Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

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.