Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

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

Human liberty is reconciled with infallible divine foreknowledge.

« From the declared reason of God's foreknowledge it is demonstrated that infallible divine foreseeing does no more stand in the way of the liberty of human acts than the consequent necessity by which, while we act, we cannot at the same time not act. »

The whole difficulty in reconciling the liberty of creatures with the infallibility of divine foreseeing arises from our imperfect way of conceiving eternal knowledge. We know future things only in the antecedent disposition of causes present to us ¹; hence we foreknow future things with certainty only so far as we understand causes determined to one. Therefore we always conceive an infallibly foreknown act as antecedently determined in its cause, and so as not free. We can indeed have an intuition of the act itself while it is in the present; we cannot while it is still future. Hence we find no difficulty in reconciling the liberty of an act which we see being done in the present with the infallibility of our vision, because we understand that our vision is not the cause of the act, but rather that the free act is presupposed, so that it can be seen by us as free; but a difficulty appears to us in reconciling the liberty of a future act with its infallible foreknowledge, since it is not yet. Yet this difficulty would be no greater in foreknowledge of the future than in the intuition of the present, if we could distinctly conceive an intuition of the future as of the present; since foresight is no more the cause of a future act than vision is the cause of the present, but each equally presupposes its knowable term. It is therefore manifest that the ancient philosophers were deceived, who, transferring our manner of foreseeing future things to God, thought that foreknowledge is repugnant to liberty and that one of the two must therefore be denied; and likewise certain recent theologians are in error, who think that we can understand no infallible foreknowledge of future things other than that which is their effective cause, as if we could in no way conceive a divine intuition, to which all truth lies open without change and vicissitude of times. From this opinion of theirs, all the arguments for reconciling infallible foreknowledge of our acts with liberty having been rejected, they say that only this remains: that we believe both by faith, and that we altogether lose heart about finding any reconciliation ² (Berlage Dogm. P. I. sect. I. §. 38. p. 258. sq.).

The reconciliation of our liberty with the infallible and unchangeable foreknowledge of God, which we assert in the thesis, follows from what has been said above, as a corollary. For it has been demonstrated: a) that the truth of the existence (in its temporal difference) of acts, especially free acts, is prior in reason and is presupposed to divine vision as its term; and that the action itself, in the way it takes place in time, lies before the eternal gaze; and therefore it is not foreknowledge that is the cause why the act is done, but rather the act, whose positing depends on our liberty, is constituted as the term of divine foreknowledge; and in this sense it is in our free determination that there lies the reason why God foresees this action rather than another. b) From what has been demonstrated, the divine decrees which pertain to constituting the first act of the created will do not render the will determined to one; but rather they establish it in active indifference, that is, proximately able to make a free choice. But the decrees of permission or of aid with respect to our second act already presuppose the exercise of liberty, and the presence of the free act itself, at least under the condition of its being future: whence it is placed in the happy power of our free will that the permission of sin in the second act never should have been ³, and it is in the unhappy power of the same will that the aid which is prevenient to a good act should not also be assisting in the second act.

This, then, is the conclusion of the whole explanation: infallible knowledge, which supposes the free determination of the created will as its term, does not impede liberty; but on the contrary, the more infallible it is, the more certain is the indication and argument of liberty itself ⁴. Now infallible divine foreknowledge supposes the free determination of the created will as its term. Therefore infallible divine foreknowledge does not remove liberty; but as foreknowledge of free acts it confirms it. The Fathers and Doctors, Eusebius, Augustine, Boethius, Bede, St Thomas and others, are accustomed to illustrate this reasoning frequently by comparing God's knowledge with our vision, or even with memory, by which we see or recall someone acting freely. « Just as your memory, says Aug. de lib. arb. III. 4, does not compel the things that have passed to have been done; so God, by his foreknowledge, does not compel the things to be done which are future. » So too Boethius, de Consol. V. pros. 6. « As when you see at the same time a man walking on the earth and the sun rising in the sky, although you see both together, you yet discern them; you judge the one to be voluntary (free) and the other necessary: so the divine gaze, surveying all things, in no way disturbs the quality of things, being present to itself (in its knowledge) of things present, but as to the condition of time of things future. Whence it comes that this is not opinion but knowledge resting rather on truth, since it knows what is going to come about, which it knows well lacks the same necessity of existing. » Cf. th. XLII.

Whoever has become accustomed to consider the truth of our free determination as an object of the divine intuition which embraces all things as they are in themselves, will not find much difficulty in discerning the fallacy of the arguments which are usually put forward. Yet since in this matter a certain distinction, not inappropriate and very frequent among theologians, is in place, between necessity which does not remove but rather supposes liberty, and necessity opposed to liberty, something must be said about these. They distinguish accordingly between necessity in the composite sense and in the divided sense; which, in other words and with somewhat different concepts, is also called the distinction between necessity by hypothesis and necessity simply, or between the necessity of consequence and of the consequent, or between necessity consequent and antecedent, or between necessity secundum dici and secundum rem. All these distinctions come to the same thing, so that necessity in the composite sense, necessity by hypothesis, necessity of consequence, necessity consequent, necessity secundum dici do no harm to liberty; but necessity in the divided sense, necessity called simple, necessity of the consequent, necessity antecedent, necessity secundum rem take liberty away.

But if we are not content with words, and look at the thing itself, it readily appears that necessity in the composite sense, or by hypothesis, is twofold and most diverse: one of which indeed supposes and indicates liberty, while the other plainly removes and denies it. The composite sense is so called in this matter when, to a subject with some form or constitution under some hypothesis, insofar as it is under that form or hypothesis, some act stated in the predicate can be said to belong; the divided sense is when, the subject being separated by division from that form or that hypothesis, the act of the predicate can belong to it. Let there be, for example, the proposition: a man very tightly bound with chains can run; a speaking man can keep silent. Each of these propositions is false in the composite sense and true in the divided sense; and conversely the negatives: a man bound with chains cannot run; a speaking man cannot keep silent, each is false in the divided sense and true in the composite sense. Nevertheless, in the former case there is no liberty to run; in the latter there is the fullest liberty to keep silent. The reason for the difference is evident: namely, that in the former case the hypothesis of the chains, with which the act of running cannot be compounded, does not depend on the free choice of the man, to be or not to be (for so we suppose); but on the contrary the hypothesis of speaking, with which silence is incompatible, lies within the choice of the speaking man. But it matters little that the man bound with chains retains the radical power to run, which is not taken away by the chains; for the liberty to run requires a power of running readily at hand, or at least the power of removing the impediment.

