXXII; see Vasquez disp. 63. c. 3. ad 3ᵗᵘᵐ).

It is one thing, then, to ask whether God sees infinite things, and another to ask whether the things God sees are infinite in act or in potency (categorematically or syncategorematically). To the former question the answer, from the foundations already laid, is affirmative: God sees infinite things. As to the other question, the dispute can be one about the name rather than about the thing, as Suarez rightly observes, 1. c.⁶. For if you consider the real existence of the terms in themselves, or the series constituted of past acts, the series, as I have said, is always only syncategorematically infinite. Suarez prefers this manner of speaking, as do Gabriel Biel and others who went before him. If you consider the terms as all together known by eternal vision, they are not a series in successive knowledge but are terms categorematically infinite, all together under one simple intuition of God. So most of the disciples of St Thomas, Valentia, Vasquez, Ruiz, Ripalda, Pallavicinus and very many others speak, and rightly so, since the question is not about the multitude of existing things but about the multitude of things known. « When we ask, says Vasquez 1. c. c. 2. n. 7, whether the multitude is actually infinite, we inquire about it as it is in the intellect of God, actually understood, to which no further addition can be made, since God can know nothing else outside the whole of it; therefore, since he knows all things in act, we say that the multitude known in act is infinite in the intellect of God, not in the nature of things. »

From what has been established, against the opinion of certain more recent authors, we hold these things: a) God knows no indefinite. For this mode of knowing presupposes imperfection and ignorance. b) The infinite understanding of God cannot be compared with acts of knowing succeeding one another to infinity. For these, in actual existence, are always finite not only in perfection but also in number; from which it follows that through them one can never arrive at a multitude of things actually infinite. c) Because God intuits the whole infinite imitability of his essence, and by it knows distinctly, in one act, all possible imitations as each would be if produced, there is in the divine mind no evolution of the terms which he knows, nor can one be conceived, of which some more recent authors speak.

II. The second part, asserted in the thesis, is equally manifest from what we declared in the preceding chapter concerning the manner and perfection of divine knowledge considered in itself. And indeed, if by the divine will, whether efficacious or permissive, objects which are in themselves in the state of possibility actually exist for some difference of time; by that very fact, those things which in the prior sign lie under the divine understanding as possible, the same, in the posterior sign, lie under divine vision as existing. Therefore, in the perfect knowledge of all possibles, as they would be in themselves, there is comprehended in a certain way, as a part, if it is permitted to say so, the knowledge of existing things, as they are in themselves, which by that very fact is knowledge of vision (th. XL.).

In the Scriptures this perfection of divine vision, reaching to all things that at some time are, is proclaimed a) by general expressions. After St Job, in chapter XXVIII, has explained that wisdom is not like material treasure, which is hidden in the depths of the sea or in the bowels of the earth, he adds in vv. 23. sqq.: « God understands its way, and he knows its place; for he himself sees the ends of the world, and regards all things that are under heaven. » He adds a proof from the creation of all things, which is in the wisdom and through the wisdom of God. « He who made the weight for the winds and weighed the waters by measure. When he set the law for the rains and a way for the sounding storms; then he saw it and recounted it, and prepared and searched it out. » That is, he comprehends all wisdom in himself, and through it comprehends all works, and the whole reason of wisdom poured out over them, and manifested through them, and shining in them. b) Especially his knowledge, before which nothing is small so as to lie hidden from him, and nothing great so as to surpass him, is declared to pertain to each singular thing. « He who numbers the multitude of the stars and calls them all by name (by intimate knowledge of each)… and of his wisdom there is no number » Ps. CXLVI. 4. 5; Is. XL.26. Entirely parallel to the cited passage from the book of Job is another, Eccli. I. 1. sqq., with an explicit enumeration of those things which in Job are called « the ends of the world and all that is under heaven. » The description of Ecclesiasticus runs thus: « All wisdom is from the Lord God, and with him it has been always and is before eternity. Who has numbered the sand of the sea (graece of the seas) and the drops of rain and the days of eternity? Who has measured the height of heaven and the breadth of the earth and the depth of the abyss?... One is the most high creator, almighty... he himself created her in the Holy Spirit and saw her and numbered and measured her⁷. And he poured her out over all his works. » Thus also God is said to know « the birds of heaven, and to feed the young of ravens, and to guard the sparrows, and to clothe the lilies and the grass of the field, and to have the hairs of the head numbered » not only by speculative but chiefly by practical knowledge of his wonderful providence: Ps. XLIX. 11; CXLVI. 9; Iob XXXVIII. 41; Matth. VI. 26. sq.; X. 29. 30; Luc. XII. 24. sq.

On the preaching of the holy Fathers in a matter that is manifest, there is no need to say more. In Irenaeus, 1. II. c. 26. al. 45., there is a long exposition concerning the numbers of the smallest things that exist — of the hairs of the head, of sparrows, of sand, of the pebbles of the earth, of the waves of the sea — the reasons, particular ends, and order of each of which, he says, men seek in vain; but that Christians agree and confess that « nothing of all these things which have been made, and which are done and will be done, escapes the knowledge of God; but by his providence each of them receives and has received its own habit and order and number and quantity, and nothing at all is made or is to be made in vain, nor as it happens (in Greek ὡς τυχὸν, in Latin fortuito), but with great fitness and with a sublime consciousness; and that there is a wonderful reason which can both discern things of this kind and state their proper causes. » See the Fathers as cited in Petav. 1. IV. c. 3; Ruiz disp. IX.

In general this truth is most fully attested in the Christian consensus. Hence there can be no difficulty, except perhaps a hermeneutical one, in the passage of St Jerome (in Habac. I. 14. T. VI. p. 604. ed. Vallarsi). « It is absurd, he says, to draw the majesty of God down to this, that he should know moment by moment how many gnats are born or die; what is the multitude of bedbugs and gnats and flies on the earth, how many fish swim in the water, and which of the smaller must yield as prey to the greater. Let us not be such foolish flatterers of God, that, while we bring down his power even to the lowest things, we become insulting to ourselves, saying that the providence of rational and irrational things is the same. » The holy Doctor does not treat primarily of speculative knowledge of vision but of practical knowledge of providence. Next, he does not treat of providence simply, but of a special providence pertaining only to rational creatures, which alone can be the object of paternal care and love, since the other irrational creatures, just as they are created, so also are governed by providence for the sake of rational creatures as their proximate end. Therefore St Jerome said more and wished less to be understood, as St Bonaventure says in another matter of a certain opinion of St Augustine (Breviloq. P. 3. c. 5.). Moreover, that the doctrine found in the Gospel and in all the Scriptures and in the Christian profession, so to speak elementary, should not be called in question by the holy Doctor, much less rejected as « absurd », ought to be held firmly in itself, and it is demonstrated from other passages of his. Let there be compared, for example, the clear and polemical disputation of the holy Doctor in Ier. XXXII.26. T. IV. p. 1090. « God, said the prophet, is believed to have made all flesh, both rational and brute animals. For there are some who confess the providence of the creator only as far as rational things, while they assert that brute things perish or live by chance accidents. And the prophetic word declares that nothing escapes the providence and knowledge of God, because some things are created for their own sake, and others for the use of men »⁸.

