De Deo uno

PETER LOMBARD, 1. 1 d. 25; 38; 39. ST. TH., 1 q. 14 a. 2. 3. 5. 9-13; MOLINA, Liberi arbitrii concordia, q. 14 a. 13 disp. 52; BÁÑEZ, on the cited place in the Summa; SUÁREZ, De Deo, 1. 3 c. 1-3; De gratia, prolog. 2; PETAVIUS, De Deo, 1. 4 c. 3. 4. 6-8; RUIZ, De scientia, de ideis, de veritate ac de vita Dei, disp. 5. 9. 61-70; BILLUART, Summa s. Thomae, p. 1 diss. 5 a. 2 § 1; diss. 6 a. 1. 2. 5; FRANZELIN, thes. 37; 41-42; 45; KLEUTGEN, nr. 449-453; 457-486; DE SAN, nr. 145-151; 154-158; 168-190; BILLOT, thes. 21. 22; PESCH, prop. 29-32; MUNCUNILL, nr. 274-292; 340-344; 383-388; VAN DER MEERSCH, nr. 350-373.

The thesis says that God is omniscient, that is, whatever has the character of truth is known to God. This is already contained in the fact that God is infinite in intellect; in this thesis it is shown specifically with respect to each of the objects.

God knows himself

250. This is explicitly taught in sacred SCRIPTURE, Matth 11, 27; 1 Cor 2, 10. 11; implicitly, in that God reveals many things about himself in sacred Scripture.

That the FATHERS explicitly taught the same doctrine is clear from several texts already cited above, for example CYR. HIEROSOL. (nr. 192), BASIL (nr. 83), JOHN CHRYSOSTOM (nr. 83 and 192), GREGORY THE GREAT (nr. 192), MINUCIUS FELIX, Octavius 18: “he is known to himself alone as great as he is” (ML 3, 290; R 270); TERTULLIAN, Apologeticus 17: “What is immeasurable is known to itself alone” (ML 1, 376); CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA, Thesaurus de s. et consubst. Trinitate, ass. 31: “What, then, would prevent God from knowing himself perfectly according to his essence, while we, who are human, understand him in an inferior way?” (MG 75, 452; R 2073). In presenting this doctrine, they often appeal to or allude to Matth 11, 27.

God knows all things that are other than himself

251. The Vatican Council teaches this explicitly (Denz 1784). This is the explicit teaching of sacred SCRIPTURE, both of the Old Testament (above, nr. 235; for example, the whole of Ps 138) and of the New Testament: Hebr. 4, 13, the text cited by the Vatican Council. Indeed, knowledge of the things most hidden is attributed to God: he is the searcher of hearts: Ps 7, 10; Eccli 23, 28; Rom 8, 27; 1 Cor 4, 5; during his public life Christ often manifested this knowledge: Mc 2, 8; 3, 2 ss.; 8, 17; 17; 12, 15; Io 2, 24 s.; 6, 15. 61.

The FATHERS explicitly taught the same (many texts in R, ser. 118); it is implicitly contained in the Fathers’ doctrine of universal divine providence (R, ser. 124).

252. Obj., 1. In sacred Scripture some ignorance seems to be taught of God, for example Matth 7, 23; Luc 13, 27.

I answer. I distinguish: knowledge simply speaking is denied, I deny; knowledge of approval, I grant. By knowledge of approval God knows the things that please him, which he approves. It is the knowledge by which God knows “the way of the just” (Ps 1, 6), by which he “knows by name” (Ex 33, 12. 17), by which the good shepherd knows his sheep (Io 10, 14), by which the Lord knows those who are his (2 Tim 2, 19).

2. ST. JEROME, In Habacuc, 1. 1 c. 1 v. 14: “Just as among human beings God's providence extends to each individual, so among the other animals we can understand a general dispensation, order, and course of things. For example, how a multitude of fish is born and lives in the waters, how reptiles and quadrupeds arise on the earth, and what foods sustain them. But it is absurd to bring God's majesty down to the point that he knows at each moment how many gnats are born or die, what multitude of bugs, fleas, and flies there is on earth, how many fish swim in the water, and which of the smaller must become prey to the larger. Let us not be such foolish flatterers of God that, while we drag his power down even to the lowest things, we insult ourselves by saying that the providence over rational creatures is the same as that over irrational ones” (ML 25, 1286; R 1377).

FRANZELIN responds to this¹: “The holy Doctor is speaking principally not of speculative knowledge of vision, but of the practical knowledge of providence. Further, he is not speaking of providence simply, but of the special providence pertaining only to rational creatures, which alone can be the object of paternal care and love, whereas the other, irrational creatures are administered by providence, just as they are created, for the rational creatures as their proximate end. St. Jerome therefore said more than he wished to be understood, as St. Bonaventure says of a certain other statement of St. Augustine (Breviloq. P. 3 c. 5). Besides, one must be convinced in itself, and it is shown from other passages of his, that the holy Doctor does not call into question, much less reject as ‘absurd,’ the doctrine taught in the Gospel, throughout Scripture, and in the Christian profession of faith—if I may put it so, an elementary doctrine. Compare, for example, Jerome’s clear and polemical discussion on Ier 32, 26²: ‘God,’ the prophet said, ‘of all flesh,’ so that he may be believed to have made both rational and irrational animals. For there are some who profess the Creator’s providence as far as rational creatures, but claim that irrational creatures live or die by chance. The prophetic word declares that nothing escapes God's providence and knowledge, because some things were created for themselves, others for human use.’” He says similar things in In Matth 10, 29 (ML 26, 27).

God knows all things that can exist

253. Sacred SCRIPTURE attributes to God knowledge of things that precedes their creation or the decree to create them. For God created in supreme wisdom (above 235); but creating in wisdom presupposes that things are known before their creation or the decree to create them; the same is contained in the doctrine of the freedom of creation (above 234) and of providence (above 236). Cf. Eccli 23, 29; Eph 1, 11. The same is likewise contained in the FATHERS’ doctrine of the wisdom and freedom of creation (R, ser. 191) and of divine providence (R, ser. 124).

God knows the things that are to come about through the free action of creatures

254. The Vatican Council: “God, indeed, protects and governs by his providence all things that he has created, reaching mightily from end to end and ordering all things gently. For all things are naked and open to his eyes, even those that are to come about through the free action of creatures” (Denz 1784).

In the reworked schema proposed to the Fathers, the first paragraph of chapter 1 read: “God ... almighty, most provident, eternal” (see above, nr. 241). An amendment (8) was proposed: “In the first paragraph let the word most provident be deleted, and let the following be added after the second: Indeed, God protects and governs by his providence all things that he has created, reaching mightily from end to end and ordering all things gently (Sap. 8, 1). For all things are naked and open to his eyes, not only things that have been made, but also those that are to be made, whether by the necessary or free efficacy of created things” (Col. Lac. 7, 98 s.). This amendment asserts not only divine providence but also divine knowledge.

In his report on this amendment, Bishop GASSER said on behalf of the Deputation of the Faith: “The author of this amendment not only explains the attribute most provident more fully, but also wishes and desires that a third paragraph be added to the first chapter, which should deal with the providence and foreknowledge of God; and the Deputation judged that this amendment should be accepted, for two reasons. First, for a formal reason: namely, the word most provident, as it appears in the reworked schema, was introduced only later; and, to speak frankly, it somewhat disrupts the sequence of statements. It would therefore be much better to omit the word or expression most provident here, and then to add this amendment on the providence and foreknowledge of God as a third part or third paragraph. The Deputation also judged this amendment should be accepted because, in fact, theologians seem to doubt in many places whether God really foreknows contingent futures, that is, free futures. It will therefore certainly not be beside the point to set forth the most certain doctrine, indeed a doctrine that is certainly of faith, that God is most provident and foreknows even contingent and free futures. The Deputation of the Faith was troubled only by the final words of this amendment, which were somewhat harsh; accordingly, having reached an agreement with the author of this amendment, this amendment is proposed to you, Most Reverend Fathers, for your votes in the following form: Indeed, God, all things that he has created, protects and governs by his providence, reaching mightily from end to end and ordering all things gently; for all things are naked and open to his eyes, even those that are to come about through the free action of creatures. All the other points in this newly amended proposal have been left as they were, since they raise no doubt, namely, that God foresees past and future things, both necessary and contingent. All these matters are at least indirectly and implicitly contained in the words ‘even those that are to come about freely, etc.’” (Col. Lac. 7, 105). Almost all the Fathers approved this amendment (Col. Lac. 7, 109). In the form of the Constitution on which votes were cast on April 12, instead of “for all things are naked and open to his eyes” it says “For all things are naked and open to his eyes”; this is the definitive text.

From these facts it is clear that the Council intended to teach not only divine providence, but also God's knowledge, specifically his knowledge of the free actions of creatures. Therefore the interpretation of this text which says that only divine providence is properly defined here, and that what is said about divine knowledge is introduced merely as an argument to prove divine providence, is false. Such an interpretation not only runs contrary to the Council’s intention, but also attributes to the Council a considerable error, namely, that its providence could be proved from God's omniscience. One can indeed infer his knowledge from divine providence in the reverse order, but not providence from knowledge.

The opinion that contingent futures have no determinate truth was condemned by Sixtus IV, 8 Jan. 1474 (Denz. 719-723).³

In sacred SCRIPTURE God announced through prophecies many future things whose fulfillment depended on a created free will; hence TERTULLIAN rightly says, Adv. Marcionem, l. 2 nr. 5: God's foreknowledge “has as many witnesses as he made prophets” (ML 2, 290); Christ foretold the betrayal of Judas (Io 6, 64; 13, 11, 21 sqq. Matth 26, 21 sqq.) and Peter’s denial (Matth 26, 34).

The holy FATHERS explicitly teach the same. ST. AMBROSE, De fide, l. 5 c. 6 nr. 83: “Those whose merits he foreknew, he predestined to their rewards” (ML 16, 665; R 1272). ST. JEROME, Dial. adv. Pelagianos, l. 3 nr. 6: “Adam did not sin because God knew that this would happen; rather, God, as God, foreknew what Adam was going to do by his own will” (ML 23, 575). ST. AUGUSTINE, De genesi ad litteram, l. 11 c. 9 nr. 12: “God foreknew that their [that is, the first parents’] will would be evil” (ML 34, 434; R 1707); De civitate Dei, l. 5 c. 9 nr. 4 (ML 41, 152; R 1740); c. 10 nr. 2 (ML 41, 153; R 1742); Enchiridion 104 (ML 40, 281; R 1928). ST. JOHN DAMASCENE, De fide orthodoxa l. 2 c. 30 (MG 94, 969; R 2359).

Obj. Whatever God foreknows must be; but what must be is not free; therefore either God does not know free future things, or there are no free future things.

I answer. I distinguish the major: by antecedent necessity, I deny; by consequent necessity, I grant; or by necessity of the consequent, I deny; by necessity of the consequence, I grant; the minor is contradicted.

God knows the things that would come about through the free action of creatures, given certain conditions.

255. Conditionally future free things are understood to be free (and so the faculty, in the antecedent sign before the second act, is not determined to one outcome but is indifferent) things that would come about if a certain condition were fulfilled, but which, by hypothesis, is either not fulfilled or is at least conceived as unfulfilled. There must be a real connection between the condition and what is conditioned by it, but it is not necessitating or necessary; from the condition, what is conditioned cannot be known with absolute certainty. If the condition is verified (or conceived as verified), what was conditionally future and free becomes absolutely future; every absolutely future free thing, in the antecedent sign before the condition’s futurity, is conditionally future. Hence a distinction is usually made between pure conditionally future free things, whose condition is not verified, and non-pure conditionally future free things, whose condition is verified at some time. An example of such a conditionally future free thing is: If Peter saw this inn in these or those circumstances, he would enter it. Note well: this is not a matter of conditional truth—this or that would be true—but of the absolute truth of a conditional: it is absolutely true that the conditional would be fulfilled if the condition were verified.

256. No theologian seems explicitly and simply to have denied that God in fact has knowledge of conditionally future free things⁴. Some, however, are said to have attributed to God only conjectural or probable knowledge of them⁵, such as PETER DE LEDESMA, Tractatus de divinae gratiae auxiliis, art. 18, diff. ult.; CURIEL and others. JOHN OF ST. THOMAS (disp. 20 a. 1) tries to show that this claim is mistaken. In our own time L. JANSSENS, De Deo uno II, 51 s., says: “God knows with certainty those futuribles that truly are futuribles, that is, those that are either contained in their causes with moral certainty or about which he has made some provision in his decrees: the former, therefore, in two middle terms, the latter in one. The remaining things, although we can imagine them as genuine futuribles, are not truly futuribles, but pertain to mere possibilities, which God contemplates through speculative knowledge.” The knowledge by which God knows futuribles that are contained in their causes, insofar as they are so contained, is morally certain. Nevertheless, theologians commonly teach that God knows futuribles with absolute certainty: ALVAREZ O. P., XANTES MARIALES O. P., GONET O. P., GOTTI O. P., BILLUART O. P., MOLINA, VÁZQUEZ, SUÁREZ, GREGORY OF VALENCIA⁶; in general, Molinists and Bañezians, between whom there is indeed controversy about the explanation of this knowledge and perhaps also its scope, but not about the fact itself: that God knows futuribles certainly and distinctly.

SACRED SCRIPTURE

257. 1 Reg 23, 1 ss. After David in the city of Ceila heard that Saul was planning to come against him at Ceila, he asked God, “Will the men of Ceila hand me over into his hands? And will Saul come down, as your servant has heard?” The Lord answers both questions in the affirmative: He will come down; they will hand him over.

Saul’s descent and the Ceilites’ surrender of David are conditionally future free things; that they are free is clear; each depends on a condition (if David remains in the city, Saul will come down; if Saul comes down, the Ceilites will hand David over); there is a real connection between the condition and the free act, but it is neither necessitating nor infallible (David’s presence in the city is a motive for Saul to come down freely; Saul’s descent is a motive for the Ceilites to hand David over); the conditions are not verified (David does not remain; Saul does not come down).

God knows these conditionally future free things with certainty. For God’s certain and determinate answer presupposes certain and determinate knowledge, since God does not affirm anything beyond his knowledge. David himself already had conjectural knowledge and moral certainty about Saul’s descent, but, not content with such knowledge, he asks God, who knows all things, precisely in order to have perfect certainty.

Obj. Perhaps the words “he will come down,” “they will hand him over” are not to be understood as they sound, but as “he intends to come down,” “they intend to hand him over,” as the Chaldean paraphrase of this text explains; if the text is understood in this way, it proves only moral certainty, or conjectural knowledge based on the disposition of minds⁷.

I answer. 1) The text states definitely, “he will come down, they will hand him over”; 2) David himself had heard of Saul’s intention, and he does not ask God about the intention, but whether Saul will in fact come down in accordance with this intention; 3) God would have affirmed more in words than he knew; 4) it is unlikely that the Ceilites at that time already intended to hand David over (cf. Ruiz, disp. 63 sect. 2).

258. Luc 10, 13 (Matth 11, 21 ss.): The people of Tyre and Sidon would have repented if the works of power that were done in Capharnaum had been done in Tyre and Sidon. Here again the matter concerns free acts (they would have repented), connected by a real but not necessitating relation with some condition (the miracles), which nevertheless is not fulfilled. The same must be said of the people of Sodom (Matth 11, 23 s.). Christ knows both truths. In the text of 1 Reg the condition at issue would not be fulfilled; here the discussion concerns a condition that was not fulfilled. Nevertheless, the nature of the object known is not thereby changed.

But perhaps Christ uses a rhetorical figure, hyperbole (as, for example, Luc 19, 40: “If these should be silent, the stones will cry out”), to indicate the ill will of the people of Capharnaum; perhaps he does not intend to affirm anything with certainty about what the people of Tyre and Sidon would have done. Indeed, if this were not admitted, one would have to say that the people of Tyre and Sidon are judged at the last judgment for what they would have done under other conditions.

I answer. Some say it is difficult to exclude hyperbolic speech from the text alone, but they concede that the text itself contains no positive reason requiring it. Nevertheless, because the Fathers explain the text as concerning true knowledge⁸, it cannot be understood as a mere hyperbolic expression. Nor does the text itself seem well suited to a hyperbolic interpretation: one should not admit hyperbolic speech without reason, and the text provides none, unlike Luc 19, 40, where the figurative sense is apparent from the nature of the matter. The proposed reason—that the people of Tyre would then be judged according to what they would have done in other conditions—is invalid; nothing is affirmed except that they will be punished less because in fact they were less obstinate. Indeed, this appeal to the future judgment would make no sense if Christ had used a hyperbolic figure.

One can argue similarly from Ierem 38, 14-20; Act 22, 17-21.