From these things the following are evident: a) in two ways an act cannot be compounded with a hypothesis or form of the subject: either in such a way that the two cannot indeed be together, yet it depends on the free will which of them shall be; or in such a way that the hypothesis or form of the subject, with which some act is incompossible (although the radical power for the act under another hypothesis remains), does not depend in any way on the free choice of the will. In the former case there is an impossibility of the composite sense, from which only consequent necessity is inferred, or of consequence, or secundum dici, which supposes and demonstrates liberty; in the other case there is an impossibility of the composite sense which is repugnant to liberty with respect to that act ⁵. b) The word can or cannot in those propositions of the composite sense which differ does not have one and the same meaning. For in the former, a ready power for the act itself is affirmed, by the positing of which the incompossible hypothesis would no longer exist; and only the power of joining the two together at once is denied: a speaking man can keep silent (he has a free and ready power); a speaking man cannot keep silent (while he is speaking freely). In the latter, a ready power for the act is denied, in such a way that the hypothesis already existing and excluding the compossibility of the act does not depend on the free will; and only the radical power for the act under another hypothesis is affirmed: a man bound with chains cannot run (he lacks a ready power to remove the hypothesis of the chains, and consequently for the act); a man bound with chains can run (if the hypothesis of the chains were removed).

When I posit an action with whatever liberty, I cannot at the same time not posit it (which means: it cannot at the same time not be); but the action, on the hypothesis that I posit it, necessarily lies under the divine vision. But if the action is free, I can equally freely not posit it, and thus bring it about that the hypothesis under which God necessarily sees the agent never was true, and therefore that this action is not the term of the eternal vision, but its omission or some other action. When, therefore, it is said, e.g.: God infallibly foresaw that Judas would sin (it would be better said: he saw Judas sinning), therefore Judas could not not sin; it was necessary that the sin come about; these words could not, was necessary are understood either to deny only the power of joining together the hypothesis of the act and of the non-act, and so the propositions are true; or they are understood to signify the exclusion of liberty with respect to the disjunction, namely to the act or to the non-act, and so the propositions are false. The first consequent is therefore to be distinguished: Judas could not not sin in the composite sense with the hypothesis, which hypothesis he himself freely brought about, I concede; he could not in the divided sense (which division he himself could have made), I deny; or in another way: he could not from an impotence consequent upon the free act, I concede; he could not from an antecedent impotence, I deny. Likewise for the second consequent, I distinguish: it was necessary that the sin come about by necessity in the composite sense, with the hypothesis depending on his liberty, or by necessity consequent upon the free act, or by necessity of consequence, I concede; it was necessary in the divided sense (the division depending on his liberty), or by antecedent necessity, or by necessity of the consequent, I deny.

The distinctions just mentioned are indeed owed, as to their wording, to the theologians of the School; but the doctrine itself has been no less lucidly explained by the holy Fathers, as anyone will easily understand who wishes to recall the testimonies described above in th. XLII. n. III. More fully, in order to illuminate the harmony of our liberty with the foreknowledge and predestination of God, the same distinctions, though in words somewhat differently arranged, were handed down by Boethius, de Consol. l. V. pros. 6. T. II. p. 1115. 1116; Bede, qq. variar. q. 13. T. VIII. p. 404. sqq.; Anselm, l. de Concord. lib. arbitrii cum praescient. praedestin. et gratia, who among other things, q. 1. c. 2., has this: « If someone considers the meaning of the word properly: by the very fact that something is said to be foreknown, it is pronounced to be future; for only what is future is foreknown, since knowledge is only of truth. Hence when I say: since, if God foreknows something, it is necessary that it be future; it is the same as if I said: if it will be, it will be of necessity. But this necessity neither compels nor prevents anything from being or not being... For when I say: if it will be, it will be necessarily; here necessity follows the positing of the thing, it does not precede it. » In much the same way argue Albertus M., Summa P. 1. q. 61. m. 8; Alexand. Halens. P. 1. q. 24. m. 5; S. Bonavent. 1. dist. 38. a. 2. q. 1. ad 1; S. Thom. de verit. q. 2. a. 12; de malo q. 16. a. 7. ad 15; cont. gent. l. I. c. 67; cf. 1. dist. 40. q. 3. « A contingent thing, he says (de verit. l. c. ad 2.), is related to divine knowledge insofar as it is posited as existing in the nature of things; but from the time it is, it cannot then not be, when it is... yet it does not follow that it is called simply necessary, nor that God's knowledge is deceived, just as my sight is not deceived while I see Peter sitting, although this is contingent. »

Corollary. From what has been said, it is clear what caution is to be used in manner of speaking. a) Expressions must be avoided which seem to state God's foreknowledge as an antecedent cause of free determination, whereas rather free determination is the term and condition of such foreknowledge. Hence it must not be said without explanation: because God foreknows that Titius will sin, Titius will sin; but rather: because Titius will sin, his sin is the term of God's foreknowledge. b) Expressions must be avoided by which the power of joining together the hypothesis of the foreknowledge of an act with the negation of that same act seems to be stated; whereas rather it is the free power of not positing the act, by the hypothesis of which being verified, the foreknowledge of it would never have existed. Hence it must not be said without explanation: While God foreknows that Titius will sin, the sin can be not future; but rather: if Titius, as he can, will not sin, the sin is not future; and then God never foreknew the sin, but always foreknew the negation of the sin. c) Therefore expressions must be avoided by which the power of changing God's foreknowledge seems to be stated; whereas rather it is the power of positing this or that term, which, whatever it may be, lies under the eternal knowledge embracing every truth, as it stands objectively at any time. « But if, you will say, it lies in my power to change my purpose, I shall nullify providence, since perhaps I may change what it foreknows. I shall reply: you can indeed turn your purpose aside; but since the present truth of providence sees both that you can do so, and whether you will act or in what direction you turn, you cannot escape divine foreknowledge, just as you cannot escape the gaze of a powerful⁶ eye, although you turn yourself to various actions by free will... Great is the necessity of uprightness imposed on you, if you do not wish to dissemble, since you act before the eyes of a judge who sees all things » Boëth. Consol. l. V. pros. 6. p. 1116. ⁷.

