Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

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.