Some thought that Scripture attributed conjectural knowledge to God, or that he was uncertain about the future, because it sometimes adds “perhaps”; for example, Mt 11, 23: If the works of power that were done in you had been done in Sodom, perhaps it would have remained to this day. Gen. 3, 3: But concerning the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of paradise, God commanded us not to eat of it and not to touch it, lest perhaps we die. Ez 2, 4 s.: They are children with hard faces and stubborn hearts, to whom I am sending you; and you shall say to them: Thus says the Lord God: Perhaps they themselves will hear, and perhaps they will be quiet, for they are a rebellious house. Ierem 26, 2 s.: Thus says the Lord: Stand in the court of the house of the Lord and speak to all the cities of Judah ... all the words ... do not omit a word, perhaps they will hear and each turn from his evil way.

The answer is found by considering what corresponds to this “perhaps” in the original text. Mt 11, 23 has a counterfactual proposition; there is no uncertainty. Gen 3, 3 has simply ne (pen), with no uncertainty. In Ezech 2, 5, whether they hear or whether they desist—that is, they will not hear: the outcome of the prophet’s preaching is indicated as uncertain, but despite that the prophet must carry out God’s command. Likewise, in Ierem 26, 3 (forte = ulai), the outcome of the preaching is uncertain, though there is hope and a desire that they be converted (PESCH, nr. 214. See below, nr. 284 and 285, the words of St. John Chrysostom and St. Jerome).

THE FATHERS

259. ST. GREGORY OF NYSSA, De infantibus qui praemature abripiuntur: “It is fitting that he who knows the future as well as the past should prevent a child from reaching adulthood, lest the evil be brought to completion which, through foreknowledge, he knew would be in the child if he were to live in that way, and lest life become an occasion of wickedness for one who would have lived with such a free will ... We hold this opinion about the death of infants: he who does all things rationally, in his goodness removes the occasion of wrongdoing, not granting time for the free choice, known by foreknowledge, to manifest itself through deeds at the height of wickedness, since it has an impulse toward evil” (MG 46, 184; R 1059).

ST. AUGUSTINE, De genesi ad litteram, l. 11 c. 9 n. 12: “God foreknew that their (that is, the first parents’) will would be evil. He certainly foreknew it, and because his foreknowledge cannot be deceived, the evil will is therefore not his but theirs. Why, then, did he create those whom he foreknew would be such? Because, just as he foresaw what evil they would do, so he also foresaw what good he himself would bring about from their evil deeds” (ML 34, 434; R 1707). Therefore God has knowledge of the sin of the first parents in a sign antecedent to the absolute decree of creation; in this sign those acts were conditionally future free acts. De dono perseverantiae, c. 9 n. 22: “Certainly God could have taken them from this life before it happened, foreknowing that they would fall” (ML 45, 1005; R 1996), which can no longer be said of things that are absolutely future; cf. also the texts cited at nr. 258, where St. Augustine understands Christ’s words in Matth 11, 21 s. as referring to true knowledge.

260. The Fathers set forth this doctrine when speaking of divine providence, especially when the question is how God, who is so good, could have permitted evil (many texts of the Fathers in Ruiz, disp. 65; on good works, disp. 66). They do not answer by saying that God was ignorant of future evil, but that although God knew the evil was to come, he nevertheless willed to permit it, since he is so good and powerful that he can himself bring good even out of evils.

But St. AUGUSTINE seems to have denied this knowledge to God in opposition to the Semipelagians.

I answer. I deny that he denied this knowledge; I grant that he denied the use of this knowledge to confer reward or punishment, as the Semipelagians claimed. Thus De dono persev., c. 9 nr. 23: “It is therefore false that the dead are judged according to what they would have done if the Gospel had reached them while they were alive. If this is false, there is no reason to say of infants who perish dying without baptism that this happens to them on account of the merit that God foreknew they would hear the Gospel preached unbelievingly if they lived. It remains, therefore, that they are held bound by original sin alone, and for this alone they go to damnation” (ML 45, 1006; R 1997). Moreover, he is entirely right to affirm that foreknowledge, strictly speaking, does not concern what will never be: “What of the fact that foreknowledge itself is emptied out if what is foreknown will not be? For how can one rightly say that what will not be is foreknown as future?” (De anima et eius origine, l. 1 c. 12 nr. 15; ML 44, 483)⁹.

THEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

261. By a supremely free counsel and with the highest wisdom, God chose the present order from among various possible orders, including the free acts of creatures, and willed it to be absolutely future (cf. the doctrine of creation and providence). But a free and wise choice of a determinate order is excluded if, in the sign antecedent to the absolute choice, God did not know certainly and distinctly what would happen in the different orders. For if he knew what would happen in this order only through his absolute will of this order, it would be more fitting to say that he willed this order blindly. In the sign antecedent to the absolute choice, however, the objects are conditionally future. Cf. Molina, Concordia q. 14 a. 13 disp. 49 (ed. Parisiis 1876 pag. 191 s.).

This knowledge of God is presupposed in every good prayer by which temporal things are asked of God. “It is also permitted to ask for gifts and adornments of the mind, such as the arts and learning, but only on the condition that they will benefit us for the glory of God and our salvation” (Catechismus Romanus p. 4 c. 2 nr. 4). Therefore, one who prays well presupposes that God knows what is better: to have those goods or not to have them; that is, that God knows what would happen if he granted those goods and what would happen if he denied them. Thus the Christian people are taught to pray, and thus they pray in practice, firmly persuaded that God knows what is better.

FRANZELIN, thes. 40; KLEUTGEN, nr. 487-492; DE SAN, nr. 162-164; 167; BILLOT, thes. 23, Scholion; PESCH, prop. 42; VAN DER MEERSCH, nr. 374-380.

262. The division of God's knowledge into knowledge of simple intelligence and of vision is ancient (1 q. 14 a. 9): God contemplates by knowledge of vision the things that are, were, or will be in actuality; the things that are in the power of God or of a creature, but will never be (possibles as such), he knows by knowledge of simple intelligence. “This is said because the things that are seen among us have a distinct being outside the one who sees them” (S. Th., l. c.). This division is based on the differing actuality of the objects.

263. More recent is the division into natural or necessary knowledge and free (contingent) knowledge, which is based on the differing necessity of the objects. By necessary knowledge God knows those things that are determinately true by the nature of the matter, independently of any free will: the divine being and possibles. By free knowledge he knows those things that are not determinately true by the nature of the matter, but depend on the free divine will, which wills them to exist in actuality (actual things outside God).

These two divisions do not simply coincide, so that one could say exclusively that knowledge of vision is free and necessary knowledge is knowledge of simple intelligence. For with respect to the divine being, God's knowledge is both knowledge of vision and necessary; with respect to actual, non-divine terms, however, knowledge of vision is free knowledge.

264. Conditionally future free things are neither necessary by the nature of the matter, like possibles, nor dependent on a free determination of the divine will in the way that actual things outside God are. Rather, under one aspect—that is, insofar as they precede such a divine decree—they would be counted among the objects of necessary knowledge; and under another—that is, insofar as they are not necessarily true by the nature of the matter—they would be counted among the objects of free knowledge. They are intermediate between those objects. Hence knowledge with respect to conditionally future free things is rightly called middle knowledge¹.

265. The term middle knowledge was introduced by MOLINA, who distinguishes God's knowledge as follows: “We must distinguish three kinds of knowledge in God, unless we wish to err dangerously in reconciling the freedom of our will and the contingency of things with divine foreknowledge. One is purely natural, and therefore could in no way be different in God. By it he knows all that divine power extends to, either immediately or through the intervention of secondary causes, both with respect to the natures of individual things and their necessary combinations, and also with respect to contingent things—not that they would or would not be future in a determinate way, but that they could indifferently be or not be, which necessarily belongs to them, and therefore also falls under God's natural knowledge. Another is purely free, by which God, after a free act of his will, without any hypothesis or condition, knows absolutely and determinately from among all contingent combinations which ones would in fact be future, and which would not. Finally, there is a third, middle knowledge, by which from the most profound and inscrutable comprehension of each free will in its essence he has seen what it would do by its innate freedom if it were placed in this or that, or even in infinitely many, orders of things, although it could, if it wished, actually do the opposite” (Concordia, q. 14 a. 13 Disp. 52; ed. Oniae - Matriti 1953, 339 s.).

266. Middle knowledge is therefore understood most directly as intermediate between natural and free knowledge; in a similar way, however, it can be conceived as intermediate between knowledge of vision and of simple intelligence, because its object—conditionally future free things—on the one hand never are, were, or will be, and hence are not the object of knowledge of vision; on the other hand, they are not mere possibles, because it is one thing for a person to be able to act freely in this or that way under certain conditions, and another for the person determinately to be going to act in this way and not the other under these conditions, though he could act otherwise.

BILLUART, Tractatus de Deo, diss. 6 a. 5 ob. 3: “It cannot be said through which knowledge God knows these conditional future things. He does not know them through knowledge of simple intelligence, because this concerns only mere possibles and necessary things; nor through knowledge of vision, because this concerns only the things that are, were, or will be, which are actually present in eternity, and this does not apply to conditional future things. Yet according to the holy Fathers and all theologians except the Molinists, there is no other knowledge in God than knowledge of simple intelligence and of vision. Therefore.

“I answer. The Thomists are divided on this point. Some say that God knows conditional future things through knowledge of vision, and to the contrary argument they distinguish: Knowledge of vision concerns only things that will be and are actually present in eternity, insofar as it is formally vision, I concede; insofar as it is free and approving, I deny. For in this respect it is directed toward all free and contingent objects, whatever they may be.

“Others say that God knows them through knowledge of simple intelligence, because just as there are two kinds of knowledge of vision in God—one natural and necessary, namely the vision of the divine essence, and the other free, namely the intuitive vision of creatures—so there are two kinds of knowledge of simple intelligence: one natural and necessary, which concerns mere possibles, and the other free, which concerns conditional future things. And when it is objected that St. Thomas and the theologians call knowledge of simple intelligence necessary, they answer that it is called this because it is chiefly occupied with mere possibles, which God knows naturally and necessarily.

“Choose whichever of these two opinions you prefer; it is a question of terminology. For whether you say that it is knowledge of simple intelligence or of vision, it is all the same, provided you do not say that it is independent of God's actual decree, as the Molinists imagine middle knowledge.”

267. Third, divine knowledge is divided into speculative and practical knowledge (1 q. 14 a. 16): speculative insofar as it is theoretical knowledge of truth, practical insofar as it is knowledge of things to be done for the end of action, directing the will and lighting its way. Knowledge of simple intelligence can be speculative and practical; nor is it difficult to understand how, as a kind of art, it can be practical and thus influence the efficient causality of things. Knowledge of vision, however, which already presupposes an absolute divine decree concerning the thing’s existence, is per se speculative; nevertheless it can be “not in the manner of art but in the manner of providence, mediately practical.” “For although in God there is not one volition on account of another, since there is one supremely simple act by which he wills all that he wills, nevertheless the things God wills are mutually dependent, and he wills one to be on account of another. Hence the vision of the existence of one thing can, in our way of conceiving, light the way for divine counsels directed toward willing another thing, and in this sense be a guide in acting”². But note: in this way the vision of object A is not practical with respect to that object, but with respect to another, for example B; and in this way it is mediately practical.

268. Fourth, divine knowledge is divided into knowledge of approval and disapproval, according as it is knowledge of good things that please God or of evil things that displease him; this distinction therefore derives from the different way the divine will is related to the known objects. “This knowledge can either precede or follow the origin of things. It precedes it: ‘Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you,’ that is, I chose you to consecrate you; for it follows: ‘And before you came out of the womb, I sanctified you’³. It follows it: ‘And God saw all the things he had made, and they were very good’⁴ ... Knowledge that approves, insofar as it precedes the origin of things, does not differ from practical knowledge⁵; insofar as it follows the origin of things, it is vision⁶ together with an act of the will⁷”⁸. Therefore not all knowledge of approval is practical knowledge, although practical knowledge, which has a will conjoined to it that the thing come to be, is necessarily knowledge of approval. Hence knowledge of approval is sometimes primarily understood as practical knowledge (1 q. 14 a. 8). One must therefore attend to how the terms are understood⁹.

As was already indicated above (nr. 252), knowledge of disapproval, because it denies benevolent knowledge, is called ignorance.

PETRUS LOMBARDUS, l. 1 d. 38; S. TH., 1 q. 14 a. 8; SUÁREZ, De gratia, proleg. 2 c. 10; RUIZ, disp. 15; BILLUART, Tract. de Deo, diss. 5 a. 3; KLEUTGEN, nr. 497-511; DE SAN, nr. 165; 228; 229; BILLOT, thes. 23; PESCH, prop. 43; MUNCUNILL, nr. 432-451; VAN DER MEERSCH, nr. 383-390.

269. Everyone admits, and must admit, that God's knowledge is the cause of things. Sacred Scripture so clearly attributes the production of things to divine wisdom: Sap 7, 21; Prov 3, 19; Ps 103, 24; Ierem 51, 15. So too do the FATHERS; for example, St. AUGUSTINE, De diversis quaestionibus 83 q. 46: “Once it has been established and conceded (namely, that all things that exist were brought forth by God as their author and are contained and governed by his laws), who would dare say that God established all things irrationally? If this cannot rightly be said or believed, it remains that all things were established by reason” (ML 40, 30). De Trinitate, l. 15 c. 13: “For, as his Word says, your Father knows what you need before you ask him¹. He did not come to know these things at some point in time, so as then to know them; rather, he foreknew without beginning all future temporal things, and among them what we would ask of him and when, and what and concerning which matters he would or would not grant. But he knows all his creatures, spiritual and corporeal, not because they exist; rather, they exist because he knows them. For he did not fail to know what he was going to create. He created because he knew; he did not know because he had created. Nor did he know them as created in a way different from his knowing them as to be created: nothing was added to his wisdom from them. Rather, with them existing as was fitting and when it was fitting, that wisdom remained as it was” (ML 42, 1076). In general, the Fathers' teaching that God created the world by his wisdom contains the doctrine that God's knowledge is the cause of things. Nor is there any dispute about this among theologians. According to KLEUTGEN², it is “certain by faith.”

270. Knowledge, however, is a cause insofar as it is joined to the will. For knowledge as cognition does not make its object but presupposes it; and if knowledge as such were a cause, it would follow that everything God knows would exist—indeed, all of it would exist necessarily, and God's freedom in acting would perish. Hence in the sources of revelation the production of things is also attributed to the divine will.

271. In explaining this matter, ST. THOMAS lays down the principle: “God's knowledge stands in relation to all created things as an artisan's knowledge stands in relation to artifacts” (1 q. 14 a. 8). The artisan acts through the intellect, and thus his knowledge is the cause of the artifacts. But a form is not “a principle of action insofar as it is only in the intellect, unless an inclination toward the effect is joined to it, which comes through the will.” Thus the artisan's knowledge is the cause of artifacts insofar as it is joined to the will; the same must be said of God.

In De veritate, q. 2 a. 14, he explains the matter as follows: “It must be understood, however, that knowledge, insofar as it is knowledge, does not signify an active cause, just as a form, insofar as it is a form, does not; for action consists in something proceeding from an agent, whereas a form, as such, exists by perfecting that in which it is and resting in it. Therefore a form is not a principle of action except through a power. In some things the form itself is the power, but not according to the account of form; in other things the power is something distinct from the thing's substantial form, as we see in all corporeal things, whose actions proceed only through some of their qualities. Similarly, knowledge signifies that something is in the knower, not that something proceeds from the knower; therefore no effect ever proceeds from knowledge except through the will, which by its very account implies a certain influence upon what is willed. Likewise, action never proceeds from substance except through power, although in some things, as in God, will and knowledge are the same, while in others, as in all other things, they are not. Likewise, since God is the first cause of all things, effects proceed from him through secondary causes. Hence between God's knowledge, which is the cause of a thing, and the thing itself that is caused, there are two intermediaries: one on God's side, namely the divine will; the other on the side of the things themselves with respect to certain effects, namely secondary causes, through which things come forth from God's knowledge. Every effect, however, follows not only the condition of the first cause but also that of the intermediate cause. Thus things known by God proceed from his knowledge in the manner of the will and in the manner of secondary causes; they need not in every case follow the manner of knowledge.”

272. Which knowledge of God, then, should be called the cause of things? The answer is: practical knowledge, or also the knowledge of approval (as St. Thomas calls it in the Summa), or of good pleasure (as St. Thomas, with the Master, calls it in 1 d. 38 a. 1). More specifically, the question has been raised whether the knowledge of vision is meant; the answer seems to be no. For the knowledge of vision has actual things as its object, and, with respect to what is external to God, presupposes their truth as things existing at some time; it therefore cannot have the account of a cause with respect to them. God's absolute decree to create those things comes first. St. Thomas holds the same on this point, as is clear from his comparison with the craft in the artisan's mind. Moreover, vision is no longer open to opposites, as he says of the knowledge that is the cause of things. Further, the divine will intervenes between the knowledge that is a cause and the thing itself; this cannot be said of the knowledge of vision, which follows that will³.