There is demonstrated in God the knowledge which is commonly called middle.

« From the authority of the Scriptures, the suffrage of the Fathers, and a certain universal Christian conviction, it is beyond doubt that acts belong to the object of God's infallible knowledge, which the created will, under conditions constituting the first act, and not infallibly connected with the second act either by itself or by its own nature, would freely determine itself to, if those conditions were actually posited. »

Declaration. Things which are future under a condition cannot be absolutely necessary truths, but can only be contingent truths; therefore they cannot be the essences of things considered in themselves, but only the existence of contingent things. If the necessary truths themselves are stated with an attached condition, such propositions are conditional only in grammatical form, or insofar as they state not the necessary truth of an essence but some contingent accompaniment; as when it is said: if a circle is divided by a straight line passing through the centre, its segments are equal; if A is, it cannot at the same time not be. Further, where contingent existence is stated under a condition, it is not understood to be an existence already supposed to be in act, of which only the condition or cause, likewise in act, under which or through which it is, is stated; for such propositions are not conditional but causal. The discussion is therefore about contingent existence, which is considered neither as merely possible (for that belongs to the notion of essence and of necessary truth), nor as already posited in act; but as that which would infallibly be in act if some other thing were in act, which, on account of this connection of the antecedent with the other as consequent, is called the condition. Hence, as was said in th. XL., this knowledge of the existence of a contingent thing which would be under some condition, the very knowledge we now discuss, is not without reason distinguished by name also from the knowledge of simple intelligence and from that of vision.

That we may more clearly distinguish the proper object of this knowledge, the different kinds of existence that would be future under a condition must further be considered, which we shall obtain more easily by examining the diverse nature of the propositions by which we express the truth of conditional existence. Those are to be set aside from our discussion which are said to be future under a condition where the connection between condition and conditioned is either none or necessary. For if the connection is none, there is neither condition nor conditioned; and therefore what is future under a condition is not knowable, because the condition in fact is not. Thus, in the proposition: if Hierius will teach rhetoric at Rome, Ambrose will be elected bishop of Milan; the election of Ambrose can be known either as possible, or as absolutely future, or as future under some condition, and future at the time when Hierius will teach at Rome; yet it will not be knowable under this condition, as it were, which is not a condition, otherwise a falsehood would be known. If, however, the connection is necessary, the knowledge of the conditioned is traced back to the knowledge of simple intelligence; for in the very comprehension of the essence and nature of that which is called the condition or cause, necessarily connected with the conditioned or with a determinate effect, the conditioned or effect also is comprehended. Thus God, in the comprehension of his omnipotence, understands the truth: if I wished to create the world, the world would come about. In the same way the physical nature and essence, with the other adjuncts of mind A, cannot be perfectly comprehended together with the supernatural nature of illumination B, without the necessary consequent undeliberate pious thought being understood in that very illumination. Therefore, although in these propositions the discourse is about contingent existence, if a cause not necessarily acting is regarded, yet it is not contingent but necessary if the connection with the hypothesis is regarded: to understand existence which is not in act, but would necessarily be from the very nature of the condition or cause, if this were posited, is nothing other than to understand the natures and essences of things in the state of possibility, which itself is the knowledge of simple intelligence. Hence those who think that even free secondary causes can do nothing, except insofar as they are physically predetermined to this act in the individual by the first cause; and that, the predetermination being supposed, and while it moves the secondary cause, it is repugnant for such an act not to be elicited: all those, consistently, cannot acknowledge, even with respect to conditionals, any properly so-called middle knowledge between the vision of existences and the understanding of essences. For in every second act which must be understood as future under a condition, the condition is always the first act proximately ready with all its adjuncts. Now, in the opinion of these theologians, predetermination belongs above all to the first act proximately ready in the secondary cause. Hence every conditional truth of the second act is traced back to this: if Peter will be predetermined to such an act, he will elicit this act; if he will not be predetermined, he will not elicit it. Such knowledge, before either condition is verified, is knowledge of simple intelligence¹, namely knowledge of the nature and essence of things; when the condition is verified it is the vision of the second act. Hence also, following these principles most consistently, the same men, after Diego Alvarez, taught that such conditionals are known by God in his decree, which they called « absolute subjectively or on the part of the act, and conditioned on the part of the object: » namely in a decree which is in act in God, but by which he does not decree that such an action of the creature be; but only that such an action would be, if a certain condition were posited. God knew, for example, that the inhabitants of Ceila (1. Reg. XXIII. 1. sq.) would hand David over, if he remained in the city, because he decreed, for that hypothesis, to predetermine them to this act, insofar as it is something physical. The knowledge of this decree is the knowledge of vision; the knowledge of such an act as would be under that condition is the knowledge of simple intelligence; for it is nothing other than the knowledge of the essence and nature of such a proximate first act of the Ceilanites, which would never be future, from which, in the composite sense with all its constituents, that is, in the composite sense with the predetermination, the second act of surrender could not but follow.

Therefore, the knowledge of God which we defend in this thesis is of another kind. For our discourse is solely about the knowledge of the existence of free acts of the created will, which would be under a condition, with which they indeed have a connection, as with their condition (if it were posited they would be, if it were removed they would not be), yet they do not have a necessary connection, nor one infallible from the very nature of the condition; and therefore even with that condition supposed they could not be. But that under such a condition they would rather be than not be, is infallible for no other reason than that it is true that the will under such a condition would determine itself to these rather than those acts, although it could equally not determine itself to them, or determine itself to others. Hence not only is the condition itself, under which they would be, something ontologically contingent, but the connection of the existence of the acts with the condition is also contingent ²; and there is no necessity of existence, except consequent not only upon the supposition of the cause, but also upon the supposition of the fact of existence; that is, namely, what is, cannot at the same time not be.