Scholion. In the question about the infinite multitude of the objects of God's knowledge, which we discussed in the first part of the thesis, many thorny difficulties occur. But almost all of these arise from our transferring, scarcely noticing it, our finite and limited manner of conceiving to the infinite understanding of God. About each of these the cited authors may be consulted; but the following general principles should be kept before one's eyes for their solution. a) What is without any ultimate limit, and thus infinite according to one reason and in one line, can be finite according to another reason (S. Th. 3. q. 10. a. 3. ad 2.). From this you will understand that the acts of rational creatures do not cease to be infinite in multitude into the future (on the side of what is after), however many preceding acts (on the side of what is before) you subtract⁹. b) What is simultaneous in knowledge is not therefore able also to be simultaneous in real existence. For the nature of a thing can be repugnant to coexistence, without being repugnant to the simultaneous knowledge of a mind, especially an eternal and infinite one. From the fact that today and tomorrow are known together, it does not follow that they can coexist. Whence you will gather that from the knowledge of God of infinite things together with the omnipotence of God it is not rightly inferred that God can produce infinite things actually existing, although there is none of the infinite known things which he could not produce singly. The reason in those things which are by nature successive is evident; in others, which are not successive in themselves, the reason is that the intrinsic nature of created actual existence requires that it be « in measure and number and weight, » limited, namely, in intensity as well as in extension¹⁰. Therefore God does not know infinite things as producible together, but as producible in such a way that, when actually existing, they are always in weight and number, bounded by determinate and finite limits. This is what Pallavicino says, l. c.: « God does not know infinite possibles as one collection; but he knows infinitely many single possible collections » (an infinite multitude of possible orders and systems). c) From the fact that created quantities and perfections are possible greater and greater to infinity, it does not follow that some one created quantity or perfection is possible as infinite, because in those possibles and perfections and quantities, by the very fact that they are infinitely possible, there is no last one, and one exceeds another only by a finite proportion. Therefore also from the fact that God knows all possible perfections and quantities, infinite in multitude, it does not follow that some infinite one is known. Cf. Ruiz de Scient. Dei disp. 20. sect. 4. n. 3. sqq.

Moreover, if we speak of perfection, in which alone it is possible — nay, not merely possible but necessary — infinity properly so called differs from the finite not by degree but by the whole intrinsic reason of being. Whence, just as it is repugnant that from any quantity or quality, e.g. of stones, a spirit should arise; so it is repugnant that from finite things ever an infinite should arise.

God foresees all the free acts of creatures.

« God sees by knowledge of vision in his eternity also all the free acts of creatures existing at any difference of time. Yet their existence does not depend on knowledge of vision as on a cause; but rather existence in time through the determination of the created free will is a condition, without which those acts could not be the object of knowledge of vision. »

I. That future things, even free ones, are most perfectly known to God: a) all of Scripture demonstrates this by a real argument. «For the foreknowledge of God has as many witnesses as he has made prophets » Tertull. contr. Marc. II. 5. Hence there would be no need in theology for singular proofs for the confirmation of this truth, since this divine foreknowledge is presupposed throughout all revelation as one of the foundations of our faith. For just as by omnipotence in miracles, so by foreknowledge in prophecies of future things — namely of those that depend on the created free will — God willed to furnish arguments on which the credibility of the whole revelation chiefly rests. Hence Christ himself, and the prophets and Apostles and all subsequent asserters of Christian truth, in countless appeals to prophecies made and fulfilled, attest and vindicate this foreknowledge of God, and suppose it as known to all and indubitable.

This perfection of knowledge of future things is so vindicated in the Scriptures that it is proper to God alone and is the most certain argument of divinity, and so surpasses all the power of created and finite understanding. «Who is like me? Let him call and declare and set forth the order for me, from when I established the ancient people; let them announce to them the things coming and those that are future.... from then I made you hear and I declared; you are my witnesses. Is there God apart from me?» Is. XLIV. 7. 8. Cf. XLI. 22. 23; XLV. 21; XLVI. 9. 10; XLVIII. 4–8. «Therefore the truth of divination is a sound testimony of divinity» Tertullian. Apolog. c. 20.

b) In explicit words, Scripture ascribes to God the fullest knowledge of future free things in many places. For these things, which depend on the created free will, are directly and immediately spoken of in the passages cited above at th. XXXVII. n. 2°. Ps. XXXII. 15; CXXXVIII. 3. sqq.; Dan. XIII. 42; Eccli. XXIII. 28. 29; XXXIX. 21. sqq.; XLII. 18. sq.

c) In these passages it is taught at the same time that God's eternal knowledge is such that the objective truth of acts existing in time is from eternity under the gaze of God, no differently than when they already actually exist in themselves. «The sun, illuminating all things, has looked... the abyss and the heart of man it has searched... for the Lord has known all knowledge and has looked into the sign of the age, announcing things that have passed and things that are to come, revealing the traces of hidden things; no thought escapes him, and no word hides itself from him. He has set in order the marvels of his wisdom, who is before the age, and unto the age; nothing is added to it, nor is it diminished » Eccli. XLII. 16. sqq. Hence nothing is said to be wonderful in his eyes, because «he regards from age to age» ib. XXXIX. 25. That God surveys all the ways of men and gazes upon the hearts of men is itself confirmed from the eternity and immutability of the divine knowledge. «For before they were created, all things were known to the Lord God, and so also after they were made perfect» Eccli. XXIII. 28. 29.¹ Susanna likewise calls God to witness her innocence, in that «he knows all things before they come to be» Dan. XIII. 42. But concerning this eternal presence before the divine eyes we have already spoken at th. XXXII.

II. The second part of the present thesis is of great importance, since in it a foundation is laid, from which we can understand the reconciliation of created liberty with the eternal and immutable foreknowledge of God.

First it must be laid down that all knowledge, if considered formally, prescinding from the effective will, presupposes its own proper object, that is, the objective truth of which it is the knowledge. This is plainly evident in speculative knowledge, which does not make intelligible things; but through it, things which are intelligible in themselves are actually understood. For how can knowledge and understanding be conceived, unless the knowable and the intelligible are presupposed? Although, therefore, every possible being depends, as on a principle, on the first and infinite actual necessary Being, and every objective truth on the first truth, and every knowable thing on the first intelligible; understanding, considered formally, nevertheless presupposes, as its principal object (infinite truth), and likewise a secondary object depending on that first truth. Just as, therefore, the knowledge of possible essences (which is that of simple intelligence) presupposes possible essences, so the intuition of existences which are at some time in act (knowledge of vision) presupposes those existences themselves for some difference of time. For unless it is presupposed in reason that it is true that these or those things exist at such a time, it is plainly contradictory that God's knowledge be referred to them as actually existing at such a time. But in this very relation, or connotation, of the term as something that at some time actually exists, lies the reason of knowledge of vision. From these things it seems clear that knowledge of vision cannot be the cause of existence; rather, the existence of the object is indeed not a cause, so that God's knowledge, which is the divine essence itself, is simply what it is, yet is a condition without which God's knowledge with respect to this term would not be knowledge of vision. We have said that it is a condition sine qua non rather than a cause, although the Fathers, as we shall soon see, have also said that the existence of the term is a cause, so that the knowledge has the character of vision and of foreknowledge. For the Fathers did not by this expression mean that the secondary object effects something in God himself; they only meant that the truth of an existence that is at some time actual is a term, from whose connotation it comes about that the knowledge, remaining unchanged in itself, has the character of foreknowledge and of vision. Hence, to avoid all ambiguity, we shall better say condition sine qua non than cause.

Further, in practical knowledge itself a distinction is needed, so that it may be rightly understood how it is the cause of things. For insofar as it is knowledge, it also presupposes its own formal term; insofar, however, as it is practical, it precedes the term of efficiency. Let there be distinguished, therefore, in God: a) the imitability of the divine essence through participated perfections, according to all the species, orders, and grades of possible beings, which imitability is the exemplar idea itself. Since this exemplar idea is the divine essence itself, it is indeed one in itself; nevertheless, on account of the connotation of the copies and of the manifold imitations, by a distinction of reason, there can be called many divine ideas and reasons of all operable things outside God. These we shall call the objective exemplar ideas and reasons. b) Let there be distinguished the formal understanding of all these operable things according to all the reasons by which they can be wisely produced and in a manner worthy of God. This can be called the formal idea, and it is practical knowledge in the first act. c) Let this same understanding be considered as it shines before the effective will, and as the free effective will is joined to it; thus it will be practical knowledge and effective idea in the second act. Then, in the objects themselves, the state of possibility, insofar as they are operable, is distinguished from real existence.

With these things laid down, we now say: the exemplar reasons in God precede as the principle from which the possibles and the operables themselves depend; the understanding, or practical knowledge in the first act, considered formally, does not precede but presupposes them, the exemplar reasons as its formal object, and likewise the operables as the secondary object of the understanding. It is also manifest that the proper object of practical knowledge is not existence already in act; rather, it is things as possible and operable outside God, or, which comes nearly to the same thing, existence as to be effected. Existence in act, however, is the effect of the effective will, to which the knowledge of the operable and to-be-effected existence shines forth; and in this way actual existence depends on knowledge, which is practical in the second act. But knowledge whose object is already actual existence is not effective and practical, but only the intuition of that existence itself.