273. The BAÑEZIAN theologians explain the matter as follows⁴: “The knowledge of simple intelligence is a cause directing things in the order of intention and productive in first act. The knowledge of vision is a cause directing and producing in second act in the order of execution—not precisely insofar as it is vision, but insofar as it is approval, as we explained in the first conclusion—so that it is true to say causally: things exist or are going to exist because God sees them. Here because refers to vision insofar as it has the will joined to it. Conversely, it is not true to say that God sees things because they exist or are going to exist, except perhaps in some more subtle sense, discussed in the solution of the objections. The conclusion is to be understood generally of all the things God makes, including those that are freely future.”

274. The point is explained and proved as follows: “The divine intellect, according to our way of conceiving, apprehends the manifestation of his glory as a good and proposes it to the will. The divine will assents to and intends this end. By virtue of this intention, the intellect, or divine knowledge, investigates the means and, among the innumerable means it can employ, discerns the most suitable; it presents them to the will as possibilities within its art, and the will wills and chooses them. Here the order of intention comes to a halt. From this it is clear, first, that the knowledge which up to this point directs by proposing the end and means is knowledge of simple intelligence, because up to this point, while it was directing before the will's choice, everything was still in a state of mere possibility. Although, through the subsequent choice, things became incipiently future in intention, they were not yet fully future in effect; nor did knowledge cooperate in this incipient futurity in any other way than by directing. It is clear, second, that because it proposes the means as possible for it and as contained within the power of its art, this knowledge is productive in first act, that is, it has the power to produce; and thus the first part of the conclusion is proved.

“Now, once the effective choice of the means has been made, the intellect, by virtue of that choice, commands their execution. Since God's command is most effective and does not require distinct executive powers, as I shall say at the end of the article, the things come to be at the very instant at which he commands; and since, as we have proved, this is an act of the intellect, it follows that by producing he sees and by seeing he produces. Thus the knowledge that is the effective cause of things in second act is the knowledge of vision, since it reaches things as existing or as fully future—not precisely insofar as it is vision, as was said, but insofar as it has the will joined to it, and is customarily called knowledge of approval. Hence I argue formally as follows: God is the effective cause of things in second act through a command; but a command is an act of the intellect pertaining to the knowledge of vision and not to the knowledge of simple intelligence; therefore. The first part of the minor is clear from what was said in the first conclusion. The second part is proved thus: This act of command presupposes an effective decree and is grounded in it, and it terminates in things as existing, since they are produced through it; therefore.”

275. Some points must be observed here. It is said that the cause is the knowledge of vision, not precisely insofar as vision, but insofar as approval; it would be simpler to say: the knowledge of approval is the cause. The knowledge of vision, however, is understood as God's knowledge insofar as it is vision (having things actual at some time as its object); it is difficult to understand what God's knowledge as vision, but not precisely as vision, could be. At least the terminology seems less apt. Further, is a command a kind of cognition?

276. It is true that God's command is most effective, but in what sense? Something of how the author understands this appears from his answer to TOURNELY's objection. Tournely thinks the command superfluous, since God's will is effective of itself. He answers, among other things: “Not only is an intellect required to direct and move the will in the order of intention and toward willing, but also in the order of execution and toward doing.… In God, therefore, besides the effective will of the work, a command for its execution must, according to our way of conceiving, be distinguished—not because God experiences difficulty in executing it, but because of a distinction between objects. For the object to be carried out adds something to the object simply willed. And just as we assign an intellect directing in the order of intention, lest the will choose imprudently and blindly, so we must assign one directing in the order of execution, lest it execute imprudently and blindly.” In the obvious sense, these words seem to be understood so that the subject of “execute” is the will. Thus, just as the knowledge of simple intelligence directs the will in the order of intention, so the command directs the will in the order of execution. This can rightly be said, but it does not seem to be the author's view. For in the appendix he says: “The power immediately productive of things is the intellect, not the will, because the will produces through the command, which is an act elicited by the intellect.” If we apply this to the passage just quoted, its meaning is: In the order of execution a command is required, an act elicited by the intellect, to direct the intellect, lest the intellect execute imprudently and blindly. This is very difficult to understand. Moreover, this opinion conflicts with the teaching of ST. THOMAS (q. 2 a. 14, vide supra nr. 271): “No effect ever proceeds from knowledge except through the will, which by its very account implies a certain influence upon what is willed,” and “between God's knowledge, which is the cause of a thing, and the thing itself that is caused, there are two intermediaries: one on God's side, namely the divine will.…”. In Billuart's opinion, however, the will does not intervene between God's knowledge, which is the cause of the thing, and the thing itself that is caused. On the contrary, between the will and the thing willed by God there intervenes knowledge, an act of the intellect that is immediately productive of the thing.

277. Therefore, retaining the teaching of St. Thomas, we answer the argument as formally proposed (nr. 274, at the end): I distinguish the major: God is the effective cause of things in second act through a command insofar as it directs the will in execution, I grant; through a command insofar as it immediately produces the existence of things, I deny. The first part of the minor is granted or left aside; the other is denied. To its proof, “This act of command presupposes an effective decree and is grounded in it,” I distinguish: an effective decree by which things are incipiently future, I grant; by which they are fully future, or actually exist at some time, I deny (so according to BILLUART supra nr. 276; the command must still direct, lest it execute imprudently and blindly). This act of command “terminates in things to be produced through the will”⁵, I grant; in things already existing antecedently to the effective will, I deny. “Since they are produced through it”: I distinguish—produced mediately through the act of command as it directs the will, I grant; produced immediately through the act of command, I deny. Therefore the act of command, as an act of the intellect preceding the will through which things have existence, does not have as its object things insofar as they actually exist; it is not, therefore, knowledge of vision.

278. “It must therefore be understood that knowledge, according to the account of knowledge, does not signify any causality, for otherwise all knowledge would be a cause. But insofar as it is the knowledge of an artisan making things, it has the account of a cause with respect to the thing made by art. Thus divine knowledge's causality must be considered in the same way as an artisan's causality through his art. The process in producing an artifact is as follows: first, artisanal knowledge displays the end; second, the artisan's will intends that end; third, the will commands the act by which the work is brought forth, and the artisan's knowledge places the conceived form in the work. Knowledge, therefore, displays the end, while the will directs the act and informs the work produced. It is thus clear that whatever occurs in the effect through a defect from the form of the art or from the end is not traced back to the artisan's knowledge as its cause. It is also clear that the principal share in causality belongs to the will, which commands the act” (S. THOMAS, in 1 d. 38 q. 1 a. 1).

279. “You have a vivid example of the distinction between practical knowledge, which precedes, and the speculative knowledge of vision, which follows the existence of things, in the very account of divine history: God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and he divided the light from the darkness. God therefore knew by the knowledge of simple intelligence that light could be made. Once joined to the will, this knowledge, no longer speculative but practical, commanded: Let there be light. With the light's coming to be, the speculative knowledge of vision follows: God saw the light. Moreover, St. Thomas also calls that creative knowledge knowledge of approval, insofar as approval as good pleasure that the thing should exist precedes it; but the speculative knowledge of vision that follows may also rightly be called approval, as the sacred text itself shows: God saw that the light was good”⁶.

280. The Fathers' statements, “Because God knows, therefore it will be,” are easily understood from what has been said: they speak, namely, of God's knowledge insofar as it is the cause of things, that is, knowledge which directs God's operative will after the manner of an art. Moreover, they often say: “Because it will be, therefore God knows.” These words are readily understood of the knowledge of vision, if this, as we have said, is not the cause of what is known. They could not be understood, however, if, as the Bañezian theologians say, the knowledge of vision were the cause of what is known. Hence ALVAREZ said⁷: “This causal statement, ‘Because things are future, therefore they are known by God,’ is false; but this one is true: ‘Because God, by free knowledge, knew something to be future, therefore it is future.’”

281. ORIGEN, Contra Celsum, l. 2 c. 20: “Celsus thinks that what was foretold comes to pass because it was foretold by some prior knowledge. We, however, not conceding this, say that the foreteller is not the cause of a future event because he foretold what would happen. Rather, the future event—which would be future even if it had not been foretold—provided the foreknower with a reason to foretell it. And this whole matter is present in the foreteller's foreknowledge: since this thing can happen or not happen, one of these two will occur. We do not say that the foreknower takes away the possibility that it can happen or not happen, as though he were saying something like, ‘This will certainly happen, and it is impossible for it to happen otherwise’” (MG 11, 836; R 521). In ep. ad Rom., l. 7 nr. 8: “Something will not happen because God knows it is going to happen; rather, because it is going to happen, it is known by God before it occurs” (MG 14, 1126); cf. In Gen., tom. 3 n. 6 (MG 12, 64; R 471).

282. EUSEBIUS, Praeparatio evangelica, l. 6 c. 11: “If it is right to say that foreknowledge is not the cause of the things that happen (for God does not intervene in the sin of the person he foreknew when that person sins), then we shall say something still more astonishing, yet true: the future event is the cause of why there is such foreknowledge of it. For it did not happen because it was known; rather, it was known because it was going to happen (γίνεσθαι ἔμελλεν). A distinction is needed. If someone interprets ‘it will certainly happen’ to mean that the event foreknown must necessarily happen, we do not agree. We will not say that, because Judas the betrayer was foreknown to be going to appear, it was altogether necessary that Judas the betrayer appear. For if that were so, he would not be blamed by those who foresaw that he would betray; yet he is blamed, plainly because he could also have refrained from betraying” (MG 21, 492; R 663). A little earlier, he had said of good and evil acts: “Since God foresees each person's will, he knows that one will act wrongly and another rightly. Foreknowledge, then, is not the cause of future things.”

283. ST. EPIPHANIUS, Adversus haereses, haer. 38 nr. 6 et 7: “We do not act as we do because Scripture foretold it; rather, Scripture foretold what we were going to do, on account, plainly, of God's antecedent knowledge.… We must think the same about the punishment of the cross. Christ was not driven to the cross by the Jews or betrayed by Judas because Scripture foretold that it would happen in this way; rather, because Judas was going to betray him and the Jews were going to crucify him, both Scripture in the Old Testament and the Lord himself in the Gospel foretold that it would happen at some time” (MG 41, 662 s.).

284. ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM, De prophetarum obscuritate, hom. 1 nr. 4: “Let us ask why he says⁸ Perhaps they will listen. If he had said They will listen without Perhaps, it would have been false, for they were not going to listen. If he had said truthfully, They will not listen, he would have sent a prophet to people who would not listen for no purpose. Nor was this the only reason; lest his foreknowledge be thought to exert some force or necessity that made them disobedient, he therefore spoke these words with a certain hesitation, so that no one might say, as they are accustomed to say about Judas: ‘God foretold it, so it had to happen altogether. He foretold, they say, that Judas would be a betrayer, and that is why he became a betrayer.’ What madness! What shamelessness! Foreknowledge was not the cause of his wickedness, my friend—far from it! It does not impose necessity upon future things; it merely foresees them. That man did not become a betrayer because Christ foretold it; rather, Christ foretold it because he was going to be a betrayer. So, lest they also say here that he said they would not listen and thereby shut off the way to repentance for them, he anticipated them and took away every pretext by saying to the prophet, Perhaps they will listen” (MG 56, 170 s.). In Matthaeum homil. 59 (in Mt 18, 7: “It is necessary that scandals come, but woe to the man through whom scandals come”): “When he speaks of necessity, he does not take away free choice or freedom of the will, nor does he say this by subjecting life to the necessity of anything; rather, he foretells what was going to happen altogether. Luke made this clear in other words, saying: It is impossible that scandals should not come⁹.… His prediction does not bring scandals about—far from it! Nor did they happen because he foretold them; rather, he foretold them because they were going to happen. Thus, if those who cause them had not wanted to do so, they would never have come; and if they were not going to happen, they would not have been foretold. But since some acted wickedly and suffered from an incurable disease, scandals came, and he foretold what was going to happen” (MG 58, 574 s.; R 1175).

285. ST. JEROME, Dial. adv. Pelagianos, l. 3 c. 6: “Adam did not sin because God knew that this would happen; rather, God, as God, foreknew what Adam was going to do of his own will” (ML 23, 575; R 1405). In Ezechielem prophetam, l. 1 (in 2, 5): “And you shall say to them: Thus says the Lord God: Perhaps they too will listen, and perhaps they will be quiet: for they are a rebellious house, and they will know that a prophet has been among them. Something similar is written in Jeremiah¹⁰: ‘Perhaps they will listen and repent.’ And in the Gospel¹¹: ‘Perhaps they will respect my son.’ God speaks these words in the manner of one who is uncertain, in order to show man's free choice, lest foreknowledge of future good or evil make unchangeable what God knows will happen. For it is not necessary that we do what he has foreseen simply because he knows what is to come; rather, as God, he knows what we are going to do of our own will” (ML 25, 393 s.).

286. ST. AUGUSTINE, De libero arbitrio, l. 3 c. 4: “Augustine: Why does our free choice seem to you contrary to God's foreknowledge? Is it because it is foreknowledge, or because it is God's foreknowledge? Evodius: Because it is God's. Augustine: Well then, if you foresaw that someone was going to sin, would it be necessary for him to sin? Evodius: It would indeed be necessary for him to sin; for otherwise my foreknowledge would not be foreknowledge, unless I foresaw it with certainty. Augustine: Therefore, it is not necessary that what God has foreseen happen because it is God's foreknowledge, but only because it is foreknowledge; if it did not foresee with certainty, it would not be foreknowledge at all. Evodius: I agree; but where is this leading? Augustine: Because, unless I am mistaken, you would not immediately compel someone to sin by foreseeing that he was going to sin, nor would your foreknowledge itself compel him to sin, although he would undoubtedly be going to sin; otherwise you would not foresee that this would happen. Just as these two things are not contrary to each other—you knowing through your foreknowledge what another will do of his own will—so God, while compelling no one to sin, nevertheless foresees those who will sin of their own will. Why, then, should the just one not punish what he foreknows without compelling it to happen? Just as you do not, by your memory, compel past events to have happened, so God does not, by his foreknowledge, compel future things to be done. And just as you remember some things you did, though you did not do everything you remember, so God foreknows everything of which he is the author, but is not the author of everything he foreknows. What he is not the evil author of, he is the just avenger of. From this, then, understand how justly God punishes sins, since he does not bring about the future things he knows. For if he ought not to repay sinners with punishment because he foresees that they will sin, neither ought he to repay those who act rightly with rewards, because he likewise foresees that they will act rightly” (ML 32, 1276; cf. R 1547).

De civitate Dei, l. 5 c. 10 nr. 2: “It is not the case, then, that nothing is in our will because God foreknew what would be in our will; for he who foreknew this did not foreknow nothing. Moreover, if he who foreknew what would be in our will foreknew not nothing but something, then plainly, with his foreknowledge, something is in our will. Therefore we are in no way compelled either to reject freedom of the will while retaining God's foreknowledge, or—an impiety—to deny the one who foreknows the future while retaining freedom of the will. Rather, we embrace both and faithfully and truthfully profess both: the former, so that we may believe rightly; the latter, so that we may live rightly. One lives badly if one does not believe rightly about God. Therefore, far be it from us to deny his foreknowledge in order to wish to be free, for with his help we are, or will be, free. Hence laws, reprimands, exhortations, praise and blame are not without purpose: he also foreknew that these would come to be, and they are of the greatest value to the extent that he foreknew they would be of value. Prayers too avail for obtaining what he foreknew he would grant to those who pray; and rewards for good deeds and punishments for sins have been justly established. For a person does not sin because God foreknew that he would sin. Rather, there is no doubt that he sins when he sins because the one whose foreknowledge cannot be mistaken foresaw that it was not the deed, nor chance, nor anything else, but the person himself who would sin. If he does not want to, he certainly does not sin; but if he does not want to sin, God also foreknew this” (ML 41, 153; cf. R 1742).

287. THEODORET, In Rom. 8, 30: “Those whose purpose he foreknew he predestined from the beginning; he also called those predestined, then justified those called through baptism, and glorified those justified, naming them his children and giving them the grace of the Holy Spirit. Yet no one should say that foreknowledge was the cause of these things. For foreknowledge did not make them such; rather, as God, he foresaw from afar the things that were going to happen.… As God, the God of all things sees all things from afar; yet he does not impose a necessity on this person to practice virtue and on that one to act wickedly” (MG 82, 141; R 2162).

ST. JOHN DAMASCENE, Dialogus contra Manichaeos, 79: “The foreknowledge of almighty God does not have its cause in us; but foreknowledge of what we ought to do (that is, what we are going to do) arises from us. For if we were not to do it (that is, if we were not going to do it), he would not foreknow it either, and it would not be future. God's foreknowledge is indeed true and inviolable, but it is not itself the cause why something future happens altogether; rather, because we ought to do this or that (that is, because we are going to do it), he foreknows it” (MG 94, 1577; R 2382).