It is per se sufficiently manifest that it makes no difference whether the question is raised about an act which in fact never will be future, because the condition is not verified, or about an act which at some time in fact would be future with the condition verified, and is considered in the prior sign with respect to the supposition of the condition to be verified. For just as from two propositions of a condition never to be verified, if the Tyrians and Sidonians had seen the signs of Christ, they would do penance; they would not do penance; so from two other propositions of a condition to be verified, if the Corozaimites and Bethsaidans had seen the same signs, they would do penance; they would not do penance, one is necessarily true and the other false, wholly abstracting from the real existence and foreseeing of the signs. As long as this condition is supposed neither granted nor positively denied for either, the knowability of the truth is evidently in the same state on each side. Therefore in the same way the divine knowledge of the impenitence of the Galileans stands, in the prior sign, relative to the decree and foreseeing of the verified condition, just as the divine knowledge of the penance of the Sidonians stands, if the condition had been verified among them, which, however, was never granted.

The opponents do not all argue in the same way. For some denied that the conditionals of which we speak can be the object of infallible knowledge; and so either simply denied knowledge of them in God, or, what seems more absurd, attributed to God conjectural knowledge (cf. Liv. de Meyer Hist. de Auxil. l. V. cc. 44. 46; Georg. Albertini dissert. ad Dominic. Pelegrini n. 60; see also Thomassin. de Deo l. VII. c. 23). Others affirmed that conditionals of this kind can be known only in antecedent divine decrees, which, by reason of their object, they called decrees objectively conditional. But since it rightly seemed « fictitious³ and ridiculous, » as Zumel, a theologian of that school, and after him Gonet and others put it, to assert that such decrees exist actually in God with respect to all conditionals possible to infinity; there always remained the consequence that infallible knowledge of God about an infinite multitude of conditionals was denied. Of such decrees of conditionals absolutely antecedent, we shall speak as much as is needed in the following thesis.

The state of the present question, therefore, is, on the one hand, in general terms: whether God infallibly knows the free acts of creatures as future under a condition; and on the other hand (defining it more strictly): whether God infallibly knows what the created will would choose, if it were placed under these or those conditions of a first act so constituted that the second act would be infallibly future, not from the nature and intrinsic conditions of the first act, but solely from the free⁴ determination of the will. We affirm this in the enunciation of the thesis, where we also indicate the threefold source of arguments.

I. From Scripture we select, among the many testimonies that are usually adduced, one and another very commonly used, yet on that account no less valid. First of all, in the narrative recorded at 1. Reg. XXIII.1-13. the following things stand. a) Neither the descent of Saul against the city of Ceila nor the betrayal by the men of Ceila was ever going to happen absolutely. b) On the hypothesis that David remained in the city, and with all the circumstances accompanying the first act, there was nothing to which the second act, that Saul should descend and the citizens betray David, would be infallibly and with absolute certainty bound. That the men of Ceila were already plotting the betrayal is not in the narrative, from which the contrary is rather inferred; but Thomassin invents this (l. VII. c. 23. n. 13.); and even if this were conceded, the second act of betrayal would not yet be bound to the first act with absolute and metaphysical certainty. Absolute certainty, moreover, is expressed in words of infinite truth: «descendet, tradent;» I do not know how the author has dared to deny the same⁵. Thus c) God foretells by an absolute affirmation that, if David remains in the city, Saul will descend to besiege it, and the citizens will hand him over. It is therefore without doubt to be believed that both this free act would infallibly have been future under that condition, and that this truth was known by God with absolute certainty: although, David having escaped by flight, neither the descent of Saul nor the betrayal by the citizens was ever going to be in fact; but they would have been future only under a condition, if David had remained at Ceila.

Most clearly has this knowledge been explained by Raymond Jordan, surnamed Idiota, Abbot of Cell, around the year 1391, namely two centuries before Fonseca and Molina, in the «Oculo mystico» c. 15. n. 12. «Not only does the eye of God behold those things which will truly at some time be; but also those which in fact will not be, yet would be, if something else were posited. For thus, when David asked whether, if he himself remained in Ceila and Saul came thither, the men of Ceila would hand him over, the Lord answered: they will hand him over. »

Matth. XI. 20-23.⁶ compare Luc. X. 13. If the passage is examined by itself and in its context, it is taught by infallible truth that the Tyrians and Sidonians would have had free acts of repentance under certain internal and external conditions, which by their own nature could exist without repentance following; just as under like conditions, under which repentance could and should have followed, the inhabitants of the cities Chorazin and Bethsaida persisted in impenitence against the antecedent and most sincere will of God and of Christ. That it is not lawful to depart from this obvious sense of the words: both other considerations and the commentaries of the Fathers persuade,

As regards the particle, which in the Vulgate seems to express doubt and occurs quite often in divine revelations with reference to free human acts, the Fathers have already observed that by this form of speaking it is indicated that no necessity is brought to our acts by divine knowledge. Thus Hieronym. in Ier. XXVI. 3. T. IV. p. 1025: « the ambiguous word perhaps cannot be fitting for the majesty of the Lord; but he speaks in accordance with our feeling, so that free will is preserved for man, lest he be compelled by his foreknowledge, as if by necessity, either to do something or not to do it. » Cf. Theodoret on the same passage; Chrysost. in Matth. hom. 68. al. 69. n. 1; Origen. apud Euseb. Praepar. Evang. l. VI. p. 289. etc. For by such locutions it is indicated that, antecedently and from the very nature of free will, one thing no less than the other can come to pass; yet it is not indicated, consequent upon the supposition of free election, that as far as divine knowledge is concerned the act is not determined, and therefore determinately knowable as future, either absolutely or under a condition. Among these, St Augustine, in many places and with constant assertion, interprets the words of Christ, the infallible truth, to this effect. « Can we say that the Tyrians and Sidonians, had such mighty works been done among them, would not have wished to believe, or would not have been going to believe, since the Lord himself bears witness that they would have undertaken repentance of great humility, if those signs of divine powers had been done among them? » Aug. de Bono persever. c. 9; cf. Enchirid. c. 95. See the other Fathers in Didac. Ruiz disp. 62. sect. 1.