The order, therefore, in which, according to our manner of understanding, with a foundation in the thing, the individual items succeed one another and one is prior in reason to another, is as follows: 1° the divine essence as imitable outside God; 2° all possibles; 3ⁱᵒ the divine understanding of the imitability of the essence, and in this the understanding of all possibles as they are operable by God himself; 4° the understanding of operables and of existences to be effected, shining before the effective will, and the free will, joined to the understanding, commanding existences for some difference of time; 5° the truth of existence for that difference of time; 6° the knowledge of vision of this existence.

From these things it again appears that practical knowledge, which as a cause precedes the truth of real existence, is not knowledge of vision; rather, knowledge of vision is posterior in reason to practical knowledge, which is joined with the effective or at least permitting will, and therefore also posterior to the truth of existence in all its objects.

III. If this is the character of knowledge of vision with respect to its object existing in general, even in those things which depend on the will of God as on the single efficient cause; then all the more evidently in the free acts of creatures, which depend on the free determination of the created will, the truth of the existence of the act for some difference of time is prior in reason, and is presupposed to the divine vision. Therefore acts are not future because they are seen by God from eternity; rather, acts are the object of vision from eternity because they are future. Indeed, as Vasquez rightly remarks (disp. 68. c. 6. n. 36.), «by the common teaching of the Fathers, and if the matter were well grasped by reason, this thing would be beyond controversy, if the mind were intent on inquiring into the truth rather than on contention.» We have spoken of the intrinsic reason of the matter; it remains that we briefly embrace the most brilliant teaching of the Fathers.

The Fathers teach that a free action is not future because God foreknew or even foretold it as future; rather, because it is future, it is constituted a fitting object to be foreseen and foretold by the divine knowledge and truthfulness. For since all things are presented to the divine sight as they objectively stand for any time, hence God, just as he knows that a man can choose one among many, so he sees the choice itself determinately, of what sort it is and of what it is the choice.

Celsus objected to the Christians that, if Christ is God and cannot be deceived, and he foretold that the crime of Judas would be future, it follows that God himself is the cause of the crime, and that Judas necessarily committed it. For, he says, «it was God who foretold it, and it had altogether to come to pass (πάντως ἐχρῆν γενέσθαι) what had been foretold.» Origen's reply (c. Cels. l. II. n. 20. T. I. p. 405.) places the whole question we are discussing in the clearest light. «Celsus thinks that what has been foretold comes to pass because it has been foretold; but we (Christians) by no means concede this, and we say that he who foretold it is not the cause of the future thing, on the ground that he foretold it would be future; but that the thing which would certainly be future even if it had not been foretold has furnished the foreknowing one with the cause of foretelling it. The whole matter, of course, turns on the foreknowledge of the one who foretells in this way: it is possible for this thing to come to pass, and it is possible also for it not to come to pass; of these two, however, one will be this determinate thing. But we do not concede that contingency, by which it can come to pass or not come to pass, is taken away from the one who foreknows...² If, moreover, (Celsus) takes that word altogether (it had to come to pass) in the sense of necessarily, we shall not grant this to him; for it could also not have come to pass. But if he means altogether in the sense that it will be true that this thing is contingent, although it could also not come to pass, this does nothing against our teaching.» Eusebius, in slightly different words, reports and approves this doctrine of Origen in the Praepar. Evang.l.VI.p.287. sqq.«We do not say that foreknowledge is the cause of the things that come to pass (he is speaking of free acts); but, what may seem more wonderful, yet is true, we say that the future is the cause of such foreknowledge of it³: for it is not because it is known that it therefore comes to pass; but because it is future, it is known.... If Judas can be an Apostle just as Peter can, God can know of Judas that he remains an Apostle just as Peter does. If Judas can be a traitor, God can know of him that he will be a traitor. But if in fact Judas will be a traitor, God, foreknowing that which will be out of the two mentioned possibilities, foreknowing the truth in that very thing⁴, will foreknow that Judas will become a traitor... As if the knowledge of God said: since this man can do this and can do the contrary, and both are possible, I know that he will do this.»

The sense in which the free determination of the creature itself can be said not to be the cause of God's knowledge, but the cause why God foresees this rather than that, Damascene declares still more distinctly in the dialogue against the Manichaeans, n. 79. «The foreknowing power of God does not have its cause from us; but that he foresees these things which we are about to do is from us.» For if we were not going to do them, neither would he have foreseen them, since they would not be future. And the foreknowledge of God is indeed true and infallible, ἀπαράβατος; but it is not itself the cause that what is future should altogether come to pass; rather, because we are going to act this or that, he foreknows it.» According to this relation of the term to the knowledge, which without such a term would indeed be an equally perfect knowledge, but would signify not this term but another, the expressions of the Fathers must be understood, when they say that we and our free action are the cause why God foresaw it, or even that God is forced by us to foresee sins. Thus speaks, for example, the Venerable Bede, Variar. qq. q. 13. «What, then, has God compelled us to, that we should seem evil to him from eternity? Far from it! For rather we have compelled him to see us as evil.»

Moreover, this doctrine and opinion is most common among the Fathers: a thing is not future because God foresees the future, but because it is future, therefore God foresees it. «Just as these two things are not opposed to each other, says St Augustine, so that by your foreknowledge you know that another is going to act by his own will; so God, compelling no one to sin, nevertheless foresees those who will sin by their own will.... Just as your memory does not cause the things that have passed to have happened, so God by his foreknowledge does not cause the things that are future to be done» Aug. de lib. arbit. l. III. c. 4. See also August. Civ. Dei V. 10. n. 2; in Io. tract. 53. n. 4. 6; Hieronym. in Ierem. XXVI. T. IV. p. 1025; in Ezech. II. T. V. p. 25; Gaudent. Brix. in Pascha serm. 3. p. 247; Chrysost. in Matth. hom. 59. al. 60. n. 1; Boëth. de Consol. l. V. pros. 6.

The principle on which the doctrine rests, and which is presupposed as a kind of foundation, is that set forth by us: that the truth of the existence of acts for some time is prior in reason, and that the knowledge of vision can be referred to those same acts only when this objective truth is presupposed. The Fathers also expressly declare this itself; thus the author of the Quaestiones ad orthodoxos, among the Works of St Justin, q. 58. «The cause of the betrayal, he says, was Judas himself, which God, foreknowing that it was to be, foretold in Scripture; and foreknowledge is not the cause of the future, but the future is the cause of foreknowledge. For the future does not follow upon foreknowledge (futuritio is what the Scholastics call it), but foreknowledge follows upon the future»⁵