288. From the examples cited, it is evident that the discussion concerns that knowledge of God whose object is things as existing at some time; therefore, it concerns what is called the knowledge of vision. We must therefore say: God knows things by the knowledge of vision because they will be. Those Bañezian theologians who do not wish simply to deny this proposition think such statements should be understood as referring mostly to sins, “insofar as they are formally sins, the knowledge of vision is not their cause”¹². But it must be said that a general principle is usually established, which is indeed often applied to sinful acts because the difficulty was being raised specifically about them, but is also explicitly applied to good acts (ORIGEN, EUSEBIUS, EPIPHANIUS, JEROME, JOHN DAMASCENE). Hence BILLUART (l. c.): “When the holy Fathers sometimes speak of non-sinful acts, they mean only that knowledge is not a cause that introduces necessity into what is known, such that something is compelled to happen because God knows it.” But this “solution” is impossible. The difficulty the Fathers had to solve was this: If God foreknows an act, the act must necessarily happen and cannot be omitted; therefore man no longer acts freely. The Fathers' solution is: God sees the act because it is going to happen; God's vision already presupposes the truth of the free act that is to come; therefore this vision cannot take away the act's freedom. But if the Fathers had said only that God's vision is not a cause that introduces necessity, they would not have offered a solution to the difficulty; they would only have asserted the contrary of what the difficulty itself had said.

BILLUART adds another answer to this difficulty, based on the Fathers' teaching: “The holy Fathers spoke in this way, attending only to the account of knowledge, to which the account of causality does not belong unless the will is joined to it; that is, they spoke of the knowledge of vision as vision, not as approval.” This distinction has already been discussed above (nr. 275). In fact, if the knowledge of vision is not the cause of things, that difficulty has been “solved” by the Fathers—or rather, there is no longer any difficulty.

289. God is infinite in intellect and will, utterly simple and immutable; his knowledge is pure act. Therefore everything implying imperfection, potentiality, composition, or succession must be excluded from it. God's cognition is not an act proceeding from a faculty, but a substantial divine act; there is complete identity among the divine essence, the intellect, and the act of understanding; there is not even a distinction of reason with objective precision. God, from himself alone, knows most perfectly whatever has the character of truth. He is in no way determined, nor can he be determined, by objects to know them, because such determination presupposes a potential subject. Indeed, it cannot properly be said even of the divine essence that it determines the divine intellect to cognition as a principle, because divine intellection in no way arises or is produced. Therefore no object exerts a real influence upon the divine intellect; objects are merely terms of the divine intellection. Hence an object's real existence is not required for it to be known by God: if it is true, it is known by God precisely for that reason, and it is known from eternity according to every truth it possesses and every degree of certainty it has. For example, a determinate free act of some creature may be contained with probability in its causes and be knowable from them. If so, God knows with infinite certainty that the act is contained with probability in its causes. If the act is truly posited, it is metaphysically impossible that it not be posited; and God likewise knows with infinite certainty the act as outside its causes and as metaphysically impossible not to occur.

290. We cannot conceive this infinite, substantial cognition of God except after the manner of potential, created cognition. As was said above concerning God's attributes and perfections in general, some things must be distinguished in God and considered after the manner of a certain succession. Thus we distinguish the divine intellect as a “faculty” or principle of intellection from intellection itself; the intellect as the principle of intellection from divine being (the physical essence) as the object of intellection; and cognition of divine being from cognition of non-divine objects. But being, intellect, and intellection are fully identical, and the intellection by which God knows himself is the same as that by which he knows non-divine objects.

291. Since a knowing creature is potential, it must in some way be determined to cognition, either immediately by the object or by something that takes the object's place: an intelligible species. In a similar way, an “intelligible species” is usually assigned to God, to inform the divine intellect in some way for cognition, while excluding every real determination, as was said above. This species is the divine essence, which, conceived by us under this aspect, can be called the medium quo of divine cognition. It should be noted, however, that the divine essence is understood as the physical essence, divine being itself.

By this species we conceive the divine intellect as informed so as to know that of which this species is the species—namely, primarily, divine being itself; and, since the divine essence is the foundation and representation of all truth, also, secondarily, every non-divine truth. The divine essence is also the medium in quo by which God knows things other than himself.

292. Just as the divine essence is the foundation of all being, so too it is the foundation of all truth. It is the foundation of the truth of possibles because possibility is grounded in the divine essence as imitable; it is the foundation of the truth of existents because existence is grounded in the free decree to create that being, which decree is the divine essence itself. And just as the essence determinately grounds those truths, so too it represents them, so that whoever knows divine being comprehensively also sees the truths grounded by it.

In this sense one may rightly say that God knows non-divine objects in his essence, or that the divine essence is the medium in which God knows things other than himself—not by discursive reasoning, but intuitively. These words should not be understood as if one were saying that God knows non-divine things only according to the eminent being they have in the divine essence, an opinion attributed by some to AUREOLUS (In 1 d. 35 p. 2 a. 2). Rather, non-divine objects are known in the divine essence, as the representation of all truth, according to their own natures, with all their properties down to the smallest details. This cognition, however, is not discursive. “For when something is known in something, the knower is carried in one movement toward both; as is clear when something is known in something as in an intelligible form. Such cognition is not discursive” (De veritate, q. 8 a. 15 c.).

293. If one says that God knows this truth in his essence, another in the decree to create, and another in his decree to concur or in his concurrence, the meaning is this: This truth (for example, Peter is possible) is grounded in the divine essence, prior to any divine decree, because the divine essence is thus imitable; that truth (Peter not merely as possible but as existing at some time) derives from the free decree to create Peter. Hence the divine essence, insofar as it is identical with this decree, grounds this truth and represents it; thus in this decree the truth “Peter exists” is known.

Generally, the question “In what medium does God know this or that truth?” properly means: From what is this or that thing true? How is this or that truth grounded and connected with the divine essence—independently of any divine decree, dependently on a decree, on which decree, and so forth? The question in no way means explaining how cognition of this or that truth is possible for God. For this possibility is fully explained by the fact that God is infinite in intellect and that the object in question is true. We cannot, however, positively understand in itself the manner in which God knows, since in thinking about this matter we always think after the manner in which creatures know.

294. It has been said that the divine essence is the medium in which God knows things other than himself. Some authors, whom you may consult in URRABURU, Theodicea, II, 150 s., have further maintained that one must admit a cognition by which non-divine things are known not in the divine essence but immediately in those things themselves. If this opinion is defended by saying that things have truth not only in the divine essence but also in themselves, and that they are knowable and known by God according to this twofold account of truth, it seems that one should observe the following: just as there is not one being of things grounded in divine being and another that they possess in themselves, so there is not one truth of things grounded in the divine essence and another that they possess in themselves. Therefore, even if God does not know them immediately in themselves but only in his essence, no account of their truth escapes him. On the other hand, it seems quite difficult to admit in God a cognition in which the intelligible species—which, in that cognition too, by which things are said to be known not in the divine essence, is posited as the divine essence—would immediately lead to the cognition of something that is not the divine essence. One should therefore say, it seems, that God knows all non-divine things in his essence as the medium in which; this appears to be the more common opinion. Those who defend it may be consulted in URRABURU, l. c., pag. 148 s. Theologically, this is an entirely open question.

295. What has been said applies readily to the cognition of possibles and of those things that exist whose truth depends solely on a free divine decree (the existence of things and their necessary actions). A difficulty arises, however, when the acts in question involve created freedom.

296. ST. BONAVENTURE:¹ God knows all things from eternity; and so in his knowledge all things are eternally present to him as the object of his knowledge. “Knowing all things as present can be understood in two ways: either the presence is noted on the part of the things known, and in this sense it is false, because he does not know all things as presently and simultaneously true; or the presence is noted on the part of the knower, and in this sense it is true. The reason is that God has the ideas of all things present to him at once, through which he knows future things with the same certainty as if they were present. And, further, he turns toward all of them simultaneously and as present, and thus knows them simultaneously and as present. Further, the present of his knowledge is the simplest present, which encompasses all times. From these three reasons taken together God is said to know all things as present”². The divine ideas represent the future not merely as possible but as truly future; this is proper to the divine idea. The divine ideas represent the future, however, not by reason of some decree of the divine will by which God decrees that those things will be future, but because divine truth is “a light supremely expressive.” “For since the divine intellect itself is the highest light, perfect truth, and pure act, just as divine power is sufficient in itself to produce all things in causing them, so divine light and truth are sufficient to express all things; and since expressing is an intrinsic act, it is therefore eternal; and since expression is a kind of assimilation, the divine intellect, expressing all things eternally by its supreme truth, eternally possesses the exemplary likenesses of all things, which are not other than itself, but are what it is essentially”³.

297. ST. THOMAS treats several times the question whether God’s knowledge concerns future contingents⁴ and always proposes the same view: “A contingent thing can be considered in two ways: in one way, in itself, insofar as it is already actual; and thus it is not considered as future but as present, nor as contingent toward either alternative, but as determined to one. For this reason it can in this way be infallibly subjected to certain knowledge, such as the sense of sight, as when I see Socrates sitting. In another way, a contingent thing can be considered as it is in its cause; thus it is considered as future and as not yet determined to one, because a contingent cause is related to opposites. In this way a contingent thing is not subjected with certainty to any knowledge. Hence whoever knows a contingent effect only in its cause has only conjectural knowledge of it. God, however, knows all contingent things not only insofar as they are in their causes, but also insofar as each of them is actual in itself. Although contingent things become actual successively, God does not know them successively as they are in their being, as we do, but simultaneously; for his knowledge, like his being, is measured by eternity, and eternity, existing all at once, encompasses the whole of time, as was said above. Hence all things that exist in time are eternally present to God—not merely because he has the forms of things present within himself, as some say, but because his gaze from eternity is directed upon all things insofar as they are present. It is therefore clear that God knows contingent things infallibly insofar as they are subject to the divine gaze according to their presence, and yet, in comparison with their proximate causes, they are future contingents”⁵. The explanation, then, is this: For certain knowledge to be possible, certainty in the thing known is required; certain and infallible knowledge is only of an object that has determinate truth. A future contingent does not have this insofar as it is in its causes; it has it only insofar as it is outside its causes, in itself; and precisely in this way it can be known by God.

God has three kinds of knowledge of future contingents: 1) in created causes, 2) by knowing his relation to the thing, 3) in the things themselves. The first plainly does not provide certain knowledge, nor does the second; for God’s relation to the thing that was to be future by his power, does not ground certain knowledge, since it does not confer certainty on the thing known: “A necessary first cause can coexist with a defect in a secondary cause, as the sun’s motion can coexist with a tree’s sterility”⁶. The infallibility of divine knowledge is explained only by the fact that God knows a future contingent insofar as it is in itself, “when its being is already determinate and can be known with certainty”⁷.

298. St. Thomas never explains the infallible knowledge God has of future contingents by the causality of the divine will; nor does he abandon this doctrine in the Summa contra gentiles. From that work people usually cite book 1, chapter 68, “That God knows the movements of the will,” where he says: “In knowing his essence, God knows other things as effects are known through knowledge of their cause. God therefore knows all things by knowing his essence to which his causality extends. It extends to the operations of intellect and will: for since each thing acts through its form, from which the thing has some being, the source-principle of all being, from which every form also comes, must be the principle of every operation, since the effects of secondary causes are referred more principally to first causes. God therefore knows the thoughts and affections of the mind.” In this passage, however, St. Thomas is not dealing at all with knowledge of future contingents; he had dealt with that in the preceding chapter, “That God knows singular future contingents.” There he had plainly proposed the very same doctrine found in his commentary on the Sentences through the Summa theologiae, which we have already seen: “A contingent thing is opposed to certainty of knowledge only insofar as it is future, not insofar as it is present. For when a contingent thing is future, it may not exist; and so the knowledge of one who judges that it will exist can be mistaken: he will be mistaken if what he judged would exist does not exist. But once it is present, it cannot fail to exist at that time.... Therefore all knowledge directed to a contingent thing insofar as it is present can be certain. The gaze of the divine intellect, however, is from eternity directed to each of the things that unfold in the course of time insofar as it is present, as was shown above (cap. 66).

It follows, then, that nothing prevents God from having infallible knowledge of contingents from eternity.”

299. The question St. Thomas treats in chapter 67 is one question; that which he treats in chapter 68 is another. In chapter 63 he had set out the reasons given by those who wished to deny God knowledge of singular things: both singularity itself and the particular difficulties that seem to obstruct certain knowledge of some singular things. In third place there he listed the fact that some singular things are contingent, and he treats them in chapter 67; in fourth place he listed “that the cause of some singular things is the will. But an effect, before it exists, can be known only in its cause; for only in this way can it exist before it begins to exist in itself. The movements of the will, however, can be known with certainty by no one except the one willing, in whose power they are. It therefore seems impossible for God to have eternal knowledge of such singular things as derive their cause from the will.” He deals with this matter in chapter 68. The subject, then, is not acts of intellect and will insofar as they are future contingents, but the searching of hearts, as is also clear from the passages of Sacred Scripture he cites at the end of the chapter: Ps 7, 10; Prov 15, 11; Io 2, 25. The same is clear by comparing other passages in which St. Thomas treats a similar question: De Veritate q. 8 art. 12; 13; De Malo q. 16 art. 7; 8; Summa Theol. 1 q. 57 art. 3; 4. A creature’s thoughts and movements of heart can be known by an angel and by demons only through their effects, insofar as they are manifested outwardly; but in their very cause they are known only by the person to whom they belong, and by God.

300. PETRUS DE TARANTASIA O. P. “For contingents, even if as future they have no necessity because they depend on undetermined causes, nevertheless, insofar as they are already actual, they have necessity. God, however, sees contingents as present in eternity; and all time is present to eternity. Man, by contrast, sees contingents as future, since he is in the earlier part of time. Thus God sees them infallibly and determinately, whereas man cannot. For some things have a cause wholly determined to exist or not exist, such as eclipses of the heavenly bodies; others are not wholly so determined, but are more inclined to one side than the other, such as natural events in the lower realm, namely rain and the like; others, such as contingents, are determined to neither side. The first kind of beings can be foreknown with certain knowledge; the second with conjectural knowledge, as happens in the judgments of physicians and astrologers; the third cannot be foreknown at all, but only when it is actual, because only then is it first determined. God, however, sees all things as present; hence he sees all things as actually existing, and thus as determined, and so knows all things, whether they exist in their proper nature, are past, or are future”⁸.

301. RICARDUS DE MEDIAVILLA O. F. M. “God’s foreknowledge concerns all future things, as is clear for two reasons. As will be explained below, all future things are really present to eternity, insofar as eternity, by reason of its immensity, transcends our present. Hence Anselm ... says of God that all things are simultaneously present to him. A contingent thing, however, is seen clearly when it is seen as present; and therefore, because God sees all future things as really present to himself, he has certain knowledge of them. His knowledge of them is not merely knowledge but foreknowledge, insofar as they are future by comparison with our present”⁹. The other reason he adduces is that God knows which good things he wills to happen, which he does not will to happen, which things are evil and he does not will to happen, and which he does not will to prevent.

302. In 1 dist. 39 SCOTUS asks: 1) whether God has determinate knowledge of all things with respect to every condition of existence; 2) whether this knowledge is certain and infallible; 3) whether it is immutable; 4) whether he necessarily knows every condition of existence of all things; 5) whether some contingency on the part of things in existence can coexist with the determination and certainty of his knowledge. He cites three views that do not seem sufficient to him: 1) “The certainty of divine knowledge concerning all things, with respect to every condition of existence, is posited on account of the ideas placed in the divine intellect, and because of their perfection in representing: they represent the things of which they are ideas not only in their entirety, but also according to every aspect and relation of their extremes. Thus the divine intellect has a sufficient principle not merely for apprehending those things simply, but also for apprehending every union among them and every mode of the things represented by the ideas pertaining to their existence”¹⁰. 2) “Another view holds that God has certain knowledge of future contingents because the whole flow of time, and all things that are in time, are present to eternity”¹¹. 3) “A third view says that, although some things are necessary with respect to divine knowledge, it does not follow that they cannot be contingent with respect to their proximate causes”¹²

303. In seeking to answer the questions, he first investigates generally “how contingency is possible.” He replies: “No causation by any cause can preserve contingency unless the first cause is posited as causing immediately and contingently, and this by positing in the first cause perfect causality, as Catholics do”¹³. Since the first cause acts through intellect and will, contingency must be sought either in the divine intellect or in the will. “But not in the intellect insofar as it has its first act prior to every act of the will; for whatever the intellect understands in this way, it understands purely naturally and by natural necessity. Thus there can be no contingency in knowing something it does not know, or in understanding something it does not understand by such a first act. Therefore the first contingency must be sought in the divine will”¹⁴. According to Scotus, then, all contingency is grounded in the fact that the first cause wills contingently.