Act. XXII. 17-21. God asserts that those men of Jerusalem, whom Paul hoped would receive his testimony, would return to the Holy Spirit, if Paul preached to them. But it is most certain that they could, under the hypothesis of Paul's preaching, either believe or not believe. God therefore knew, between those two possibilities, and from the indifference of the first act by its nature, the one which under that hypothesis would certainly have been future.

From Ier. XXXVIII. 14-20. the same is inferred by a wholly similar reasoning.

II. The view of the Fathers, which is by no means ambiguous, can be understood from certain heads of doctrine, in which they either manifestly presuppose this knowledge of God's, of which we speak, or deliver it in express words. Many of their testimonies can be read in Didac. Ruiz de Scientia Dei, especially disp. 65; Petav. l. IV. c. 8; Casinium Encyclopaed. S. Script. Tract. IV. in Appendice n. 8. sqq.⁷ We shall recall some general sentiments of the Fathers.

a) Among very many of the Fathers, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Gregory of Nyssa, St Ambrose, St Jerome, Chrysostom, St Augustine, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodoret, John Damascene, as well as the Gnostics, the Marcionites and heretics in general, who referred creation to a demiurge distinct from God and different from him, infinitely good and knowing all things, customarily press this question: why did God create the angels and man, whom the outcome showed would sin? For either, the heretics said, while God willed to create them, he did not know that, if they were created, they would sin, and so he is not omniscient; or else, knowing this, he created them nonetheless, and so he is not good. In an entirely similar way, among the Fathers, heretics or foolish men put forward the difficulty in general from the permission of sins. To this question there is none of the Fathers who does not reply that God knew beyond doubt that they, if they were created, would sin; yet that he willed to create them endowed with liberty, and was unwilling to hinder their liberty in sinning. Therefore both heretics and Catholics presuppose, as beyond controversy and most thoroughly known to all, that it pertains to the perfection of the true God to know what the angels, what men, would do if they were created and placed in these circumstances, where with the fullest liberty they could not sin and could also sin. « If he did not know, as it stands in St Jerome (dialog. III. n. 6. cont. Pelag.), then whoever takes from him foreknowledge (of what man would do under those conditions) takes away his divinity too. » And yet this very thing is middle knowledge, which we uphold. This doctrine is therefore so certain to antiquity that in disputations against heretics it was always presupposed as an indubitable principle.

b) The same Fathers teach, Ambros. de Paradiso n. 38; Hieronym. dial. III. cont. Pelag. n.6; August. cont. Crescon. n.10; Cyrill. Alex. in Io. IX. 1. c. 10, that Christ foreknew indeed the obstinacy of the Jews, if he preached to them, and foreknew that Judas, if he chose him as an Apostle, would be a traitor; nevertheless he was no less willing to confer the benefits of preaching and of the apostolic office. In general, God does not cease to pursue sinners with his graces, although he knows they will not obey if such graces are granted. « For God, as a lover of men, as Chrysostom says (or. II. n. 5. de s. Babyla), foreknowing this also, that disobedience would be future under that condition, nevertheless does not omit what is his own. » From these there arises an argument wholly similar to the preceding.

c) Often among the Fathers, when disputing about divine providence, the doctrine occurs that God often deprives men of temporal goods because he knew in his infinite knowledge that they would abuse them for sinning; and therefore also that sometimes an untimely death is appointed for them, because God foreknows the sins which the man, if he lived longer, would commit. Gregory of Nyssa (orat. de iis, qui praematurae abripiuntur T. II. 764–770.) carefully inquires into the reasons for the untimely deaths of certain people. He affirms, as a most certain principle needing no demonstration, that God knows what they would freely have committed if they had lived longer. This being posited, he says that some reasons for death can be conjectured by us, although in God's counsels there may be many others unknown to us. « It is consistent that he who knows what would be future (under a hypothesis which, however, was never going to be actual) just as he knows the past, prevents the progress of the infant to adult age, lest an evil be carried out, which, if he had lived so, was known by foreknowing power to be (future)... We hold this about the death of infants, that he who does all things by reason, from his goodness withdraws the matter of wickedness, not allowing time to free choice known in advance by foreknowing power, so that through deeds it might show itself to be at the height of wickedness. » Similar things are held by Chrysost. de Provid. l. I; Nemesius de natura homin. c. 44. (Bibl. Galland. VII. p. 421.), whose opinions Anastasius of Sinai also copies out in qq. in s. Script. q. 18. (ed. in Opp. Gretzeri T. XIV. P. II. p. 271. 272.). After Nemesius had taught, l. c., that to a good man riches are often denied by God and grave calamities let loose, because he knows that, if they were granted, he would abuse the goods of fortune to sin; and that, on the contrary, others are kept from poverty because God likewise knows the sins which those placed in poverty would commit: he adds a general statement about this knowledge of conditional things. « We, knowing nothing of future things and regarding only what is present, do not judge events rightly. But for God even future things (which would be, for of these alone he treats here) are as present. »

d) The doctrine of St Augustine about this same knowledge is so clear that it is a wonder that theologians, and among them Thomassin, have not feared to write that the knowledge of free acts future under a condition was brought in by the Pelagians and Semipelagians and was opposed by St Augustine. St Augustine considers free acts future under a condition in two ways. First, he looks at those acts which, once the condition is verified, are absolutely future, in the prior instant (of reason), in relation to the supposition of the verified condition; for he teaches that God would nonetheless have known these acts most certainly, had the condition not been posited, as future under the condition, if it were verified; and he judges it « most insane and most perverse » to deny this. He raises the question why God did not snatch from this life earlier those men who at last die in sin, « since they lived piously and faithfully, lest a fiction deceive their souls. » He insists in this way: « did he not have this in his power, or did he not know their future evils? Surely nothing of these is said except most perversely and most insanely » de Corrept. et grat. c. 8. n. 19. Of these same sinners he writes elsewhere, « surely God could, foreseeing that they would fall, take them from this life before it happened » de Dono persev. c. 9. n. 22. Therefore God could snatch these men from this life before they freely sinned; just as that one was snatched away, Sap. IV. 11., lest a fiction deceive his soul: and if it had been so done, then on St Augustine's doctrine God would equally have known all those same sins as future under conditions which would never be verified, just as now he knows these sins as absolutely future, while the conditions are supposed to be verified. By the same reasoning, the knowledge must without doubt be understood by which God confers prevenient grace formally as congruous and efficacious: « of whom he has mercy (mercy infallibly bound with effect and with end, to which all mercy by itself and on God's part tends), he calls him in the way he knows it fitting that the one called should not reject him » ad Simpl. l. I. q. 2. But there is neither room nor need now to dispute about this manner of calling.