From these things it can be judged how weighty is the difficulty usually urged against the proposed doctrine, namely that it follows that what happens in time and is not from eternity would be the cause of God's knowledge, which is from eternity. For first, the object and terminus, according to what has been declared, is not the cause of the knowledge itself, insofar as it is the absolute perfection of God. Next, it is not a cause in the proper sense, which would effect the terminating of the knowledge by some physical influx and action upon God; but it is only a terminus which, on account of the infinite perfection of the knowledge that comprehends every truth as it is objectively, necessarily underlies the knowledge of simple intelligence for the state of possibility, and the knowledge of vision for the state of real existence. Admirably St Albert the Great says: «Origen (in the place cited above by us) intends that the future, because it is future, is knowable by God, that is, has an aptitude for being known; and so he says that the future is no cause of knowledge in the knower, but states a reason of aptitude in the knowable» Albert. Summ. P. I. q. 61. m. 3. The same is found in Alexander of Hales, P. I. q. 24. m. 3. Moreover, it is not simply true that the object of knowledge, as regards its esse as knowable, begins in time. For the object is the truth of existence under such a difference of time; but that such an act exists at such a time was from eternity a truth; therefore the object of eternal knowledge, as regards its esse as knowable, does not begin in time. It indeed depends on the free determination of the creature, which begins in real existence in time, that this rather than that should be true from eternity; yet the knowable truth itself, that such an act will be future and another will not be, is not temporary. Hugh of St Victor declares this subtly (de Sacramentis fidei P. II. c. 17. 18. T. III. fol. 227.): «Now, however, what has been foreknown from eternity is from eternity future; but what is future is not itself eternal, for if it were eternal it would not be future but present. And it was not foreknown before it was future; but it was foreknown and it was future before it was... And these two ran together from eternity: that which was future (e.g. the obstinacy of Judas), and that which could be but was not future (e.g. the conversion of Judas). And if what could be, and yet was not future, had been made to happen (the conversion), it would have been future and foreknown, which (in the present hypothesis) was not future; nor would the foreknowledge of this future have been changed, but would never have been had, because it would not have been future.» In the same way St Thomas speaks in many places: «Just as our sight is never deceived in seeing contingent things as they are present, and yet from this it is not removed that those things happen contingently; so God infallibly sees all contingent things... because they are not future to him, but he beholds them as being when they are: whence from this it is not removed that they happen contingently... The intuition of divine knowledge is directed to the thing according as it is in its presentiality, as it is now determined to one, and so far as this goes can no longer be varied. But if the thing itself receives another disposition, that will again be subject in the same way to the divine vision» de veritat. q. 2. a. 12. et 13. What was disputed above concerning the mode in which all temporal things are present to the eternal gaze of God must be recalled here th. XXXII.

Corollary 1. God's knowledge is indeed determined by the divine essence itself as by its formal object, so that it comprehends in it every truth according to the threefold reason declared in th. XXXVII. But since contingent existence is so true that its opposite could be true, the divine essence of itself does not exhibit existence rather than non-existence, but exhibits one or the other, according as one or the other is objectively true. It therefore depends on an object that exists or does not exist, and consequently, in free acts, on the free determination, so that the divine essence represents existence rather than non-existence as true. This, however, is not a dependence of imperfection, nor one in the proper sense as an effect on a cause; it is the absolute perfection of the first truth, intrinsically determined to represent every truth as it objectively stands.

Corollary 2. Since practical knowledge precedes the supposition of the existence of things, of which it is the cause (together with the effective will), either alone or at least as the first cause, by way of art, it is said of it most truly by Augustine (see p. 349.), and after Augustine by St Thomas and all the others: things are not known because they are; but they are because they are known (knowledge in the manner of art and of directing wisdom). « Because he knew, he created; not because he created, he knew ». Therefore one must speak in a far different manner of practical knowledge and of knowledge of vision. To declare this distinction, St Thomas, 1. q. 14. a. 8., treating of practical knowledge, objects to himself an objection from Origen, who seems to deny that God's knowledge is the cause of things, and rather to affirm that the existence of things is the cause of knowledge in God: « it will not be something because God knows it will be future; but because it is future, it is known by God. »

St Thomas answers, as to the first part, which denies it, that Origen does not speak of practical knowledge; as to the second part, which affirms it, that Origen is not to be understood as speaking of a cause that produces God's knowledge, but according to «the cause of consequence»: that if a thing is future, then without doubt it is known by God. « We must say that Origen spoke attending to the notion of knowledge, to which the notion of causality belongs only when the will is joined to it. But when he says that God foreknows some things because they are future, it must be understood according to the cause of consequence, not according to the cause of being» ib. ad 1. Cf. de verit. q. 2. a. 14. ad 1. This is just what we said above: that the truth of real existence for some difference of time is not a cause but a condition and a term, without which God's knowledge would not be the vision of this term.

On the proper objective reason of the foreknowledge of free acts.

« The proper and universal reason why future free acts are the object of eternal foreknowledge cannot be drawn either from the divine decrees pertaining to the constitution of the created will in the proximate first act, or from the absolute predefinitions of the second free act itself, which we are certain do not precede foreknowledge, at least with respect to morally evil acts; but the objective reason of foreknowledge can be understood from the truth of the free act itself, namely, that the creature freely determines itself in time to this act rather than to another, and this has been true from eternity. »

The divine essence itself is the formal object in which God, as in the supreme Being, the supreme truth, and in the infinite representation of all truth, knows all things which, apart from God, have the character of being, whether possible or real (th. XXXVII.); yet he knows all true things not only as they are in the divine exemplar, but also as they are in themselves (th. XXXVIII.). Hence the free acts of creatures too, on the supposition that they will at some time be, lie open to the divine gaze in themselves. And they lie open to it from eternity, because the divine knowledge is unchangeable and eternal without succession, and at the same time because the existence of such acts for such a difference of time was true from eternity (th. XXXIII. XLII.). On these principles, which are most certain from the doctrine of the Fathers, and which, as we demonstrated in the preceding theses, are also in accord with the older Masters of the school and especially with St Thomas, one ought to rest. But the theologians, from the waning sixteenth century onward, preferred to transfer to this place the most contentious questions, which would have their proper seat partly in philosophy, where the general concurrence of God is treated, that is, the dependence of creatures in acting on the first cause, and partly in the treatise on grace, where the question is about liberty, by which man, raised and strengthened by the supernatural powers of grace, elicits deliberate supernatural acts. We shall touch on this dispute as far as necessary, presupposing a fuller demonstration of certain principles from other treatises. Thus, what St Augustine and St Thomas (1. q. 14. a. 8.) and all the others teach, where they treat of the creation of things and of the effective ideas: « things are not known by God because they are, but they are because they are known », all this some of those theologians transferred to the free acts of the creature, paying no heed to the most express doctrine of those same Fathers, which contradicts them when they explain the relation of free acts to the divine knowledge. Just as, therefore, in the creative will of God there is the adequate cause of the existence of creatures, and therefore in that will the existence of the things to be created is also knowable; so those theologians posited absolute decrees of God predefining all the free acts of creatures before any foreseeing of the free acts in themselves; indeed, in those decrees God sees the free acts themselves, which are future, as effects in their cause. We shall consider the divine decrees, or effective volitions, first as they refer to the proximate first act of the created will; second, as they refer to the second free act itself; third, we shall conclude what is the proper and sole universal objective reason why free acts are constituted the term of knowledge of vision.

I. A free secondary cause, existing, and equipped with powers that are, according to the diversity of acts, merely natural or even supernatural, and not impeded in the exercise of its liberty, is necessarily presupposed, in order that a free act may be future. But all these things, each and all of them constituting the first act of the free creature, can neither be nor be understood apart from the decree or the effective will of God. Therefore, in order that a free act may be able to be future, the divine decrees pertaining to the constitution of the first act are necessarily presupposed.

But that in these decrees there is no reason why God should foresee the determinate second free act is plainly manifest. For by the divine decrees or efficacies which we have recalled, the creature is constituted in first act, indifferent to second act, such that it can elicit the second act or not elicit it, eliciting one rather than another. For unless the first act were so disposed, the second act would not be free but necessary. Therefore in those decrees there is knowable, and is known by God, the liberty of the creature and its indifference to diverse acts; but the determinate act of the free will is not knowable. The consequence is proved: for if in those decrees a determinate act were knowable through divine knowledge¹ that is always infallible, there would have to be something in them to which it is metaphysically repugnant that the act not be posited. But in those decrees there is not only nothing to which this is repugnant; on the contrary, they are so disposed that from their intrinsic reason the act could also not be posited: for in those very decrees or efficacies the creature is constituted in first act in such a way that it can determine itself to either side. Therefore in those decrees a determinate act is not knowable.