304. He next asks how certainty in divine knowledge can coexist with the contingency of things: “Having considered the contingency of things with respect to existence, and having considered it in relation to the divine will, it remains to consider the second main point: how the certainty of God’s knowledge stands together with this. This can be explained in two ways. First, the divine intellect, seeing the determination of the divine will—that is, that this will be the case at A because that will determines it to be the case at A—knows this because it knows that the will is immutable and cannot be impeded. Or otherwise: since this approach seems to posit a kind of reasoning in the divine intellect, as though it concluded that this would be the case by intuiting the will’s determination and immutability, it can be explained in another way: the divine intellect either presents simple terms to the will, whose union in reality is contingent; or, if it presents a proposition, it presents it as neutral to itself. The will, choosing one side—that is, the union of these things at some particular moment in reality—makes it determinately true: this will be the case at A. Once this is determinately true, the essence is the principle by which the divine intellect understands this truth, and it does so naturally, insofar as this is from the side of the essence. Thus, just as it naturally understands all necessary principles, as it were before an act of the divine will, because their truth does not depend on that act and they would be known by the divine intellect even if, impossibly, there were no willer, so the divine essence is the principle by which it knows them in that naturally prior instant, because they are then true. This does not mean that those truths move the divine intellect, nor do their terms move it to apprehend such a truth, for then the divine intellect would be debased, suffering action from something other than its essence. Rather, just as the divine essence is the principle for knowing simple terms, so too it is for knowing such propositions. At that point, however, they are not contingent truths, because nothing then exists by which they have determinate truth. Once the divine will’s determination is posited, they are true, namely, at that second instant; and the same thing that was the principle for the divine intellect to understand them at the first instant will be the principle for it to understand them, now true at the second instant, and they would have been known at the first instant if they had then existed at the first instant.

305. An example: just as, if the power of sight in my eye were always the principle by which I see an object, and someone representing it made first this color and then that color present, my eye would see now one, now the other, and yet by the same act of vision—the only difference being the priority and posteriority of seeing, because the object was presented earlier or later. If one color were made present naturally and another freely, there would be no formal difference in my vision: on its own part, my eye would naturally see both. Nevertheless, it could contingently see one and necessarily the other, insofar as one is contingently present to it and the other necessarily. Whichever of these two ways we suppose the divine intellect to know the existences of things, it is clear in either case that the divine intellect is determined to the existing thing to which the divine will is determined, and that there is certainty of infallibility: the will cannot determine without the intellect’s determinately apprehending what the will determines. It is also immutable, since both will and intellect are immutable.... Yet the contingency of the object known remains alongside these things, because the will, although willing this determinately, wills it contingently”¹⁵.

In brief, the doctrine is this: by a free or contingent determination of his will, God grounds the determinate truth of a contingent thing; God knows this determinate truth because the divine essence is the principle by which every truth is known¹⁶.

306. Scotus presents this doctrine as different from the explanations given up to that time. It was immediately adopted by his disciples and other theologians of the Order of Friars Minor. From then on, when different positions on this subject were listed, Scotus’s position was treated as distinctive and different from the position of others, especially St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas. His disciples developed their master’s doctrine. Scotus had explicitly spoken of the determination of the divine will as the foundation of all contingent truth. If, indeed, every contingent truth is grounded in this way, the explicit conclusion readily follows that the divine will determines contingent secondary causes, including the created free will itself, to act. The Scotists had already drawn this conclusion explicitly in the fourteenth century: Hugh of Novocastro, Francis of Marchia, William of Rubione¹⁷, Peter of Aquila, John of Ripa, and Francis of Perugia¹⁸.

307. The explanation Scotus proposed seemed new to the theologians of his time, and they immediately subjected it to criticism. Such were Thomas Anglicus O. P., Aureolus, Thomas de Wilton, and Ockham. It was objected that this explanation could not be applied to all contingents—specifically, not to the free acts of creatures and to sinful acts. For, as a consequence of this doctrine, the creature’s true freedom would have to be denied, and God would have to be called the author of sin. These, then, are the same “difficulties” that two centuries later would be raised against the doctrine of the Bañezians. As early as the fourteenth century, defenders of Scotus’s doctrine attempted in various ways to resolve these difficulties: because the divine will’s determination is contingent and the source of all contingency, acts of free choice also remain contingent; if a created cause determined the created will, its freedom would not be preserved, but it is preserved if the first cause, God, determines it, since the divine will does not change the nature of actions and determines to a free act; under the divine determination the possibility of the opposite act remains, although it will never be actualized; and freedom consists in the possibility of performing another act. The same solutions are already found that defenders of physical predetermination would propose two centuries later¹⁹. Likewise, to the difficulty that God would be the cause of sin, the reply is that God determines the positive act, but not its deformity, in which the formal character of sin consists.

308. THOMAS BRADWARDINUS, who follows Scotus in explaining God’s knowledge of future contingents, arrives at a doctrine that does not preserve the creature’s true freedom. Strictly speaking, the creature is free not in relation to the first cause but in relation to secondary causes²⁰. Bradwardine’s doctrine was immediately attacked by theologians of the fourteenth century.

309. The Thomists retain St. Thomas’s doctrine, explaining the infallibility of divine knowledge of future contingents by the fact that God knows what is future for us as present to him, and thus no longer undetermined but determined to one. So CAPREOLUS, In 1 d. 38 q. 1 a. 2 concl. 1: “A contingent thing, insofar as it is future, cannot be known infallibly, but it can be known insofar as it is present”²¹. God knows them in this way (concl. 2). The reason why this knowledge of God is infallible and most certain is indicated solely by citing St. Thomas’s texts: the future contingent is known as present; only insofar as it is in itself is it determinately true (concl. 4)²². The effect, however, remains contingent because its proximate cause is contingent (concl. 5)²³. According to Capreolus, contingency in things is not derived only from secondary causes (a. 1 concl. 1)²⁴, but the root of contingency is the divine will (concl. 2)²⁵; for God wills some things to happen necessarily and others contingently, and therefore fits necessary causes to some effects and contingent causes to others.

310. DIDACUS DEZA O. P., professor at the University of Salamanca from 1477 to 1486, proposes precisely the same doctrine. In 1 d. 38 q. 1 a. 3: “A contingent thing insofar as it is future, especially if it is contingent toward either alternative, cannot be known certainly and infallibly; it can be known in this way only insofar as it is in itself and present to the knower.” “From eternity God knows future contingents with certainty and determinately, not as future, but in themselves, insofar as they are eternally present to God.”

According to him, the claim that they cannot be known infallibly in their causes is to be understood not only of created causes but of the first cause itself: “Since in the causes of a future contingent there is no power or efficacy having a necessary relation to that future contingent—for otherwise it would not be future and contingent but necessary, since necessity and contingency in the effect arise from the necessity or contingency of the cause—it follows that a future contingent does not have necessary, determinate, and infallible being in its causes, and therefore cannot be known with certainty, determinately, and infallibly in its causes. And according to the mind of St. Thomas this is true not only of the secondary and proximate causes of a future contingent, but also of the first cause, which is God. For the argument already given applies to the first cause just as it does to the proximate causes: God’s power and efficacy have no necessary and determinate relation to the existence and production of future contingents any more than to their nonexistence; considered in themselves, they are related to them freely and toward either alternative. It is therefore concluded, according to the foregoing argument, that future contingents cannot be known with certainty and determinately not only in their proximate causes but even in the first cause, God, since their cause is not necessary and determinate but free to either alternative, and consequently they are not in God necessarily, absolutely, and determinately.” He then shows that this is St. Thomas’s mind.

311. To the objection, “Although God’s power and efficacy, considered in themselves and absolutely, have no necessary relation to the existence or nonexistence of future contingents, nevertheless, when the disposition and determination of divine knowledge and will concerning future contingents to be produced—which was in God from eternity—are considered, it seems that from eternity God’s power and efficacy had a necessary and determinate relation to their existence and production; it follows that future contingents could have been known from eternity with certainty and determinately by the divine intellect in their first causes,” he replies: “Just as God’s will determined from eternity that certain future contingents would be brought into being, so too it determined that they would be produced contingently and fallibly; thus it fitted them with proximate causes that are contingent, liable to impediment, and subject to failure, from which the effects themselves could contingently occur or not occur, be produced or not be produced.... It follows that future contingents cannot be known with certainty and determinately in the first cause, even when it is determined, insofar as its causality is concerned”²⁶.

312. FRANCISCUS DE SYLVESTRIS FERRARIENSIS presents as St. Thomas’s doctrine, in his commentary on Contra Gentiles 1, 67, the claim that a contingent thing can be known with certainty only insofar as it is present, and that this is how God knows it. To St. Thomas’s argument, “Just as an effect follows with certainty from a necessary cause, so it follows from a contingent cause if it is not impeded; but since God knows all things, as is clear from what was said above, he knows not only the causes of contingents but also what could impede them; therefore he knows with certainty whether contingents exist or not,” Sylvester adds this note: “Observe ... that this knowledge by which the causes of a contingent thing are known, together with the fact that they will not be impeded or will be impeded, is not knowledge of a contingent thing insofar as it is contingent, but insofar as it has necessity. This is understood of the effects of natural causes. For perhaps, in the case of the effects of the will, knowledge of the causes and impediments is not enough for certainty of knowledge unless the cause itself is known as actually and ultimately operating without impediment; this is to know the effect as already in its being, not merely as it is in its cause.”

Scotus had taught that if the first cause moves necessarily, the secondary cause also acts necessarily, and there would then be no contingency in the world. Sylvester replies: “A moving cause, insofar as it is moved, can at once be moved necessarily by the first cause and yet not move necessarily, because the action of the first cause is modified in the secondary cause according to the mode of that secondary cause.” In support of this view he appeals to St. Thomas himself, In 1 d. 38 a. 5, and De Veritate q. 5 a. 9 ad 10, that the power of the first cause is received in the secondary cause according to the mode of the secondary cause.

313. CAIETANUS raises a difficulty in explaining 1 q. 14 a. 13, in the response to objection 1: “Things known by God are contingent on account of their proximate causes, but necessary in relation to God’s knowledge.” This can be understood as follows: “A thing contingent in itself has a necessary relation to the first cause, but a contingent relation to its proximate causes.” Scotus argues against this. His first argument is: “A cause that moves insofar as it is moved, if moved necessarily, moves necessarily; but every secondary cause moves or acts insofar as it is moved by the first; therefore, if it is moved necessarily by the first, it also moves necessarily; and thus there is no contingent cause.” Caietanus replies: “To the first argument, his Achilles, which he has repeated so often, we answer on two grounds. First, we distinguish ‘insofar as it is moved by another’: does this indicate a cause exclusively, or a co-cause? If exclusively, the proposition contains a contradiction in its predicate: for if the secondary cause is a cause, then it does not move solely because it is moved, but also contributes something of its own. And if it moves solely because it is moved, it contributes nothing of its own, and so it is not a cause. If, however, it indicates a co-cause, though a principal one, we deny the assumption: it can be moved necessarily and yet not move something else necessarily, because the motion of the prior cause is modified in the secondary cause according to the mode of the secondary cause. Thus, although the second cause is moved necessarily by the first, once the motion is received in the second cause, if we suppose that cause to be contingent, it is modified by the contingency of the recipient. And because it is modified prior in nature to impelling the cause to act, this motion, already modified to a contingent cause, moves the second cause to act not necessarily but contingently. And if the second cause is posited as a natural cause that is nevertheless liable to fail, that motion, now modified to the nature of the secondary cause, will move it to act not necessarily but for the most part, according to the proper mode of the secondary cause and not of the first. Thus the whole Scotist edifice is overthrown from a single point. Again, we distinguish ‘moved by another’ in a different way: either by a motion preceding its own action, as water heats after being heated by fire, or by a motion cooperating intrinsically in its own action. Even if the proposition were true or defensible in the first way, it cannot be upheld in the second, because a cause cooperating intrinsically cooperates with each thing according to its mode. Such is the cooperation of the first cause, of which it is written that it reaches mightily from end to end and orders all things sweetly: that is, it cooperates with each according to its mode.”

314. He discusses the question of how freedom can stand with the certainty of divine providence in 1 q. 22 a. 4. St. Thomas solves the first objection—that divine providence imposes necessity on things because it cannot be frustrated—in this way: “The effect of divine providence is not merely that something happen in any way whatever, but that something happen either contingently or necessarily. Therefore what divine providence disposes to happen infallibly and necessarily happens infallibly and necessarily; and what divine providence intends to happen contingently happens contingently.” To this Caietanus adds: “In the response to the first objection a very difficult doubt arises, perhaps insoluble by the human intellect. To make clear where the doubt lies, and so that it may be better understood, one must observe that it is one thing for A to happen contingently, another for A to happen necessarily, and yet another for A to happen infallibly or inevitably. The first and second both imply a relation of the effect to a cause placed in act: the first means that its cause has power toward either alternative, while the second means that its cause cannot fail to exercise its causality. The third, however, is more general than either, since both contingent and necessary things follow divine providence once it is in act infallibly or inevitably, while the former follow it contingently and the latter necessarily. Although the intellect may be satisfied by these points as it considers the response in the text concerning the preservation of contingency, it nevertheless wavers over how this infallibility is connected with free choice—or, to speak more accurately, with the free occurrence of the very operations we call free, and likewise with the indeterminate occurrence of other contingents. For in a free operation one must consider the will itself, its cause, and its outcome, or execution, here and now, such that the opposite does not occur. It is not difficult to preserve the nature of such a cause, namely, a free one, together with the infallibility described, since this infallibility neither gives nor takes away anything from a cause open to either alternative; rather, it is compatible with the cause having an indifferent power for what is infallible and for its opposite. For this reason divine providence does not remove contingency from things. But to preserve this infallibility together with the indifference or freedom of execution or outcome—this is the task, this the labor. For if it is infallible that I will write at first light on the next day, although I have the power for either alternative, that is, to write then or not to write then, this power and freedom will nevertheless not be actualized as a refusal to write, but as an affirmation, so that it is inevitable that the affirmation occur. And if this is so, since divine providence has from eternity been in act, determined with respect to all things, and is immutable, infallible, etc., it follows that as a matter of fact all things happen inevitably, although some contingently and others necessarily.... And if all things in fact happen inevitably, why do we deliberate and strive to pursue some things rather than others, or to avoid them? For this seems to destroy the moral order and every effort of the Church and exhortation to the good no less than the denial of contingency. For although the denial of avoidability and the denial of contingency are not equivalent, as is already clear from what was said, they seem equal with regard to the proposed difficulties. No one deliberates about what is inevitable, and no one strives, exhorts, or prays about inevitabilities.”²⁷

315. “I have found nothing written by St. Thomas about this doubt, because I do not recall that he raised it anywhere; rather, he always strove to preserve contingency. Nor have I so far found anything on this question in other doctors except the common discussions of the composite and divided senses, of the necessity of the consequence and of the consequent, of the freedom of the divine choice in eternity, and of the nature of causes in the universe that are open to either alternative.

But, as is clear from what has been said, none of this settles the intellect, for, as has already been said, the question concerns not God considered in himself but God as he actually is; and likewise it concerns not the very natures of causes or things, nor necessity and contingency, but the compatibility of inevitable outcomes with the contingency and freedom of those same outcomes.” He concludes: “The best and most salutary counsel in this matter is to begin from what we know and experience with certainty in ourselves: namely, that everything subject to our free choice is avoidable by us, and therefore we are worthy of punishment or reward. How, while preserving this, divine providence, predestination, and so on are preserved, we should believe as Holy Mother Church believes. For it is written: ‘Do not seek things higher than yourself; many things have been revealed to you beyond human understanding.’ This is one of them.”

Caietanus does not hold the doctrine according to which God, by his will, predetermines the created will to one freely performed act, nor does he ground the truth of contingents in a divine decree of predetermination. Like Conrad Köllin O. P., he was still far from a full understanding of Thomistic principles²⁸.

316. Against Caietanus’s doctrine that the motion of the first cause is modified in the second cause, the Scotist LYCHETUS attempts to show that such modification, in whatever sense it is understood, is impossible and cannot be reconciled with the absolute independence of the first cause: the first cause would be determined by the second cause, “which no sane person would say; for it is contrary to the nature of the first cause that it could be determined or modified in acting by a second cause”²⁹.

317. The theologians of the Order of Preachers who taught at the University of Salamanca in the sixteenth century before Báñez, together with St. Thomas, explain the infallibility of God’s knowledge of future contingents by saying that God knows them insofar as they are outside their causes and present to him in eternity. They debate in what sense this presence is to be understood, whether as real and ontological or in some other way; most understand it, with Caietanus, as real and ontological. The other explanations they consider are chiefly Durandus’s explanation (God knows future contingents in secondary causes that are complete and unimpeded) and Scotus’s view (God knows them in the first cause itself). They do not accept these, however, because they do not sufficiently explain the certainty of divine knowledge³⁰.