Moreover, St Augustine proposes this certainty of the knowledge of conditional things no less emphatically with regard to those acts which will absolutely never be future; yet they would have been future, if some condition had been verified. Thus the holy Doctor, asking why Christ did not admit among his disciples the man who offered himself of his own accord, Luc. IX. 57., gives the reason: « because, since he was such a master, who foresaw future things, we understand that that man, if he had followed Christ, would have sought his own things not those of Jesus Christ » Serm. 100. n. 1. (de verb. Ev. Luc.).

But in the disputations with the Semipelagians, the doctrine of the knowledge of conditional things, which St Augustine, like the other Fathers, accepted as put beyond all controversy, and which was denied only « most perversely and most insanely », must be carefully distinguished from the error of the Semipelagians. According to their invention, those things which the will would do well or ill under a condition, although it never actually does them, have some account of merit before God, just as acts of good or evil really existing. Therefore, just as from the most true doctrine of St Augustine ad Simplician. l. I. q. 2. n. 6., God's absolute election unto reward proceeds from the foresight of supernatural acts really existing⁸: so those erring men affirmed that good works which God foresees as future under a condition are merit, to which God renders grace; and similarly that sins, which he knows as future under a condition, are demerit, on account of which either grace is withdrawn in general, or infants are snatched by death before baptism. Because of this error St Augustine, in the disputations against the remnants of the Pelagians, discerns more carefully absolutely future things from those which would be only under a condition, and never actually are. Hence also he denies that there is in God foreknowledge, which in the proper sense can be only of absolutely future things, of those things which, though never actually to be future, those erring men nonetheless said were foreknown by God (2)⁹. According to this distinction, therefore, St Augustine, disputing against the remnants of the Pelagians, in many places either presupposes or expressly teaches as most certain the divine knowledge of acts, good or evil, which would be under a condition, but never in fact future; and he denies what the adversaries devised about those good or evil merits future under a condition. « Can we say that the Tyrians and Sidonians, had such mighty works been done among them, would not have wished to believe, or would not have been going to believe; since the Lord himself bears witness that they would have undertaken repentance of great humility, if those signs of divine powers had been done among them? And yet on the day of judgment they will be punished.... Moreover, if the dead are judged even according to the deeds which they would do if they lived; surely, since these men would have been faithful, if the gospel had been preached to them with such great miracles, they are by no means to be punished: yet they will be punished; it is therefore false that the dead are judged according to those things which they would do, if the gospel reached the living. And if this is false, there is no reason why it should be said of infants who die without baptism and perish, that this happens to them on the merit that God foreknew, that if they lived and the gospel had been preached to them, they would hear it unfaithfully » de Don. persev. n. 23; cf. n. 22. See also the two books de Praedest. SS. n. 24. 25; ep. 217. al 107. ad Vital. n. 22; ep. 194. al 105. ad Sixt. n. 42. 43; de anima et eius orig. l. I. c. 12. n. 15. Having this knowledge therefore supposed, St Augustine now denies that these things, which would be under some condition, are ever in fact foreknown as future, since they are not future. Thus in de Praedest. SS. n. 26. he speaks plainly of the foreknowledge of absolutely future things; and he teaches that, if a just man dies an untimely death, God surely did not foresee future sins, but a future death in justice, and that this very death, which is announced in the book of Sap. IV. 10. 11., is sent as a benefit of God, since there is always the danger that the just man might fail among so many temptations of this life, and so the outcome of the temptations is uncertain antecedently, from himself and from the natures of things. « He was snatched away, lest malice change his understanding. It is said according to the dangers of this life, not according to the foreknowledge of God, who foreknew this, what was going to be, not what was not going to be; that is, that he was going to grant him an untimely death, so that he would be withdrawn from the uncertainty of temptations, not that he would sin, who, if he had remained in temptation, would not have sinned » August. l. c. The holy Doctor speaks more clearly about this same text of Sap. in de anima et eius orig. l. I. n. 15. Cf. also Fulgent. de Veritate praedest. cc. 7. 8. nn. 15. 16.

III. Ferdinand Bastida rightly observed in disp. XXXIII. and XXXIV. before Clement VIII. (cited in Livin. de Meyer, Histor. Congreg. de auxil. l. V. cc. 43. 45), a) that there is no Christian who, if at any time asked about these conditional contingents, does not at once answer: I do not know; God knows; b) that all upright and Christian men in their prayers to God daily presuppose this knowledge of conditional things as most certain; c) and finally that the Church itself manifests this same faith both in its prayers and in its catechetical instruction¹⁰.

The objective truth of things future under a condition is the proper term of middle knowledge.

« The object of middle knowledge is the objective truth itself of the acts which » freely would be elicited by a created will, if it were placed in certain circumstances; but such acts, future under a condition as free, » whether necessary in themselves or determined by » antecedent divine decrees, are not known by God. »

The manner in which free acts future under a condition become the object of divine knowledge is to be understood from the principles about God's own foreknowledge already demonstrated. For the present question can almost be settled from those things alone which were said above about the knowledge of free acts absolutely future.