I declare this same thing in other words. The divine decrees, of which we now speak, as transient action outward, are divine efficacies pertaining in the secondary cause to the first act. Now, with these efficacies supposed, regarding the first act as considered with all its intrinsic elements, a twofold opinion is possible: a) the first act may be assumed in such a way that, in the composite sense, with all the elements pertaining to the first act itself, the will has a true power to either side, namely, to elicit this very second act or not to elicit it (the active indifference of exercise or of contradiction), or also to elicit this or that other second act (the indifference of specification or of contrariety); and this indifference, at least of contradiction, is essential in the first act, so that the liberty of the second act may consist. With this admitted, no determinate second act is knowable in those divine efficacies and in all the conditions of the first act, in the kind of knowledge that befits God. For to know some determinate act in its cause is the same as to know the cause as determined to that act. But if God knew a cause as determined to one act, when it is not determined to this act rather than another, the knowledge would be false. Note, however, that the term of vision lies under the divine knowledge in such a way that it is absolutely repugnant for the known term not to be such as it is known to be. Hence, if in the first act of the created will the second act is contained as the term of divine vision, the first act of the created will must be supposed to be such that it is absolutely repugnant for this determinate second act not to follow. But this being posited, there would no longer be indifference to either side in the first act, and consequently the second act would not be free, which is contrary to the hypothesis. Therefore I have said that the second act is not knowable in that way, in the kind of knowledge that befits God.

You will say that God knows the cause as already determining itself, and in this way knows the act in its cause. This indeed is most true; but this is not to know the cause in the first act, and from the proper nature of the first act to understand the second act; rather it is to know the cause already in the second act, or the second act itself in itself, as we affirm and shall demonstrate a little later.

But if b) the proximate first act is assumed in such a way that, from the intrinsic nature of all those things taken together which constitute the first act, this determinate second act cannot but follow; or so that the first act, in the composite sense, with all the intrinsic elements constituting it, is determined to one second act: this, I say, being admitted, we confess, constrained by the evidence of the matter, that we cannot understand a free second act, that is, one elicited by the choice of the will in a first act indifferent to either side. We therefore concede that in the first act of a necessary cause, determined to one (to which first act there pertains, of course, also the will of God not to impede the second act), the second act can be known infallibly; but we deny that the same reason holds for a free cause, which, with all the requisites and opportunities for acting posited, can act and not act.

Some theologians defend efficacious grace, insofar as it pertains to the first act, and without which it is repugnant for the second act to be elicited, in such a way that efficacious grace is infallibly bound up with the second act through physical predetermination of the created will, or in another way from the intrinsic nature of grace itself; so that it is repugnant for such an entity of grace to be received in the first act and for the second act not to follow. Indeed, some think that a premotion and a similar application derived from the first cause, although natural in its entity, is required for all acts of secondary causes, and therefore also for all free acts of the created will, even for morally evil acts, not indeed insofar as they are evil, but insofar as they are some entity. With these things admitted, it is most easily understood how God, in his decrees by which from eternity he destines such grace and such premotion, and therefore also in that very grace or premotion which pertains to the first act, sees all the second acts; but it seems to us far more difficult, and, to tell the truth, in no way intelligible, how such acts are free to the created will.

To explain this, those theologians customarily use a distinction which, if we restrict the disputation to supernatural acts alone, comes down in the end to this: they say that in the composite sense, namely in the hypothesis of such efficacious grace being received, it is indeed repugnant that the act to which efficacious grace is directed should not be posited; but that in the divided sense the act can not be posited, and therefore that the will remains free even with grace and under grace, as is without doubt believed by all Catholics. Other theologians do not concede the usefulness of this distinction, because they can understand it only in such a way that the will, while there is in it a motion efficacious of itself, is said not to be able to dissent by a second act; although the will, in which there is that efficacious motion, considered in itself, has the power of positing dissent under another hypothesis. Since, however, the free will of man, moved and stirred by God through preceding grace, can either assent to God stirring and calling, or can also dissent² (Conc. Trid. sess. VI. cap. 5. et can. 4.), it seems entirely clear that, in the composite sense and under the hypothesis that all things which intrinsically constitute the first act are now present, assent or dissent in the second act can follow from the free determination of man. And therefore it must also be conceded that, with the first act of the free cause considered in the composite sense with all the things intrinsically constituting it, a determinate second act cannot be known from all those things and their nature considered in itself, because it is not determined by all of them³.

II. Although these things are so, it does not yet appear why God does not foresee all free acts in some one absolute decree of his, by which he predefines not now the first act of the secondary cause, but the second act itself.

The difference between this doctrine, proposed by the Catholic Doctors, and the doctrine of the Jansenists or of the older Protestants concerning the liberty of the will is very great. For the heretics affirm that free will moved by God cannot dissent, although it could not-will, indeed could not will, if it were not stirred and moved; and therefore they confess and affirm no liberty to either side under grace. But those Catholic doctors maintain that in the will, even while it is stirred by God, full liberty remains. The way, however, in which liberty stands under predetermining grace they try to explain by the distinction of composite sense and divided sense, which satisfies them; but to us it seems to be of no value, unless perhaps they are willing to concede that it lies in the free power of man to have that predetermination, or that it lies in his free power to reject, and to deny consent to, the predetermination which is already present in the first act; so that it is true, according to the Council of Trent, Sess. VI. cap. 5, that man, while receiving the inspiration, does something, « inasmuch as he is able to reject it. » Therefore the disagreement among Catholic theologians is not about liberty whether it is, and so it is not about a dogma that has been defined; but the disagreement is about liberty how it is, and about the explanation of the dogma. We agree on this point with Francis Aravius, Bishop⁴ By the name of such predefinitions nothing else can be understood than the eternal and absolute will of God, that the creature in time freely determine itself to this or that act. This, however, manifestly includes two things, complacency,

As for that distinction of composite sense and divided sense, we understand very well that the impossibility of an act in the composite sense, with some hypothesis depending on the determination of the free will, does not detract from liberty. For example, under the hypothesis that I freely consent to exciting grace, it is repugnant that I should at the same time not consent; and because God sees my free act of consent, it is equally repugnant that there should be a divine vision of my consent and yet the consent not be. For unless I consented, I could not-consent, and God sees this very thing. If it is a question of the composite sense with efficacious grace, formally as it is efficacious grace in the second act, we here presuppose the doctrine concerning the nature of efficacious and sufficient grace. Namely, considered in itself, grace is and is called efficacious, that is, having the power of effecting, indeed from within and from its own entity (for it is foolish, and unheard of except in the childish objections of certain persons, that any theologian should ever have thought that grace receives its powers from the consenting will, whereas on the contrary grace gives powers to the will to consent). But in comparison with sufficient grace it is called efficacious not from a different entity, as if sufficient grace were not intrinsically ordered by its own virtue to effecting; rather, efficacious and sufficient grace are distinguished in the first act, insofar as with the one there is joined the foreseeing of the free second act to which it is ordered, while with the other there is joined the foreseeing of free dissent, and therefore the foreseeing of the negation of the second act, to which grace of itself is ordered. In this sense, therefore, if grace is efficacious and effective in the second act, insofar as through the powers of grace communicated to me I freely elicit the act, which same grace would be merely sufficient if dissent were foreseen, it is readily understood that, with grace one and the same ontologically, either consent elicited through the powers of grace can be joined to it, or man can dissent with a dissent elicited by the powers of corrupted nature. It is understood, namely, that such an act comes to be, and by the absolute will of efficacy, the creature, while it can determine itself to diverse things, determines itself by free choice to this one act. Further, this absolute will can again be understood in three ways: first, that together with grace, formally as it is efficacious, or as it presupposes the fact of my free consent, consent cannot but be joined to it; for if consent is, it cannot at the same time not be; but that hypothesis that there is consent is in the power of the free will, whence it depends that the other hypothesis, that of dissent, be the true one, which being posited, the same grace is no longer efficacious and effective in the second act, but merely sufficient. In this way, therefore, it is easily understood that, in the composite sense with grace, formally as it is presupposed to be efficacious, that is, joined with free consent, actual dissent cannot stand together with it; for this would be the same as positing consent and dissent at once and in the same respect. What we cannot understand in the doctrine of the theologians I mentioned at the beginning is this: that, given efficacious grace and a predetermination inhering in the soul, it is repugnant from the very nature of grace that consent should not follow, just as, given grace alone, which is by its nature sufficient, it is repugnant that consent should actually follow unless something else is added; and yet we are said to consent freely, although whether that efficacious grace, or its lack, is in us is in no way in our power. » Although love cannot be posited without predetermination to it, nor its omission without a positive lack of predetermination; yet among all Thomists neither the predefinition nor its lack is contained in the power of the will, but solely in the power of God, who by the means by which (that is, through predetermination, or on the contrary through its lack) subordinates the will to himself both in love and in its omission. » Thus Illmus Montalban, with Cajetan Benitez consenting and approving, 1. c. §. 3. n. 35. We revere the opinions of the theologians; yet since such a mode of operation of grace is not proposed in revelation as something to be believed, but the matter is an explanation of a dogma believed by all, an explanation, I say, of liberty together with the necessity of grace for any supernatural act, and since another explanation is available which seems to us far better to cohere with the heads of revealed doctrine concerning liberty and grace, we cannot do what Bañez demands in 2. 2. q. 10. a. 1. concl. 3. docum. 8. Opp. T. III. p. 249. 250., where he cites theologians agreeing with us that they cannot understand liberty of the will under grace and with grace, if grace is by its intrinsic nature so efficacious « that these two cannot stand together: this man receives such help, and this man is not converted. » Bañez, however, refutes them thus: « Replying to this objection, I cannot sufficiently wonder at the ignorance, not to say the rashness, of theologians of this kind. For first of all they ought to have believed what they say they cannot understand; for we Catholics believe the mystery of the Trinity, even though we do not understand it. » But the opinion proposed by the author, those to whom it pleases may defend, and those to whom it does not please may⁵ so that it precedes all middle knowledge of what a creature under certain conditions would freely do, and all knowledge of vision, by which God beholds the determination itself already free; or so that, with middle knowledge shining forth, God by his absolute will disposes all the free acts of creatures antecedently to the knowledge of vision; or finally, so that he does not absolutely will such acts to exist, except while in his eternity he sees the creature freely determining itself to them.