318. FRANCISCUS DE VITORIA O. P. adopts knowledge through presence as St. Thomas’s explanation. Concerning God’s cooperation in a sinful act, he says: “God has a will with respect to sin as a universal agent, not as a particular agent. I mean that this is the difference between universal and particular agents: a particular agent cannot act without the influence of a universal agent, according to the true philosophy—or the more probable philosophy, which philosophers commonly hold—that no motion at all can occur without the influence of the heavens; universal agents, however, do not depend on anything else in their actions. Assuming this, I say that God, who is the universal cause, influences all things so that they act: if they are voluntary agents, they act if they will, and if they do not will, they do not act. For if the sun were the first voluntary agent and gave me an influence by which I could move myself to kill someone, it would not therefore be guilty, nor would it move me, etc. For while that influence remains, I could kill or not kill. In this way, then, God concurs in sin and does not sin in any way, nor does he move anyone to it, because, as has been said, while this general concurrence remains, it is entirely true that we can act and not act with complete freedom. Try it when you wish to sin, to see whether you cannot refrain from willing, even though God’s general concurrence is in you. This is because it is already a natural law that absolutely no agent, acting well or badly, acts without God’s general concurrence. In this way we must concede that God concurs in sin, just as the sun concurs, according to the philosophers”³¹.

319. DOMINICUS SOTO O. P. says of Scotus’s view that God knows future contingents because he knows the determination of his will in himself, “that he does not know them in this way either, because if he knew them in this way, he would not know them so certainly”³². He explains St. Thomas’s doctrine as follows: “I myself see each of you in your distinct place; in the same way, God sees all future things at the instant in which each is later to exist. And just as if Peter and I were both looking and I had sharper sight than Peter, I would see someone coming from farther away than Peter would, so too, if I see things at a spatial distance, I would see one coming sooner than another who does not see at so great a distance as I do. This, then, is how St. Thomas conceives it: God sees all things from eternity in the way they will exist in their own times”³³.

320. MELCHIOR CANO O. P. states the conclusion: “God knows them (future contingents) infallibly, because we too know present things infallibly”³⁴. First, concerning Durandus’s opinion, he says that St. Thomas did not deny that there could be another way to preserve the infallibility of divine knowledge; then he adds: “Second, I reply that there is no other way of preserving God’s knowledge—the infallibility of God’s knowledge of future contingent things—except by positing the existence of things. This is what St. Thomas holds.” To the argument that an unimpeded contingent cause behaves like a natural cause, he replies: “I distinguish: if that contingent cause is free, I deny it; if it is natural, let it pass”³⁵.

PETRUS DE SOTOMAYOR O. P.: “God knows all future contingent things by seeing them in themselves, in the proper essences and existences they will have”³⁶.

321. MANCIO O. P. argues against Scotus’s view: “Certainly one could hold this about contingents brought about by God alone; but it is not so easy to understand this about things he brings about together with free choice. For why does the divine will determine itself to concur with you and not with me, unless because it knows that you will want it to concur with you, but I will not? For God’s concurrence does not necessitate, but it is in my power whether God concurs with me or not. I then ask: how does he know that you will want him to concur with you?”³⁷. Against Durandus he says, among other things, that Durandus’s argument applies to a natural cause. “For in the case of a free cause, even if God knows that it will not be impeded, he does not thereby immediately know the effect; for a free cause has this property: once impediments are removed, it is in its own power to act or not”³⁸.

322. BARTHOLOMAEUS DE MEDINA O. P. argues against Durandus that a future contingent cannot be known with certainty in secondary causes, especially when free causes are involved. He goes further and asks how God can know that a cause will not be impeded. “If he replies that God knows this through another cause that he knows will not be impeded, I will ask again: how does he know this, since it is a future contingent? And since there cannot be an infinite regress, one must necessarily arrive at St. Thomas’s explanation: he sees this future contingent as present in his eternity”³⁹. To the argument, “God knows future contingents because he willed to produce them by a determinate will, and therefore he knows them through their cause,” he replies: “God decreed through his knowledge and will to produce future things; nevertheless, he would never see them by the knowledge of vision unless they were present to him in eternity, just as he would not know things unless they were as they are in reality; otherwise God’s knowledge would be false”⁴⁰. Nevertheless, God’s knowledge has its infallibility and certainty not from the things themselves but from itself; “but for it to be certain about contingent things, it is required as a condition that they be outside their causes and present to God in eternity; otherwise they cannot be known with certainty. Just as, for divine knowledge by which God knows that a human being is capable of laughter to be certain, it is necessary that the human being really be capable of laughter; otherwise God’s knowledge would be false”⁴¹.

323. To make still clearer how far the Thomist school of Salamanca before Báñez was from the doctrine of physical predeterminations and predetermining divine decrees, it is useful to cite some other texts. Dominicus Soto says, in the common definition of a free cause (“a free cause is one which, all the requirements for acting being posited, can both act and not act”), that divine concurrence also belongs among those prerequisites⁴²; Medina holds the same, according to whom concurrence itself is in the power of freedom⁴³. Melchior Cano: “This opinion is partly pleasing, namely, in saying that concurrence does not necessitate us, but just as we use a habit when we will, so in a certain way we likewise use divine concurrence when we will”⁴⁴. “God concurs with me in such a way that it is within my power whether such concurrence is posited or removed; and in this consists the freedom of the will”⁴⁵. Mancio: “It is asked whether it is in a person’s power not to use special help. It seems not, for otherwise we could frustrate God.... The reply is that we should reason about special concurrence as we do about general concurrence. Just as it is in my hands to use or not use general concurrence, it is even in my power that God concur with me or not concur. Yet God would not be frustrated, since he gives concurrence only to one whom he knows will use it. The same must be said of special concurrence. Thus, if God moves you to contrition, you grieve over your sins; and God’s concurring in the grief comes before your grieving. Nevertheless, it is in your power to be moved or not to be moved by God, and that God concur with you or not”⁴⁶.

324. DOMINICUS BÁÑEZ O. P. notes that St. Thomas teaches two things “that present great difficulty, and on which all theologians do not agree. The first is: All things that are, have been, or will ever be are already present to God in his eternity.... The second is: The infallibility and certainty of divine knowledge concerning future contingents is measured by the fact that God knows the future contingents themselves in themselves and outside their causes, insofar as they are present to him in eternity”⁴⁷.

325. He gives the third conclusion: “God knows future contingents in their causes, but in causes that are determined and complete. The first part of the conclusion is explicitly taught by St. Thomas in the text, when he says: ‘God knows contingents not only in their causes,’ etc. It is also proved by reason: God knows all things, even contingents, according to every mode they have; therefore he knows contingents according to the mode they have in their causes. Confirmation: God knows that the Antichrist does not exist now and will exist later; therefore he knows that the Antichrist now has being in his causes. The second part of the conclusion—that God knows contingents in determined, complete, and unimpeded causes—is inferred from the preceding conclusion (namely, if he knew them in undetermined and impedible causes, his knowledge would be conjectural, fallible, and uncertain, which is incompatible with God). It is also proved as follows: God knows future contingents in their particular causes, insofar as those particular causes are subject to the determination and disposition of divine knowledge and will, which is the first cause. But the particular causes of future contingents, insofar as they are subject to the determination and disposition of divine knowledge and will, are determined, complete, and unimpeded in producing their contingent effects. Therefore God knows future contingents insofar as they are in determined and unimpeded causes. The minor is most certain, and the major is proved as follows: God knows all created causes through his essence, insofar as it is the first cause that gives being, power, and determination to all causes; therefore...”⁴⁸.

326. Fourth conclusion: “The infallibility and certainty of divine knowledge concerning future contingents is measured not only by the fact that they are known by God as present in eternity, but also by the fact that they are known in their causes in the sense explained in the preceding conclusion. Thus, even if God did not know future contingents as present in his eternity but only in their causes, his knowledge would be certain and infallible. I understand this conclusion, like the preceding one, to concern all future contingents, including those that depend on the will alone. Thus ‘contingent’ here includes the free. The conclusion is proved, first, because it follows most clearly from the second part of the preceding conclusion. For knowledge acquired through determined and complete causes is certain and infallible; but God knows contingents through determined and complete causes, as we said in the preceding conclusion; therefore.... It is also proved as follows: God knows future contingents through their reasons, which are in God—that is, through their proper ideas, which in God are the ideas of future contingents. But an idea represents certainly and infallibly by way of an exemplar and efficient cause, as will be said in the next question 15 art. 3; therefore, through the idea as a cause, God has infallible knowledge of a future contingent. The major is asserted by St. Thomas in this article and explained by Caietanus in the second doubt of this article.”

327. Against this argument Báñez argues from Scotus that an idea represents naturally and necessarily; therefore it represents only what belongs to things naturally and necessarily, not contingent and accidental predicates. Báñez replies: “An idea taken completely and fully is not only a form that is a principle of knowing, but also a principle of acting and, as will be said in the next question, article 3, a principle by way of an exemplary cause. From this it follows that an idea, insofar as it is a principle of acting, intrinsically includes the free determination of the divine will. For it cannot be a principle of acting unless the will is joined to it, and then only with respect to those effects that God’s free will decreed from eternity to produce in time. Thus an idea is representative by way of an exemplary cause of future contingents insofar as it represents the divine essence as the will of God—or, to speak more precisely, as the form known by the divine intellect in the mode of God’s will. For when God knows his essence as will, he knows every determination and disposition of the divine will concerning the creatures to be produced. It follows that, with respect to creatures’ actual existence and other contingent predicates, an idea does not represent naturally and necessarily, speaking absolutely, but only in the composite sense, that is, given the free determination of the divine will concerning those created effects”⁴⁹.

328. But if it is sufficient for certain and infallible knowledge to know future contingents in their causes, “why, then, does St. Thomas in this article make such an anxious effort to explain that God knows future contingents insofar as they are present to him in eternity? The reply is that in this article St. Thomas wished to explain fundamentally every way in which we can preserve the infallibility of divine knowledge concerning future contingents. Indeed, if we once admit that future contingents are present to God in eternity, it is very easy to understand how divine knowledge is altogether infallible and certain. A second reply is that in this article St. Thomas wished to show us that God has not only infallible and certain knowledge of future contingents but also intuitive knowledge. Thus St. Thomas teaches us that God knows future contingents not by the knowledge of simple intelligence or by abstractive cognition, but by the knowledge of vision and intuitive cognition.

329. This is the second argument (namely, against his own explanation of the infallible knowledge of future contingents). It follows at least from those conclusions and their proofs that God cannot have certain knowledge in their causes of sins that depend solely on the free will of the agent. The inference is proved as follows: the divine will does not determine the created will to sin, but leaves it indifferent and free; but a certain knowledge of a future effect cannot be had through an indifferent and undetermined cause; therefore.... The inference is denied in reply. In answer to the proof, I say first that future evil of sin is known by God through the idea of the good to which it is opposed. Second, I say that the created will will infallibly fail with respect to any matter of virtue unless it is effectively determined by the divine will to act well. Consequently, from knowing that his will has not determined the created will to act well in, for example, the matter of temperance, God knows evidently that the created will will sin and fail in the matter of that virtue. Thus God knows other future contingents in their causes insofar as they are determined by the first cause; but he knows future evil of sin in its cause insofar as it is not determined by the first cause to act well”⁵⁰.

330. Concerning the concurrence of the first cause, he says: “The concurrence of the first cause is so effective in determining secondary causes that at the same time it is gentle, conforming itself to the natures of secondary causes, so that with a necessary cause it produces necessity, and with a contingent cause, contingency. There are two reasons for this. First, God is the author of all nature. Therefore he can move any nature according to its mode, so that both the efficacy of the first cause and the secondary cause’s proper mode of acting are preserved at once. The second reason is the one St. Thomas gives below, q. 19 art. 8, namely, the supreme efficacy of the first cause, which can produce the effect it intends not only with respect to its substance, but also with respect to every mode in which it wills to produce it, whether necessarily or contingently. Thus the first cause determines my will to read not just in any manner, but to read freely. It follows that, in the composite sense, it is just as necessary that I now read freely as that I read at all. For both fall under the most efficacious determination of the first cause, which determines my will to will to read freely. This doctrine is drawn from the cited article 8, ad 2.... Although we cannot fully explain a priori how the concurrence of the first cause is effective and necessary while at the same time conforming to the nature of a contingent and free cause, we know a posteriori with absolute certainty that it is so. For if the concurrence of the first cause were not effective in determining all secondary causes, no secondary cause would produce its effect, since no secondary cause can act unless it is effectively determined by the first. But if the concurrence of the first cause were effective in such a way that it did not accommodate itself to the natures of lower causes, the concurrence of the first cause would remove all freedom and contingency from secondary causes. Therefore let us say what is written in Wis. 8: God reaches mightily from end to end and orders all things sweetly”⁵¹.

331. In Caietanus’s doctrine he “dislikes the claim that the power of the first cause is modified by the second cause but not impeded. I consider this false if it is understood of the most universal first cause, such as the divine will. On the contrary, the divine will modifies all things, since it is the most universal and efficacious cause of anything whatever, both with respect to its becoming and its being and its mode.... It would posit the greatest imperfection in God to claim that, just as the very same concurrence of the sun produces distinct effects because it is modified by distinct lower causes, so the concurrence of the divine will remains indifferent on its own part, but is modified and determined to distinct effects by distinct lower causes”⁵².

This doctrine of Báñez becomes common among theologians of the Order of Preachers, and from this time onward they regard it as the doctrine of St. Thomas⁵³.

332. Scotus’s disciples present their master’s doctrine in full; for example, Nicolaus de Orbellis († ca. 1475)⁵⁴, Nicolaus de Niisse († 1509)⁵⁵, and Petrus Tartaretus (late fifteenth century). To the difficulty of how freedom remains when the determination of my will necessarily follows the determination of the divine will, he replies: “Just as God willed me to read after lunch purely contingently, so I will to read after lunch purely contingently”⁵⁶. Thus he reduces the matter to the claim that the divine will’s determination is contingent. Similarly, Franciscus Lychetus († 1520), in response to a difficulty arising from a sinful act, eventually says: “I could say one thing: although the divine will is the most universal cause of all things and simply the first, nevertheless, with respect to the created will (even though with respect to other causes it is called the first cause and the first determiner of the secondary cause, so that a secondary natural cause acts because the divine will has so determined it to act), by reason of its supreme freedom it is not the first determiner of the created will to act. Rather, from its sheer contingency, so that the created will might be perfectly preserved, it has always determined to cooperate with the created will in such a way that it left it in its freedom, so that it can determine itself to act. Thus I would not consider it objectionable that in a certain way the created will determined itself first—understanding ‘prior’ in this way: that the divine will waits for it throughout any length of time on the way, not meaning that the creature acts in the first instant A and the divine will begins to act later, in the second instant B”⁵⁷.

333. IOANNES ANTONIUS DELPHINUS O. F. M. († 1560) proposes a doctrine according to which the free determinations of the created will are not second acts, but propensities and inclinations of the wills themselves toward willing or not willing something; these are not distinct from the will itself. The second act follows this free determination. He explains God’s foreknowledge and its harmony with created freedom as follows. The divine will “first determines that human wills will exist and that it will move them, as first cause, to certain operations. Second, the divine intellect fully understands that these wills will exist and will be moved by the first cause, namely, God. Third, in the divine essence, which is an infinite mirror representing all things, it sees the determinations of those wills, whether consent or dissent; sometimes⁵⁸ these are not at all distinct from the wills themselves. Fourth, in accordance with those acts of consent or dissent, the divine will clearly and deliberately determines whether it will cooperate with the human wills, moved by itself and accordingly consenting or dissenting to its motion, in bringing about and producing certain operations, or whether it will not cooperate. Fifth, the divine intellect infallibly comprehends all those deliberate operations”⁵⁹. This doctrine about the nature of free determination is already found in Aegidius Romanus⁶⁰; Gregory of Valencia defended the same doctrine for a time⁶¹, and more recently it is found in De San and others⁶².

334. After Molina had proposed his doctrine, many Scotists thought it agreed with Scotus’s own mind, and that he should be understood as speaking not of absolute but of conditional divine decrees⁶³.

Finally, in the seventeenth century, some Scotists thought that Scotus should be understood as speaking neither of predetermining divine decrees nor of decrees that follow a conditionally foreseen determination of created freedom, but rather of co-determining decrees that are absolute and efficacious. The author of this explanation seems to have been Ioannes de Trapani⁶⁴; Vulpes and Mastrius followed him.