1°. Wherever the Fathers treat of these conditioned free acts, they give no other reason why and how God knows them than the infinite perfection of the divine knowledge; and granting this, they hold it self-evident that nothing of the things which would be under a condition is withdrawn from divine knowledge: and so, on the side of the term, they presuppose a determinate objective truth and knowability. « Whoever takes away from him foreknowledge (of conditionals) takes away his divinity too; » « he has known beforehand the free choice (which would be of a man snatched by death) by foreknowing power; » « God knows such a future thing as well as the past; » « future sins (which a man would commit if riches were granted) are present to God; » « just as the power of God (to snatch a man by death), so the knowledge of evils (if the man lived longer) is denied only most perversely and most insanely » Hieronym. Nyssen. Nemes. August. ll. cc. (supra). Hence you see that the Fathers wholly hold in the same sense, with respect to God's knowledge, things future under a condition which will never actually be, and things absolutely future: they call both foreknowledge, foreknowledge of the future, presence of the future under the divine gaze. Where, then, do the so often recanted turns of argument lead, that the division into knowledge of vision and of simple intelligence seemed sufficient to the ancients? Clearly it seemed to the Fathers that men would never be found who, granting the vision of future things, did not also comprehend under it the knowledge of future things under a condition; therefore, on account of the obviousness of the matter, they did not think a distinction of foreknowledge into a twofold member necessary.

Indeed, the foreknowledge of free acts, whose eliciting cause in the first act is not determined to this second act but indifferent to either, cannot be understood without its being understood at the same time as knowledge of the future under a condition. From the explanation of this relation of conditionally future things to absolutely future things, the objective truth and knowability of such conditionals will be made clear.

While the will, placed under certain conditions of the first act, freely elicits this determinate second act, it is determinately true, and was true from eternity, that the will elicits this act, although it could not elicit it or could elicit another. Therefore also prior in reason, before the will is supposed to be actually placed in these conditions, it is determinately true: if that will were placed under these conditions, it would elicit this act, although it could not elicit it or could elicit another. Nor in any way can the determinate truth of an absolute proposition be conceived, e.g. Peter in these circumstances will sin freely, although he could indeed not sin, without there being understood at the same time, prior in reason, a determinately true conditional: if Peter were placed in these circumstances, he would sin freely. For it is evidently repugnant that it be true that Peter, these circumstances being verified, would in fact freely deny Christ, and that it not be prior in reason true that, if these circumstances were verified, he would deny Christ. Therefore, just as by the very fact that Peter, placed in the circumstances of this first act, really sins freely, he already before the actual existence of the sin had from eternity the objective truth of the absolute proposition: Peter placed in these circumstances will sin; so, antecedently to the hypothesis of the actual placing in these circumstances and of the really future sin, he had the objective truth of the conditional proposition: if Peter were placed in the circumstances of this first act, he would sin. Although, therefore, God had not permitted Peter to be placed in the circumstances of this first act, and so the sin would never have been absolutely future; the truth of the conditional proposition would nevertheless have remained: if Peter were placed in the circumstances of this first act, he would sin. Now the infinite perfection of divine knowledge, by its intrinsic nature, is determined to the knowledge of every truth. Therefore, just as God, by the infinity of his foreknowledge, knows from eternity which of all possible acts a created will in such circumstances will choose, because from eternity it is true that it will choose this such act, although it could equally choose another (th. XLII. XLIII. n. III.): so by the same infinity of knowledge he knows which act, among all possible ones, a created will would choose if it were placed in such circumstances, because it is true that it would choose this rather than another.

2°. Without regard to the relation to absolutely future things, the objective truth is usually declared in propositions stating free acts which would be under some condition. This is stated in two contradictory conditional propositions: if Peter were placed in these circumstances of the first act, in which it would depend on his freedom to sin or not to sin, Peter would sin; Peter would not sin. Of these two statements, I say, one is determinately true, the other determinately false. Nor indeed can both be true or both be false; for either he would sin or he would not sin, nor could he at once and in the same respect sin and not sin. What he would do would be determinately either this act of sin or determinately the negation of sin; for an indeterminate act cannot be. Therefore one of the two is determinately true and the other determinately false; although it is not evident to a finite intellect which of the two is true and which false. But the infinite intellect, from its absolute perfection, necessarily knows every truth as it objectively stands. Therefore it also knows which of those two is true and which false.

3°. If these things are so, does not created liberty itself seem to be taken away? For the explanation and reconciliation of which with the infallible providence of God we say that a more careful consideration of middle knowledge is chiefly necessary. This difficulty is excluded by all those things by which, in the theses above, we demonstrated the integrity of our liberty under infallible knowledge of vision. The truth, knowable from eternity, of free acts, both of those which would be under a condition and of those absolutely future, consists in the free choice of the will itself and in the existence of the free act; but in existence under the different state, absolute or hypothetical, just as the truth itself is different. Because the will freely posits this act, the positing of this act for this time is true and is known from eternity; and if the will, as it can, would posit another act, this other act would in the same way be known from eternity: because the will would freely posit this act, if it were placed in these determinate conditions, the positing of this act future under the hypothesis, if the will were placed in these conditions; is true and is known from eternity; and if under the hypothesis of these circumstances the will, as it could, would determine itself to another act, the positing of this other act would equally be true and would be known under the same hypothesis. Hence the relation which in the above theses we demonstrated between free acts absolutely future and knowledge of vision, the same obtains between acts which would be under a condition and middle knowledge. Prior in reason to the determination of divine knowledge toward this very act, the objective truth that an act would be future under such a condition must be conceived as the term of knowledge: therefore this knowledge of God is not the cause that the act would be; but the truth of a free act future under a condition is the reason why such is the determination of knowledge. Wherefore not only does it depend on my free choice to which of my free acts (among all those to which liberty extends, either by itself or raised and strengthened by grace) the eternal knowledge of vision is determined; but it depends on this same liberty of mine to which of all the acts open to me, under the hypothesis that I were placed in such conditions of the first act, middle knowledge is referred. Therefore the infallible knowledge of God, of what man would do under any condition if he were placed in it, is no more an obstacle to liberty than infallible vision of what man will in fact do when the condition is verified.