With these things laid down, we affirm: 1° that no evil acts are predefined by God in the proper sense, not only as to moral depravity, which is most certain by faith, but also not as to the physical entity of the acts themselves. For what God forbids under threat of his wrath and eternal punishment is the physical act itself, although the reason why he forbids it is the moral depravity inseparable from it. But it is repugnant that the will of complacency in God should will that such an act come to be, and it is repugnant for God to will to bring it about that man determine himself to such an act, from which moral depravity is inseparable, and which therefore God most severely forbids. Therefore God predefines no such acts in the proper sense. Indeed, the sinner himself does not will moral depravity, except insofar as he wills the act from which it is inseparable. Therefore, since it is without doubt blasphemous to think with Calvin that God wills that sin should come to be, it cannot in any way be admitted that God, indeed by an efficacious motion preceding the foreseeing of the free determination of man, wills to bring it about that man determine himself to such an act, even considered physically, from which the reason of sin is inseparable. For note that not only external action is in question, but the very deliberate act of the will, to whose entity certain persons have not feared to affirm that the will is predetermined by an absolute antecedent decree of God. This doctrine indeed follows from a certain manner of understanding the application of all secondary causes to all acts, even free acts, through a predetermining concurrence of God; but this very consequence would be enough to deter us from admitting the principle of that predetermining concurrence to all free acts.

To such an absolute predefinition of evil acts, even if they are considered according to their physical entity, we oppose the most sweet admonition of the Holy Spirit. « Do not say: it is through God that I am absent; for what he hates, do not do. Do not say: he has led me astray (ἐπλανησεν); for he has no need of impious men » Eccli. XV. 11. 12. « Men therefore do their own will, not God's, when they do what displeases God » Conc. Araus. can. 23. Cf. Trid. sess. VI. can. 6. « We never read in the Holy Scriptures: there is no will except from God; and it is rightly not written, because it is not true. Otherwise God would also be the author of sins, which God forbid, if there is no will except from him; since a wicked will is already sin by itself, even if the effect is lacking » S. Aug. de spir. et litt. c. 31. Cf. S. Th. 1. 2. q. 9. a. 6; q. 80. a. 1.

These arguments, together with others, which it is not the place to relate at length here (see the oration of Ferd. Bastida, in Liv. de Meyer Hist. de auxil. 1. VI. c. 17.), persuade us to dissent from those theologians who tried to prove this proposition: « First conclusion: God certainly and infallibly knows all future sins in the decree by which he determined to predetermine the created will to the entity of the act of sin, insofar as it is act and being; and to permit the moral wickedness of sin, or sin itself insofar as it is sin, by not giving efficacious help to avoid it » Didac. Alvarez De Auxil. disp. XI. n. 3.

2°. Nevertheless God permits sins, and, foreseeing them, he wills certain effects from them, and by his ineffable providence has decreed to direct them to most holy ends. « God is so good that he makes good use even of evils, which the Almighty would not allow to be if by his supreme goodness he could not make good use of them » S. August. Op. imperf. c. Iul. l. V. c. 60. Permission, however, is not an antecedent will that the act in which there is the perversity of sin should come to be; but it is referred to what follows. Positively, God conserves in the creature its natural faculties and liberty, and by that very fact offers his concurrence and influx to all the actions to which its liberty extends, on which every secondary cause depends in acting. At the same time he does not will, but forbids, that the created will should choose an action in which there is moral perversion; and for not sinning he offers and gives sufficient helps, whether of the natural or of the supernatural order, by using which the creature can, at least here and now, not sin. Negatively, he does not give other helps, if the creature is unwilling to use the granted sufficient helps; either on account of antecedent demerits; or because a wise and orderly providence does not require other helps; or because God is not bound, in the distribution of graces, to accommodate himself to the malice of creatures; or, which comprehends all of them in one, according to his counsels and judgments, always holy and just, but unknown and unsearchable to us. All these things, the conservation of liberty, the ready concurrence, the denial of other helps beyond the granted sufficient ones, are not yet permission in themselves, considered by themselves, insofar as they pertain to constituting the first act; but they are permission insofar as together with them there is the foreseeing of sin; or in the second act, insofar as they accompany the free determination of the sinner.

Every volition, moreover, every decree whose transient effect is in time, is in God an eternal will. The question therefore arises whether at least the eternal decree of permitting evil acts, if these are not predefined as said above, is such that in it, prior to all foreseeing, conditional or absolute, of human free determination, there is contained the proper reason in which God foreknows these acts. We reply: in those things which pertain to constituting the first act, considered by themselves, the act of sin is not infallibly knowable, as is clear from what was said in n. I. Nevertheless God infallibly knows, as will be shown below, which act the created will would choose under any hypothesis among all possibles: not as if a determinate second act were contained as knowable in the first act or in the decree pertaining to the first act; but because it is true that the creature will freely act thus, and every truth, as it objectively stands, lies under infinite knowledge. Hence we readily concede that middle knowledge of an act under a condition, when the condition is verified, becomes the knowledge of vision of an act absolutely future. But this does not mean seeing the act of sin in some antecedent decree; it means that God knows the act, whether it would be under a condition or whether it will absolutely be, in the very truth of the act as in its term, while he would know another act if the creature (as it can) posited another.

If, finally, permission is regarded as it is in the second act and as concomitant, then indeed the eternal decree of this permission already presupposes in God the knowledge of the free determination of the creature. For this permission does not stand in such a way that God, by reason of what comes first, decrees to permit sin in the second act, and that the vision of sin then follows from this as from a cause; but while God sees, and although he sees the creature endowed with the natural gifts of the conservation of its faculties, of liberty, and of divine concurrence on which it depends in acting, freely willing to abuse these in order to offend its Creator and Lord, he nevertheless wills not to withdraw these gifts ⁶, and, sufficient aids having been granted, not to grant other aids to one who does not use them, which is the very decree of the permission of sin, as we explained a little earlier. But if these things stand thus, God does not see sin in a decree of permission; but while he knows the act of sin as future in the very truth of the act, he decrees to permit it.

Consequently, then, with respect to the knowledge of acts in their objective truth, God indeed wills absolutely to permit them; but this permission does not prevent God, by the antecedent will of the Creator and Saviour of men and by the absolute will of the Lawgiver, from willing that those acts not be and from forbidding them. For this reason the whole notion of permission cannot even be called a consequent predefinition of acts; although, consequent upon foreseeing, a predefinition of permission, if it is pleasing so to call it, may be admitted, which however would be better named with Suarez (Opusc. de div. motione 1. II. c. 7. n. 10.) will of permission. For predefinition can be said in two ways: most properly indeed, it is the absolute will antecedent to the foreseeing of the free acts of the creature; in a less strict sense it is the will of approval consequent upon foreseeing and antecedent only to the existence of the free acts. In the former sense neither the act of sin nor its permission is predefined; in the latter sense not indeed the act of sin, but yet its permission can be said to be predefined.