335. MOLINA⁶⁵ employs, to explain certain divine knowledge of absolutely future free acts, the knowledge God has of conditionally future free acts: God knows what a free cause would do in a certain order; he freely decrees to create that order; in this determination of his will lies the principle of certain knowledge of the absolutely future free act.

For this and the following thesis: PETRUS LOMBARDUS, l. 1 d. 38; S. TH., 1 q. 14 a. 13; MOLINA, Concordia, q. 14 a. 13 disp. 48-52; BÁÑEZ, in 1 q. 14 a. 13; q. 19 a. 8; SUÁREZ, Opusculum de scientia Dei futurorum contingentium (ed. Venet. 1741, tom. 10); RUIZ, disp. 23-80; BILLUART, diss. 6 a. 3; 4; 6; diss. 8 a. 3-5; FRANZELIN, thes. 43-46; KLEUTGEN, nr. 530-552; DE SAN, nr. 191-243; BILLOT, thes. 22; PESCH, nr. 235-241; prop. 37-41; MUNCUNILL, nr. 340-431; 452-494; VAN DER MEERSCH, nr. 397-425.

336. The thesis concerns acts that are absolutely future, not acts that are conditionally future. How the expression “God knows something in a decree” is to be understood was explained above (nr. 292). Several explanations of this question have been proposed; we examine three of them in the three parts of the thesis.

1. God does not know free acts in a cause immediately ready to act.

337. BELLARMINE: “The matter is exceedingly difficult and perhaps incomprehensible in this life: in what way God foreknows future things … Yet it seems probable to us that God sees future free actions only in the human will … Since God, then, perfectly knows all the inclinations and the whole disposition of our mind, and is not ignorant of all the things that may confront it in each deliberation, and finally has a clear view of what is more fitting and apt for moving a mind of such inclination and disposition, He infallibly infers which way the mind is going to incline. Perhaps this is what those mean who teach that God knows all future things, both free and necessary, both absolute and conditional, because He knows every truth and because all things that are in any way future are in some way true: for it is true to say ‘this will happen’ when it really is future.

“This opinion, I say, seems to coincide with ours. For truth and being are convertible; hence it is not true now that something is future unless it now has some being, namely, in its cause. But what is freely and contingently future does not have being in its cause unless there is some determination in the cause. And since, when the contingent cause itself is considered precisely as such, there is no determination in it, the Philosopher rightly said that there is no determinate truth about future contingents; for he looked only to the contingent cause itself. Yet if someone joins to the contingent or free cause all the things that may arise and impede it, and sees the inclinations and aptitudes both of the cause itself and of all the objects and circumstances—a thing only God can do—some determination will result; and on its account it will be true to say: ‘This will happen at such a time’” (De gratia et libero arbitrio, l. 4 c. 15).

338. On this opinion, either it is supposed that the free act is so far determined in that complex of causes that the act as a second act follows with the highest probability or with moral certainty, or it is supposed that it is metaphysically impossible for the act not to follow. If the first is supposed, it remains metaphysically possible that the act not follow, and hence error is possible. Moreover, thus explained, the opinion is insufficient: God would then know with absolute certainty only that the act proceeds from these causes with probability or moral certainty. But, given that the act will occur at some time, it is metaphysically impossible that it not occur, and God must know this truth as well. For just as the being an act has insofar as it is in its causes is not identical with the being it has insofar as it is outside its causes, so the truth of an act insofar as it is in its causes is not identical with the truth it has insofar as it is outside its causes. But if the other is supposed, namely, that the act is contained in the complex of causes in such a way that it is metaphysically impossible for the act not to follow, then the act would already be determined in its causes, and it is no longer intelligible how it could still be free and undetermined before it exists outside its causes.

In brief: this opinion is ruled out because a contingent thing, insofar as it is in its causes, is not subject to certain knowledge, since it is not determinately true (I, q. 14, a. 13).

On Bellarmine's view, see also I. M. HELLIN, Determinacion negativa in san R. Bellarmino. Estudios Eclesiasticos 10 (1931) 161-199.

2. God does not know absolutely future free acts in a decree of physical predetermination.

339. BILLUART, Tractatus de Deo, diss. 6 a. 4: “In what means does God know absolute, contingent, and free future things?” He answers (§ 2): “I say: God knows absolute, contingent, and free future things in His decree determining their futurition, or in His essence determined by such a decree.” Diss. 8, a. 2: “From eternity God preordained all our free actions, not only virtually and mediately, by decreeing to provide concurrence for them, but immediately in themselves. Yet He did so in different ways for good and evil actions: positively as regards their being and goodness in the case of good actions, positively as regards their being but permissively as regards their evil in the case of evil actions.” Article 3: “From where is the infallible efficacy of the divine decrees concerning our free acts to be derived?” He answers: “The infallible efficacy of the divine decrees concerning our free acts, especially good ones, comes from God's most powerful will and His supreme dominion over human wills, not from foreseen consent; or, as others say, the divine decrees concerning our free acts are efficacious of themselves and intrinsically, not indifferent in themselves.”

340. GOUDIN describes the physical motion of a creature corresponding to this divine decree as follows¹: “The Thomists think more profoundly about God and divine motion, teaching, with all antiquity, the foremost theologians and philosophers, and the principal academies of the world, that God not only cooperates with creatures and stirs free causes to act well by moral motions, but also physically, actively, and by a prior motion applies and moves all agents to each and every one of their actions. Thus, just as the heart breathes life, motion, and power into all the limbs, and when its influence is withdrawn all the faculties of life fall into paralysis, so divine providence breathes strength and efficacy into the whole world and all its active causes, applying their active powers by a certain prior, physical, and intrinsic impulse. If God withdrew it, all those powers would grow feeble, so that in the Church's sacred hymns He is rightly called Rerum tenax vigor [the steadfast strength of things]. This impulse they call physical premotion: motion, because all creatures are moved by it to act; prior, because it naturally precedes all actions; and physical, because it does not consist in those exercises and persuasions by which a human being can move another human being, or good angels can inwardly stir their charges to virtue, but in supplying an interior power and actively applying it, as will become clearer below. It is also customarily called physical predetermination, because by it the creature's active power is reduced from indifference and inactivity to a determinate act.” “Physical premotion² is an influx of the first cause received not immediately in effects but in secondary causes, by which God inspires them with actual efficacy and moves and applies them—not merely objectively and morally, by attracting and persuading, but also physically and actively, by inclining, applying, and determining them inwardly—to their ultimate activity, which is immediately followed by action. Hence it is called physical motion. But since the motion and application of an active power to act is prior in nature to the action itself, just as every road is prior to its terminus and every cause to its effect, that motion is called prior motion or premotion … By that influx God actively and properly makes the creature act, and makes it dependent on Himself—not as a co-cause on a co-cause, but as a secondary agent on the first agent, and as a subordinate and inferior cause on a superior cause by which it is applied and determined, and to which it therefore owes not only its effect but also its own cooperation in producing the effect.” “God³ not only gave and preserves the active powers of secondary causes and concurs simultaneously with them, but also applies them to act by a prior and physical application, rightly called physical premotion or physical predetermination.” When this physical predetermination moves and applies the will to supernatural acts, it is called intrinsically efficacious grace.

341. The doctrine can be stated as follows. The being and operation of creatures depend essentially on God, the first being and the first and most universal cause. Their power comes from Him and is preserved by Him, and He applies it to act; without this application, a creature's action is impossible. God moves all causes, necessary and free, to their second act. This motion is physical predetermination: pre-determination because it precedes the creature's own determination in nature and causality; pre-determination because it moves to a wholly determinate act (including free causes); physical predetermination because its causality is physical, not moral. This physical predetermination, received in the acting subject, is a created entity that gives the faculty the ultimate completion of its first act⁴; it is a virtuous motion⁵, an application of a power to act. Once this kind of physical predetermination to a free act is posited, the will infallibly performs that free act. It is metaphysically repugnant for the will not to act, not to perform this determinate act, or not to perform it freely; without physical predetermination, it is metaphysically repugnant for the will to act. This metaphysical repugnance arises from the internal nature of physical predetermination itself.

It is clear that, in a will predeterminated in this way, the second act is knowable with metaphysical certainty; the same holds for God's decree to predetermine a created will in this way. This, then, is the sense in which God is said to know absolutely future free acts in a decree of physical predetermination: by this decree God grounds the determinate truth of an absolutely future free act.

342. If we deny this doctrine, we do not deny it because it says that God knows a free act in His eternal decree, or that the truth of an act as absolutely future is grounded in the divine decree; we affirm that in the thesis's third part. Rather, we deny that such acts are known in a decree of physical predetermination, and specifically in physical predetermination as described above⁶.

343. Argument 1. God does not know an absolutely future free act in a decree of physical predetermination if that predetermination removes freedom. But it does so; therefore.

Proof of the minor. A free faculty as such is not determined to one thing in the antecedent sign prior to its own determination⁷; but by physical predetermination the will is determined to one thing in the antecedent sign prior to its own determination and independently of it; therefore it does not remain free.

Proof of the minor. The will is determined to one thing because this is a pre-determination; this determination precedes the creature's determination in nature and causality because it is a pre-determination; whether the free creature receives this or that physical predetermination, or any at all, does not depend on the creature.

It is confirmed by the authority of ST THOMAS. In the doctrine of physical predetermination, a free act is determinate and knowable as true in the antecedent sign before its futurition⁸, namely, in the physical predetermination or its decree, whose effect is the creature's free determination. But according to St Thomas, a contingent thing is not subject to any cognition with certainty unless it already exists in act (I, q. 14, a. 13); therefore that doctrine conflicts with St Thomas's authority.

344. But the argument assumes something false: physical predetermination is not only to the substance of the act, but also to its mode, namely, that the act be performed freely. Yet once predetermination to a free act is posited, it is metaphysically repugnant for the act not to be performed freely. Therefore physical predetermination not only fails to destroy freedom but precisely establishes it. ST THOMAS, I, q. 19, a. 8: “Since, therefore, the divine will is most efficacious, it follows not only that the things God wills to happen do happen, but also that they happen in the way in which God wills them to happen. Now God wills some things to happen necessarily and others contingently, so that there may be order among things for the completion of the universe.” On the second objection: “From the very fact that nothing resists the divine will, it follows that not only do the things God wills to happen happen, but that the things He wills to happen contingently or necessarily do so.”

I answer. It is affirmed in this doctrine, granted; for the defenders of this opinion in no way intend to deny freedom. That it can be established logically, I deny. For to be undetermined and at the same time determined in the antecedent sign before one's own determination seems to involve a contradiction. The created will would be undetermined in the antecedent sign before its own determination because it is free, yet determined in that same sign because of physical predetermination. Nor does it help to appeal in this matter to God's infinite power, since not even God can do what is impossible.

But the words of ST THOMAS quoted above are entirely true. He adds to the first words quoted: “And therefore He has fitted necessary causes, which cannot fail, to some effects, from which effects necessarily follow; but He has fitted contingent and fallible causes to others, from which effects follow contingently.” Hence only this follows: if God wills an act to be performed freely, He does not physically predetermine that act.

345. Yet even if we do not positively understand how freedom remains, we should not immediately say that it does not remain. We likewise do not deny God's immutability or His freedom, even though we do not positively understand how the two are compatible. BILLUART: “You will reply: Even if these points, especially that celebrated principle of St Thomas—that God's predefinition and premotion are not only to the substance of the act but also to its mode—show that freedom is compatible with this predefinition and premotion, efficacious of itself⁹, the manner in which we can understand this agreement is still not sufficiently explained. I answer: It is a mystery. Although it can be known with certainty that mysteries exist, it is not easy to explain how they exist” (diss. 8, a. 4, § 2, reply to the sixth objection).

I answer. Being determined and being undetermined at the same time seems more like a contradiction than a mystery. Besides, physical predetermination to free acts has in no way been proved, nor can it be proved. It is indeed true, and the Bañezians commonly prove this at length, that the human heart is in God's hand; that God can turn a person's will in whatever direction He wills; that God can move a person so that he infallibly chooses freely as God wills; that God's will is most efficacious; and that no one resists God's will. The Molinists readily grant all these points. But none of them proves that God moves the will to a free act by physical predetermination.

346. But just as it was said earlier about God's foreknowledge, that it does not impede freedom, so too one can say this about physical predetermination and the divine decree: there is a consequent, not antecedent, necessity, or a necessity of the consequence, not of the consequent; only antecedent necessity, or necessity of the consequent, removes freedom.

I answer. These things could be said if the decree of predetermination and predetermination itself already presupposed the creature's free determination, as foreknowledge presupposes it. But predetermination and its decree do not presuppose this determination; thus there is antecedent necessity and necessity of the consequent, which remove freedom itself.

Hence the distinction between the composite and divided senses cannot be applied in this doctrine to save freedom. Necessity in the composite sense with something that logically presupposes the creature's own determination does not destroy freedom, because it is consequent necessity. For example, in the composite sense with my own choice I cannot fail to choose; or in the composite sense with God's knowledge I cannot fail to choose. The first does not destroy freedom but is its very exercise; the second does not destroy it because it presupposes the creature's free determination. But necessity in the composite sense with something that does not presuppose one's own determination and is prior in nature to one's own determination is antecedent necessity, which destroys freedom.

347. But the Bañezians posit an antecedent supposition that causes the act and its mode (freedom). Such an antecedent supposition, which is the cause and origin of freedom, no more destroys freedom than the supposition of the act itself, which is the effect and sign of freedom¹⁰.

I answer. If supposition means physical predetermination or its decree (as it does for GONET, l. c.), there is antecedent necessity, which destroys freedom. The positing of the free act itself does not destroy freedom, because it is precisely the exercise of free choice. But the supposition that is physical predetermination is indeed said to be the cause of freedom; in fact, it destroys freedom. For it is (1) a supposition independent of the creature's use of free choice; (2) in the antecedent sign before the creature's choice, it determines the creature to one thing; and (3) once this supposition is posited, the act cannot fail to follow and no other act can follow. Before its futurition the act is already determined; there is antecedent necessity, and freedom is absent.

348. Argument 2. A particular difficulty in the Bañezian doctrine arises in the foreknowledge of a sinful act.

BILLUART (diss. 8, a. 5): “I say, first, that no evil as such, whether of nature, guilt, or punishment, is willed or caused directly and of itself by God … I say, second, that God wills and causes evil of nature and of punishment indirectly and accidentally, namely, on account of the good upon which it follows, and hence He can be called its author. But God in no way wills or causes the evil of guilt, even accidentally; He only permits it. Hence in no sense can He be called its author … The evil of guilt is a defect and proceeds from a defective principle. But God is not, and cannot be, a defective principle, since He is most perfect act … Yet because in sin, an accidental concrete, there are two things—an act and a defect, being and deformity or evil—and since God is not the cause of the evil, as was just said, the question now is how He relates to the act. The act is sometimes called the material of sin. This material can be taken in two ways: materially, for the physical entity itself considered precisely as such, or formally, for the entity itself as deprived of deformity. Therefore, when theologians say that the material of sin is caused by God, they mean the material taken materially, not formally. There are three opinions about the question proposed. The first holds that God does not positively concur in the act of sin, but only permissively; the second, that He concurs positively by simultaneous concurrence; the third, that He concurs by prior and predetermining concurrence, and thus predefines it from eternity. To resolve this, I say, third, that the first opinion must be rejected altogether; the second does not seem admissible, and only the third does … It remains, then, to adopt the third opinion: namely, that God physically premoves to the entity of sin and defined by a positive and effective decree that He would thus bring it about.”

After resolving the objections, he continues: “It is asked in what means God knows future sins. I already answered above, in the preceding dissertation, a. 4, reply to the second instance of the third objection, that God knows future sins in a twofold decree, permissive and effective. Since in sin there is something from God, namely, the act or effect, and something from man, namely, the defect, God does not see it in the effective decree alone, as He does a good act that is wholly from God; rather, He sees it in a decree partly permissive and partly effective, by which He decrees not to prevent the defect on the part of the created will and to move it according to this defective disposition.” Compare Scotus's explanation below, nr. 409; BÁÑEZ, nr. 329.

349. God, then, predetermines—or decrees from eternity to predetermine—the creature to a determinate act in which the creature will fail. Since this failure of the creature is a privation, it does not require predetermination; God permits this failure. But a human being will infallibly fail if he does not have predetermination to a good act. If God decrees to give a person predetermination to the material of sin¹¹, to the entity of the act, and at the same time to permit the formal aspect of sin, its evil (or not to give predetermination to a good act), then a sinful act, formal sin, infallibly follows. Thus, in the effective decree physically to predetermine to this act, God knows the entity of the sin; in the permissive decree of the failure (or of not giving predetermination to the good), He knows the evil.