Someone might ask how an act which would be under a condition can be said to be in the power of free will, when this act and this free will are in fact never to exist, but would be only if the condition were posited. In this specious objection there is a fallacious confusion of the absolutely future with what would only be under certain conditions that are never to be verified. For the objection assumes the power of choice and the dependence of a really existing act, which indeed involves a contradiction, if free will is never to be. But we are concerned with the power of indifference which free will would have, if it existed and were placed in certain circumstances of the first act; and with the dependence of the act which in that hypothesis would be. We say that this power, this dependence of the act, and the free election which then would be, are known by God; not the power, dependence and election which really are and exist.

A similar fallacy lies in the other difficulty, which is commonly put: such a free act as would be under a condition is nothing in itself, as is plain, and nothing in its cause, unless a divine decree be admitted which, antecedently to the free choice of the created will, predefines this act, so that it would be, if the condition were verified. If therefore God is said to know the act in itself apart from such a decree, God is said to know nothing. This argument proves very well, what needs no proof, that such an act (in that sign by which it is known through middle knowledge) does not really exist, nor is it absolutely future; but it does not prove that such an act would also be nothing in itself, if the hypothesis of the first proximate act were verified. God is not said to know an act existing from eternity, nor existing at any difference of time; but he knows that that act really is nothing and really will be nothing, unless some hypothesis is verified; and that it would be something, namely the free act itself in itself, if the hypothesis were verified. The actual reality and the formal object of divine understanding, in this as in every other knowledge, and in this knowledge of which we now speak, is the divine essence itself, which as the infinite idea and representation of every truth exhibits to the divine intellect every truth not only of things really existing at some time, but also of possibles, and of those things which, possible in themselves, would really exist under some condition. This must not be understood as if the divine essence necessarily exhibited to the intellect these determinate contingent existences a priori, either as real or as future under a condition; for on that supposition they would already be necessary existences and not contingent: but the divine essence exhibits to the divine intellect every truth as it objectively stands; whence the truth of contingent existences, which either really at some time are or would be under a condition, cannot be determinately exhibited except consequent upon the supposition that they are or would be at some difference of time or under some condition. (Cf. th. XXXVII. XLII.)

4°. Finally, concerning those divine decrees subjectively absolute and objectively conditional, which some say are needed by God for the knowledge of free acts future under a condition, what we think ought to be held can sufficiently be seen from what was said in th. XLIII.

Thus a) a decree conditioned by its object and antecedent is no less repugnant to the holiness and goodness of God, by which he would decree that an act inseparable from the depravity of sin should come to be under a hypothesis, than are simply absolute antecedent decrees predefining acts inseparable from the reason of sin. Now the Fathers for the most part treat of this middle knowledge of God insofar as it has for its term sins which would be committed under some hypothesis. It must therefore wholly be held that, apart from such decrees, there is some knowledge of free acts which would be under a condition. If this must be conceded, then in all acts future under a condition there is the same ground of knowability in themselves.

b) Generally, decrees of this kind which are absolutely antecedent and predefining a free act are repugnant on the side of the term, because an act which is called free would then no longer be free. For predefinitions of this kind, antecedent to all foreknowledge and to all knowledge of conditionals, necessarily establish in the proximate first act of the created will something intrinsic, to which it is absolutely repugnant that the will should not elicit the predefined act; and this being posited, the active indifference of the will toward either in the first act is removed, and so liberty with respect to the second act is excluded. The repugnance of predefining acts inseparable from the reason of sin, and the exclusion of liberty if absolutely antecedent predefinitions are posited prior to the knowledge of conditionals, you have proved in the thesis XLIII recalled above.

c) Christ the Lord reproaches the Galileans, Matth.XI.21., for their impenitence, because the Tyrians would have repented if the aids had been granted to them which the Galileans resisted. But there is no room for this reproach, if, in addition to the same aids to which both could consent and both could resist, there is added for the Tyrians a decree independent of their will, by which they would be predetermined to repentance, so that by the force of this predetermination it would be repugnant for repentance not to follow; while meanwhile this predetermination, without which the second act of repentance is said to be impossible, is denied to the Galileans; nay, to them is given a predetermination to the entity of the acts of impenitence¹. Therefore, in order that this reproach of Christ, the eternal truth, may hold, it is necessary to say that, under those conditions under which the Tyrians as well as the Galileans could have resisted, God knew that the Tyrians would not have repented but would have consented: therefore God does not know, in such a predefining decree, the free consent that would be under those conditions; but only because it is true that they would freely consent.

Moreover, if it is asserted that the created will can will nothing unless it is predetermined to the act and applied by the operation of God, to which it cannot resist; I do not see why some theologians of this opinion have thought necessary those divine decrees subjectively absolute and objectively conditioned, as they themselves call them. For that opinion being admitted, it is evident that there is in God, without any actual decrees, this and no other knowledge of simple intelligence in relation to the acts of created wills: those acts to which I shall will to predetermine the created will will be; those to which I shall not predetermine will not be; just as by the same knowledge of simple intelligence God knows, e.g., that if I shall will to illumine the created mind with such a light and to excite the will by such a supernatural motion, there will be such a thought and such an undeliberate affection; and without this light and this motion there will be no supernatural thought or affection. The dispute about such decrees therefore seems of little profit, but the whole of it comes back at last to this, whether the proximate first act is indifferent (active indifference) toward either, as we have sufficiently declared above. If this is admitted, then under the condition that, if the will were placed in this such first act, the free second act does not follow infallibly except upon the supposition that the will would freely determine itself to it. Therefore this determinate free second act, which would be under a condition, e.g. that Peter, if placed in such a first act, would sin infallibly in such a way that the opposite is repugnant, is knowable only in itself, namely that the free determination itself which would be in those circumstances is known: nor is anything left except either that this conditional truth of the act be admitted in itself, or else, against the doctrine demonstrated above from Scripture, the Fathers, and the Christian sense and consent, that infallible knowledge of free acts which would be under a condition be denied to God. See Suarez Opusc. de scient. futur. l. II. c. 4. n. 13. sq.; c. 7. n. 15. sq.; Lessium de gratia effic. c. 20. n. 7. 8; Didac. Ruiz de scient. Dei disp. 75; Bastidam in Congreg. XXXV. (apud Livin. de Meyer. Hist. de Auxil. l. V. c. 47.).