3°. The reason is quite different for good acts, especially supernatural ones, which God wills by the will of approval to be done by the free creature, and which by the will of efficacy he anticipates and assists with his aids and his grace, so that it may both be able and act. In these, therefore, there is no doubt that predefinition is to be admitted in some one of the senses I have mentioned above. Hence the distinction so frequent among the Fathers, especially among Augustine and his disciples, that God foreknows both good and evil, but predestines not evil but good. « Predestination is that which cannot be without foreknowledge; but foreknowledge can be without predestination. For by predestination God foreknew those things which he himself was going to do..... but he is able to foreknow also those which he himself does not do, such as all sins » Aug. de Praed. SS. c. 10. n. 19., and from him Fulgent. ad Monim. l. I. c. 29. The only doubt, therefore, can be of what kind this predefinition of good acts is.

Predefinition of a good act, since it is God's absolute will that the creature elicit such an act, necessarily includes the decree of conferring the aid with which the act that God wills to be done is infallibly connected. Hence, if this absolute will of God is antecedent both to the knowledge of conditionals, that is, what a created will would choose under any condition and with any aids, and to the vision of that very choice in itself, then without doubt that predefinition includes a decree of conferring aid, to which it is intrinsically repugnant that the predefined act not follow. But such aids determining the will to a free act seem either not to be given, or not to be able to be given, since they fight against the liberty of the act, as we showed above, as far as the present matter required. Therefore no free acts, not even supernatural ones, are predefined in this way. For in this sense predefinition would seem to stand in the same relation to acts which must also be believed to depend on the free choice of the creature, as it stands to all those things which depend on divine efficacy alone. But when the holy Fathers call the divine decrees, upon which only the practical knowledge of simple intelligence sheds light, predefinitions and προορισμους, they distinguish between effects that do not depend on the free created will and those that depend on it; and they affirm that the former are predefined, but the latter they deny. « One must know, says Damascene, that God indeed foreknows all things, but does not predefine all things. For he foreknows what is in our power, but does not predefine it: for neither does he will that evil be done, nor again does he do violence to virtue » Fid. orth. II. 30. Cf. dial. c. Manich. nn. 78–80; de imag. or. I. n. 10.

When the Fathers speak of the predefinition or predestination of free acts, they constantly join this predefinition with foreknowledge, as with its necessary foundation. Hence predefinition indeed precedes the very existence of the act, yet it does not precede every foreknowledge of this future existence, whether absolute or conditional. For « just as foreknowledge that is not deceived, says St Anselm, foreknows nothing but what is true, as it will be either necessary or spontaneous; so predestination, which is not changed, predestines only as it is in foreknowledge » Concord. praedest. cum lib. arbit. c. 3. In St Augustine, who almost always understands predestination as the predefinition of our supernatural acts, as we shall show in its place, this predestination or predefinition of acts includes, as an essential element, foreknowledge at least under the condition of our future cooperation. « Predestination, he says, cannot be without foreknowledge, but foreknowledge can be without predestination » De Praedest. SS. c. 10. But that we may understand how foreknowledge stands related to the predestination of good works in the teaching of Augustine, certain of his principles must be noted. If the question concerns only the predefinition and bestowal of prevenient grace, by which God works in us without us, no foreknowledge is indeed required of what our free will is going to do, since it does nothing of itself. But once that grace has been received, free will can, by its own choice and with the powers of grace received, consent to the good, or by its own powers dissent. Therefore, because if it consents it acts by the powers of grace, the consent itself is and is called a work of God; but because the created will itself consents freely, it certainly also does something of its own, which it could also not do. « Let him attend and see: this will (the consent of faith) is to be attributed to the divine gift not only because it is from free will, which is naturally created with us; but also because God acts by the persuasions of things seen, that we may will and that we may believe, whether externally... or internally, where no one has in his power what (undeliberately) comes into his mind: but to consent or to dissent is of the proper will (of free determination). In these ways, therefore, when God acts with a rational soul, so that it believes him..... surely God also works in man the very willing to believe, and in all things his mercy goes before us; to consent to the call of God, or to dissent from it, as I have said, belongs to the proper will » De spirit. et litt. c. 34. n. 60. Therefore, given the persuasion, which belongs to God alone, the soul that consented could also have dissented; and conversely, the soul that dissented could have consented. « If (Esau) had willed and run⁷, he would have attained it by God's help, who would also grant him to will and to run by calling, unless, the call having been spurned, he became reprobate » Ad Simplic. l. I. q. 2. n. 10.

From these things it is clear how Augustine understands God's foreknowledge, when God is said to predestine our own free supernatural act as his own work in foreknowledge. For God predestines, as Augustine puts it, the calling and the persuasion, which however has the character of predestination of our free act only insofar as God knows that we will consent, if such a stirring calling is given⁸. From this foreknowledge, predestination, both as it is considered in individual free acts and as it is regarded across the whole series up to the end of life, is infallible; so that it is plainly repugnant that an act predestined from eternity should not follow in time: for it is repugnant that we not consent while we consent, and while God sees us consenting. See Gregor. de Valentia in 1. q. 23. disp. 1. punct. 4. §. 5. Thus « predestination is the foreknowledge and preparation of the benefits of God, by which those who are freed are most certainly freed » Aug. de Dono perseverant. c. 14. From these things it is also evident that Augustine has rightly indicated in several places that there is no greater difficulty in reconciling the predestination or predefinition of our works with freedom of choice, than in reconciling God's infallible foreknowledge with that same liberty (de Dono persever. cc. 17. 19. 21. 22; cf. Tricassin. de Praedest. P. I. sect. 4. §. 2. puncto 6.). How false this would be, if predefinition preceded all foreknowledge, no one fails to see.

Moreover, that this is the opinion of the Fathers can also be shown with little trouble from the testimonies adduced in the preceding thesis, in which they defend the liberty of our acts against the Gentiles and heretics almost solely by this argument: that the truth of the existence of acts is the condition why God foreknows them; and so the truth of existence is by reason already presupposed to foreknowledge, and foreknowledge is not the cause of free acts; and therefore they say that it depends on our liberty that divine foreknowledge is referred to this term rather than to another. By this manner of arguing they clearly concede that liberty could no longer be understood, if the cause of our acts and the reason of divine foreseeing were placed in an absolute predefinition and an absolute decree preceding all foreknowledge of what free will would choose, or at least would choose under certain conditions. See Lessius de Praedest. sect. 2. n. 17. And indeed, in this hypothesis, the absolute decree of God in no way depends on our free determination, as is evident in itself; but the decree itself, if it is abstracted from all foreknowledge, cannot be referred to the act of the created will as determined in the individual, unless at the same time such an operation of God upon the will is decreed that some other act of the will is intrinsically repugnant under it. Given this, the will is determined to one by God's very operation, and therefore there is no liberty. « The rational power is related to opposites in those things which are subject to it, and these are those things which are determined through it; but it cannot be directed to the opposite of those things which have been determined for it by another: and therefore the will cannot go to the opposite of that to which it is determined by divine impression (as is happiness and the good in general); but it can go to the opposite of those things which it determines for itself (all particular goods), the choice of which belongs to it » S.Th. 4. dist. 49. q. 1. a. 3. sol. 2; cf. 1.2. q. 12. a. 4.

