Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

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