We deny, therefore, that such predefinitions of free acts, which are absolutely antecedent⁹, include any foreknowledge or any knowledge of conditionals. But indeed, assuming meanwhile what will be proved more distinctly below, that God infallibly knows to which acts the creature would freely determine itself, if this or that aid of grace were granted, it is easily understood how the foreknowledge of supernatural free acts stands in relation to the divine decrees. For while, this knowledge of conditionals being supposed, there is conceived a decree of God to grant the aid, under which God knows the created will would furnish consent; by this very fact, conditional knowledge, so far as this act is concerned, is understood to pass over into the foreseeing of an absolutely future act. But the reason for knowing the existence of an absolutely future act is not in the decree, insofar as by it such prevenient grace is predefined, considered ontologically and in itself, as is clear from what has been said; but the reason is that the knowledge of the truth precedes, that this created will, if such grace were granted, would consent and not dissent, although it could do either. This truth, however, is known not in any antecedent decree, but in itself; because, namely, it is true (prior in reason to any decree actually conferring grace being understood in the divine mind) that the will, if such grace were granted, would freely determine itself through the powers of grace to consent; and that this rather than its opposite has been true from eternity is owing to the free determination of the created will itself.

Therefore the order is to be understood thus. a) Truth of possibility: if such a free creature were granted such prevenient grace, it could determine itself, by the powers of the grace received, to a good act in many ways and degrees (for a supernatural consent cannot be understood as possible except under the hypothesis of the grace to be granted), and it could by its natural powers resist grace and sin in many ways and degrees: knowledge of simple intelligence in God of all these possibles. b) Truth of hypothetical fact: that creature, among all the acts to which it can determine itself, would choose this good act by the powers of such grace, if it were given: middle knowledge in God of the truth of this hypothetical fact. c) The will in God, or the decree in fact of conferring such grace, which is prevenient for the first act and assisting grace for the second act, whereby through this grace and with the powers of this grace the creature determines itself to a good act. d) Truth of absolute fact: this creature, among all possible acts, will determine itself through such grace to this good act: knowledge of vision in God of this absolutely future fact.

God therefore predefines all free good acts of creatures, especially supernatural ones, in this sense: that a) by the antecedent will he wills these acts to be done, if the creatures do not resist by their freedom; and b) from this will he confers aids, under which he knows that the creatures will freely consent. This, however, is not to be understood as if God did not also grant, from an antecedent will for the good work, those graces which he foresees will be rendered vain by the free fault of man, and which are therefore called sufficient in contrast to efficacious ones, so that man may use them well and consent to them. God also bestows graces which, in the second act, are not going to be efficacious, from the antecedent will for the good work, but with the foreseeing of man's resistance; and therefore that antecedent will does not pass into the subsequent absolute will for the good work. Moreover the predefinition is completed in this, that c) God, foreseeing the consent of the creature, wills by absolute will that these acts be done.

From these things it is evident how different the predefinition of good acts is from the permission of evils; although, just as permission, so also predefinition of free acts includes a respect to the free determination of the creature, and certainly is not absolutely antecedent to knowledge of what the created will, under any condition, would freely be determined to.

4°. What we have said so far is valid only to exclude the doctrine, asserted by some, of absolutely antecedent decrees, by which God is said to predefine all free acts, or at least all good acts, of creatures without any respect not only to the foreknowledge of our free determination, but also without any respect to knowledge of conditionals. But could one not, with Suarez (Opusc. de auxil. 1. III. c. 17.), conceive a decree by which God first absolutely wills all supernatural acts of creatures with all their accompaniments in the individual; and then indeed another decree, distinct by reason, by which he destines congruous graces, under which he foresees that all those acts, each in its degree and predefined with all its accompaniments, are to be freely elicited by the created wills? Given this, indeed, all supernatural acts would already be foreknown in the absolutely antecedent decree of God. There is no lack of theologians (Vasquez, Lessius, Herice etc.) who judge that full liberty cannot consist with such predefinitions too. This response, however, is not true. For in that hypothesis all those acts would be elicited under grace, with infallibility indeed antecedent, but not with antecedent necessity, but with entirely free choice, which grace the will could resist; but that it would not resist would be known infallibly first through knowledge of conditionals, and then through the foreseeing of the free consent itself. Hence we do not deny that such predefinitions are possible, with created liberty preserved; but they are not fulfilled by absolutely antecedent decrees, since they include knowledge of conditionals. Whether divine providence in fact directs free creatures by such predefinitions is another question, entangled with many and grave difficulties. Several theologians of great authority deny that antecedent predefinitions include the foreseeing of free consent under grace and through grace: the old Louvainists whom Lessius cites (de Praedest. sect. 5. n. 92. ed. 2ᵃ), Tapper, Kuner, Stapleton etc.; then very many Scotists (see Mastrius in 1. disput. 3. q. 3. a. 8. and in 2. disp. 1. q. 3.); likewise Bellarmine de Grat. et lib. arb. l. IV. cc. 15. 16; Valentia in 1. q. 22. punct. 3; and Lessius, directly and with deliberate effort attacking the doctrine of Suarez, both in the work de Perfect. divin. published 1619, l. XI. c. 5; l. XIV. c. 2, and in the other, de Praedest., most fully in the second edition of the year 1626; Vasquez in 3. P. disp. 74. c. 6; Herice de Praed. disp. 23. c. 9; Martinon de Deo disp. 19. sect. 6. in the appendix; Maeratius disp. 26. sect. 1. n. 8; and, by a somewhat subtle circuit, the Wirceburgenses T. II. disp. IV. c. 2. a. 4., especially in the final replies to objections.

III. It can now sufficiently be established from what has been said that free acts in general, and especially morally evil acts, are not foreseen in a cause antecedently determined; but that the term of foreseeing is the free acts themselves, existing in themselves under some difference of time.

Indeed, we easily understand that a free act, when it really is, is in itself and in its truth the term of the knowledge of vision. But the knowledge and vision of God, from the very reason of eternity, does not begin to be otherwise in time; it always remains in the same way. Therefore God knows the future act, before it is, in the very truth of its existence; otherwise « God would perceive twice what is future, as St Augustine argues: in one way according to the foreknowledge of future things, and in another way according to present knowledge (when they are already done). » See above th. XXXII. The same thing can be understood from another principle. By the very fact that it is true that the creature, while it determines itself to the act, determines itself; by this very fact, I say, it was always true that for such a time this creature would act freely thus and not otherwise. Yet neither would the divine essence be an infinite representation of every truth, nor would divine knowledge be an infinite act, unless it represented to the divine intellect every objective truth, and this knowledge comprehended every truth. Therefore again the act, although beginning in real existence in time, nevertheless constitutes the foundation of eternal knowability for infinite knowledge. In accordance with this reasoning St Thomas explains (1. q. 14. a. 13; de verit. q. 2. aa. 12. 13) how God infallibly knows free future things; because he intuits them not only insofar as they are undetermined in their cause, but insofar as the creature is already actually determining itself to one. « A contingent thing can be considered in two ways. In one way in itself, according as it is already in act; and so it is not considered as future, but as present; nor as contingent to either alternative, but as determined to one.... In another way a contingent thing can be considered as it is in its cause. God, however, knows all contingent things not only as they are in their causes, but also as each of them is actually in itself. »

The doctrine of the Fathers is entirely lucid. For a) they derive the reason of divine knowledge from the presence of things under the eternal divine gaze according to their knowable being, so as to show that God's infallible foreknowledge does not stand in the way of our liberty. b) They teach that the truth of a future act is prior in reason, as an object, and that the terminating of God's knowledge with respect to such an act must be understood as subsequent. c) They describe the reason of foreknowledge in such a way that God, from among all the acts to which the free will can determine itself, looks upon that one which in fact is going to be, because it is true that this one and not another is going to be. « Not fate, not fortune, nor anything else, but he himself foreknew that he would sin, who, if he were unwilling, would not sin at all; but if he had been unwilling to sin, this too he foreknew » Aug. Civit. Dei V. 10. See th. XLII. n. III.

Corollary. Sixtus IV rightly ordered Peter of Riva to abjure, among other propositions, these: « God does not have certain or judicative knowledge of the meaning which a proposition of faith about the future conveys by its nature and mode of enunciation. » « Propositions of faith about the future are not true with proper truth and by logical rigour or by their mode of enunciation, but neither » (i. e. neither true nor false, as e. g. Peter will deny Christ; Peter after the sin will weep bitterly). See on this censure Card. de Lugo de Incarnat. disp. 26. sect. 6. and Livin. de Meyer Histor. Congreg. de auxil. l. V. c. 31. p. 434. sqq.¹⁰