According to this doctrine, then, God predetermines a person to the material aspect of some formal sin in such a way that the person can neither omit the act nor perform it without formal sin; in other words, so that this person infallibly commits formal sin. Hence the argument is as follows:

350. God predetermines a creature in this way either antecedently or consequently to some free evil will of the creature. If antecedently, this seems contrary to God's holiness; if consequently, the system itself is abandoned. Therefore this doctrine does not explain the foreknowledge of sin.

Proof of the minor. If antecedently, this seems contrary to God's holiness. For (1) to predetermine a creature independently of its evil will in such a way that it cannot avoid formal sin seems not merely to permit formal sin but to will it; for to permit formal sin in another presupposes that other's evil will. (2) To move someone, independently of his evil will, to desire something that under these circumstances cannot be desired without formal sin is morally wrong. Therefore, under these conditions, predetermining someone to the material of sin seems morally wrong.

If consequently to a foreseen free evil will, then it must already be granted that God certainly foreknew this evil will without a decree of physical predetermination; the system is abandoned.

351. BILLUART (l. c.): “You will object first: He is rightly considered the author and cause of sin who, by a prior concurrence efficacious of itself and infallible, moves and determines to the act of sin. But according to this third opinion God moves and determines to the act of sin by a prior concurrence efficacious of itself and infallible. Therefore … (The first reply is a retortion: the same applies to the opposing opinion. On this retortion, see below, nr. 356.) I answer, second, that although God physically premoves to the act of sin, He does not reach its evil but abstracts from it, because He premoves to the act of sin by a general motion in the physical order, as the first efficient principle; consequently He reaches only what in it is an effect and physical entity. But evil is not some being, nor does it belong to the physical order; rather, it is a defect, a privation, indeed a mere nothing, and consequently does not arise from a physically efficient principle but from a morally defective one, namely, the created will insofar as it is from nothing. This is illustrated by various examples. Thus the soul, by moving and premoving a crooked leg, causes the whole motion, but is not the cause of the defect of limping, which is attributed solely to the defect or crookedness of the leg.”

It should be said that the example illustrates the opposite more aptly. For one who moves a leg, which is by itself indifferent to walking straight or limping, in such a way that it limps is considered not merely to permit the limp but to will it. But one who moves a leg that is already crooked and can only limp need not will the limp, but can permit it. Similarly, if God moves a created will that is still indifferent, and can perform a free act in accord with or contrary to the order, physically in such a way toward a determinate act that it cannot perform this act without formal evil, He seems not merely to permit the evil but to will it. But if God moves a will that is already “crooked” antecedently to the divine motion, one could say that He permits the evil.

352. A little later BILLUART further explains that “God, as the first and universal principle of all being and good, moves the created will to an act that is being and good; but because the will of itself is in an improper disposition and deviates from the order of the first mover, it distorts His motion¹², whence an inordinate action follows. Thus God, as the efficient principle in the physical order, is prior in good things, while the created will, as the defective principle in the moral order, is prior in evil things. Hence some of our people have rightly observed that although the decree by which God determined from eternity to concur in the sinful acts of both angels and human beings, and the motion by which He moves them to this in time, may in a certain sense be called predefinition and predetermination, because He predefines the entity of the act and premoves to it, yet in another sense they may be called postdefinition and postdetermination, because God from eternity did not predefine the entity of the act to which evil is joined, nor premove to it in time, unless the created will first deviates from the order of the first agent and is in an improper disposition to receive the divine motion, from which an inordinate action follows—an action that otherwise would have been good and orderly.”

Therefore, because the created will first deviates and is in an improper disposition, God decreed to predetermine that will to the entity of the act to which evil is joined; if the will had not deviated first, God would not have so decreed. Hence the questions arise: Does God know this deviation of the created will in the antecedent sign before His decree? Is this deviation of the will by an act of will or without an act? And if it is by an act of will, did it have physical predetermination to that act? But if not by an act of will, whence comes that deviation and indisposition of the will? Does the system hold together?

353. BILLUART: “If you ask what this improper indisposition is, by which the will does not receive divine motion to a perfect act but to an imperfect one (on II Sent., dist. 37, q. 2, a. 1, reply to the second objection), I answer that, generally speaking, it is the defectibility of the created will insofar as it is from nothing. It has this from itself, not from God … This defectibility is increased in fallen nature by the very corruption of nature …”

But defectibility is not yet a deviation from the order of the first agent; it signifies only the possibility of deviation. Whence, then, does the deviation come? Was it also present in our first parents in the state of grace before the first sin, and in the angels?

354. BILLUART: “Third objection: It seems harsh and foreign to divine goodness and justice that God should from eternity define and in time premove a man balanced between a good and an evil action toward the evil rather than the good, and thus punish him eternally for sin. Therefore … I answer, second: I deny the assumption of the antecedent. The Thomists have never said or dreamed that God moves a man balanced between a good and an evil action toward the evil rather than the good. On the contrary, they have consistently said and say that it arises from the creature that he is determined rather to an action joined to evil than to its opposite, and that God never determines to the material of sin unless the creature has first in some way determined itself to the formal aspect; for God, as universal provider, moves each thing according to its need and disposition. Consequently, He moves to an evil action only a will that is badly disposed of itself and demands to be moved in this way, so that the improper disposition of the will objectively determines God to move to an evil act.”

Therefore, the creature whom God predetermines to the material of sin was not balanced between a good and an evil action, but is badly disposed and demands such predetermination; for it first determined itself in some way to the formal aspect of sin. The questions already raised recur: Does God know the evil disposition, and how does He know it? How did the creature determine itself? By an act, or without an act, and so on? Does the system hold together?

355. At the end of his answer to the second objection, BILLUART says: “If you say that an acting free agent cannot be moved physically unless it is also moved morally and by the presentation of an object, otherwise it would act without knowledge and necessarily, I answer: that is so. But in evil acts this moral motion, because it is defective, is not from God but from the defective cause, namely, either the devil, a human being, or one's own concupiscence, although God effects what has being in it. The mode of moral motion is distinguished from the causation of the entity as such. Once that defective moral motion is posited, and some inconsideration or inadvertence on the recipient's part intervenes, God's physical influx into the will itself begins, toward what has being in its act.”

Is this inconsideration or inadvertence necessary or free? Is it in some way culpable, or is it without any fault on the creature's part? Apply this to human beings or angels before sin. Is it by an act or without an act? Is it by physical predetermination or without it? Does the system hold together?

356. A common reply to our argument is retortion, namely, that the same difficulty occurs in every doctrine that attributes to God concurrence in the act of sin and a decree of such concurrence. But the retortion does not hold. The difficulty in the Bañezian doctrine does not arise from God's concurring in the act of sin at all, but from physical predetermination, efficacious of itself, by which the creature is already determined to one thing in the antecedent sign before its own determination, and from the absolute decree of this predetermination. The concurrence taught by the Molinists, however, is not by its nature a predetermination to one thing, and their absolute decree to actualize the determinate present order presupposes knowledge of conditionally future things. Therefore there is an essential difference precisely in those points that are the foundation of our argument.

3. God knows absolutely future free acts, given His knowledge of conditionally future free acts, in a decree to actualize the conditions.

357. MOLINA¹³: “According to what we explained in the preceding disputation's first conclusion¹⁴, we must say that through the divine ideas, or the divine essence known as the primary object, all contingent combinations are naturally represented with certainty to God, who comprehends both his own essence and each thing contained in it infinitely more perfectly than in itself in a most profound and eminent way, before every act and free determination of the divine will—not only according to possible being, but also according to non-absolute future being, under the condition and hypothesis that God establishes this or that order of things and causes, with these or those circumstances, by creation. But when the free determination of the will is added—not a determination by which it determines created free choice to one side of the contradiction (as Scotus and others hold), but one by which, leaving that free choice free and wholly indifferent to reach out its hand in whichever direction it wills, it determines to create this or that order of things, causes, and circumstances, in which these or those free causes exist—He knows all contingent combinations with certainty according to absolute and simple futurity, without any longer having a hypothesis or condition. Thus we differ from Scotus because we think that the reason God knows with certainty which side of the contradiction will be future in each of the contingent combinations that depend on created free choice is not a determination of the divine will by which He bends and determines created free choice to one side or the other. Rather, it is the free determination by which He decides to create free choice in this or that order of things and circumstances. Nor do we think this determination alone is a sufficient reason for His knowing with certainty which side of the contradiction will be future in each of these combinations. The reason is this together with His comprehension in His essence of every created free choice through natural knowledge. By this comprehension, before the determination of His will, He knows with certainty what such free choice will do by its own freedom, on the hypothesis and condition that He creates it and places it in that order of things, although it can, if it wills, do the opposite. And if it were going to do so, as it can, God would by that same knowledge and comprehension of free choice in His essence have known this, and not what He in fact knows the free choice will do. Thus, since positive contingent combinations that depend on free choice cannot exist in the nature of things unless free choice is created, God's knowing absolutely and without a hypothesis that they will be future depends on the free determination of His will by which He decides to create free choice at such and such a time, in such and such an order of things and circumstances. But since free choice, created and established in that way in that order of things, remains free to incline to one side or the other, unless God by the loftiness, excellence, and perfection of His natural knowledge, through which He comprehends all things in His essence in a most eminent way, penetrated it so as to see which way it would incline by its innate freedom, while it could, if it willed, incline to the opposite—and if it were going to do so, as it can, God would see that—He would not know determinately which side of the contradiction would be future in such contingent combinations. Therefore both things are necessary for God to know this with certainty, and both belong to Him by His perfection, which is not only infinite and immense but also unlimited in every respect. By reason of this perfection, just as it falls under His omnipotence to be able to make creatures endowed with free choice and masters of their acts, as we perceive in ourselves by experience, so it also falls under His immense and in every respect unlimited knowledge, by which He comprehends in a most lofty and eminent way whatever falls under His omnipotence, to penetrate created free choice in such a way that He surely discerns and sees which way it will incline by its innate freedom.”

“The knowledge by which God knows absolutely, without any hypothesis, what will in fact be future through created free choice is always free in God and depends on the free determination of His will, by which He decides to create such free choice in this or that order of things” (Disp. 52; pag. 341).

358. Explanation and argument. The doctrine is this: God knows what the creature would choose under these or those circumstances, as was proved positively and independently of any particular theological opinion in thesis 8. God freely decrees to actualize these or those circumstances. By that very fact, it is no longer merely true that “Peter would act in this way,” but that “Peter will act in this way.” The truth of an absolutely future act as absolutely future and actual is grounded in this divine decree; in other words, God knows this truth in this decree. In this way the matters requiring explanation are reconciled: there is certain and infallible knowledge of an absolutely future free act; created freedom is truly preserved, since the explanation rests on the fact that conditionally future free acts are known, and nothing is present that determines the will to one thing in the antecedent sign before its own determination; God's perfect dominion and causality are preserved, since the entire actual order, in all its actuality and everything realized in it, depends on God's free decree, and God cooperates in every action of creatures, so that nothing having being—not even the creature's own free determination—escapes God's universal causality.

359. Objections to this doctrine often arise because no attention is paid to God's absolute free decree, which the Molinists posit and on which the whole actuality of the present order is founded.

Other arguments commonly adduced to prove a divine decree concerning motion that is efficacious by its nature, intrinsically (physical predetermination), are invalid. Let one example suffice.

BILLUART (diss. 8, a. 3): “In Esther 13:9 and 11, Mardochai, praying to God to turn the heart of King Ahasuerus, hostile to the Jews, says: Lord, almighty King, all things are placed in Your power, and there is no one who can resist Your will if You have decreed to save Israel … You are Lord of all, and there is no one who can resist Your Majesty. And in ch. 14:12ff. Queen Esther prays thus: Lord, King of the gods and of all power … turn his heart to hatred of our enemy¹⁵. And in ch. 15:11 it is added: And God turned the king's spirit to gentleness. These words clearly refer the infallibility and efficacy of God's decree or will to His omnipotence, not to Ahasuerus's foreseen consent. Hence Augustine, considering these words in To Boniface 1, ch. 20, says: He turns and transfers the king's heart from indignation to gentleness by a most hidden and efficacious power.”

I answer. Therefore God's will is most efficacious, and God can bring about whatever He wills, including the free acts of creatures, as He wills: I grant. That God effects or can effect such free acts through a created being efficacious by its nature and intrinsically, such as physical predetermination: I deny. There is not even a hint of this in the passages, and the same must be said of the other passages. Nor does it follow, merely because God is said to work inwardly in a person's mind, will, or heart—a point the Molinists plainly grant—that God works by physically predetermining. This is precisely the question on which the resolution of the controversy depends.

In all arguments of this kind, whether from Sacred Scripture, the Fathers, or reason, one must always consider whether physical predetermination, as described above, is really proved. Hence the general reply to such objections is always: “God does this by physically predetermining”: I deny.

360. God knows not only absolutely future free acts but also conditionally future ones; it must therefore still be shown in what means He knows them. The points established in the third part of the preceding thesis do not depend on this “explanation” of ours, since they rest only on the fact that God certainly knows conditionally future free acts. That fact is not removed because we cannot explain it, or because our explanation may not seem acceptable.

What is meant by conditionally future free acts, see above, nr. 255;

in the antecedent sign is that which is prior by nature or in conception, on which something else depends, and which can be fully conceived without conceiving the other;

the futurition of an absolutely future free act is the future positing of the free act itself; the futurition of a conditionally future free act is the conditional positing of the act;

what to know in means, see above, nos. 292f. The thesis therefore means that the truth of a conditionally future free act is not determinately grounded in what is prior, by nature or logically, to the choice itself. The thesis's form is indeed negative, but its second part sets out the positive opinion.

361. 1. The opinion that BELLARMINE considers probable for the knowledge of absolutely future free acts—namely, that they are known in a cause immediately ready to act—is consequently applied to conditionally future free acts, and would amount to knowledge in a sign antecedent to their futurition.

362. 2. By analogy with their explanation of the truth of absolutely future free acts, the BAÑEZIANS posit divine decrees of physical predetermination for conditionally future acts, subjectively absolute but objectively conditional.

BILLUART, diss. 6, a. 6, § 10: “Since up to this point we have proved that God does not know conditional future things by middle knowledge before the decree, but in the decree itself, subjectively absolute and objectively conditional, which determines the conditional futurition of things; and since our opponents attack such decrees with all their strength and deny that they exist in God, it remains, to complete this famous controversy, to show with unanswerable arguments that they must be admitted … A decree in God, also called predefinition and predestination (taking predestination in a broad sense), is nothing other than a free volition or determination of the divine will, efficacious and infallible yet gentle, concerning future events. It is twofold: absolute and conditional. An absolute decree depends on no condition, either on the subject's part or the object's part, and is expressed absolutely by the verb ‘I will’; for example, I will create the world; I will save Peter. A conditional decree depends on some condition and is expressed under it. This, in turn, is twofold: conditional on the subject's part and conditional on the object's part.

“A decree conditional on the subject's part occurs when the person making the decree does not in fact have the will to do something but would have it if a certain condition were posited, as when I say: I would like to hunt if I were not a cleric; I would like to go to Rome if I did not have gout. Such a decree is therefore only a wish: nothing is actually decreed, but the decision is deferred to the future if the condition is posited. A decree conditional only on the object's part occurs when the person making the decree has an actual volition to do something, but execution is suspended until a certain condition is posited: I will give Titius a thousand florins if he marries my daughter. I will give Caius my horse if he calls on me tomorrow.

“No one denies that there are absolute decrees in God concerning future events … Moreover, it is certain that there are no decrees in God conditional on the subject's part, since they involve the imperfection of potentiality and suspension, which are repugnant to God. The question, then, concerns only subjectively absolute and objectively conditional decrees that determine the conditional futurition of things. I say: Decrees in God that are subjectively absolute and objectively conditional, determining the conditional futurition of things, must be admitted.”

Such a decree, then, could be rendered as follows: “I absolutely decree physically to predetermine Peter to this free act if the Gospel were preached to him,” that is, “if I willed to send him a preacher”; or: “I absolutely will this, if I were to will that.”

363. Argument 1. In the antecedent sign before its futurition, a free act is not yet determined and is not yet determinately true; therefore it is not yet determinately knowable (ST, I, q. 14, a. 13).

Argument 2. (Especially against the Bañezian opinion.) Since those decrees, subjectively absolute and objectively conditional, are decrees of physical predetermination, they do not leave true freedom; and when sins are at issue, they either seem contrary to God's holiness or cannot be maintained logically, as was shown in the preceding thesis. It should again be observed that these decrees are not to be rejected precisely because they are “decrees,” but because they are decrees of “physical predetermination.”

It is also rightly said that such decrees—subjectively absolute and objectively conditional, of the kind the Bañezians posit to support their opinion—are not found in Sacred Scripture. Although the Bañezians compare their decrees with those found in Sacred Scripture and consider them to be of the same kind, there is this difference: in the decrees found in Scripture, the condition at issue does not depend on God alone, nor does God make those decrees in order to know or be able to know what would happen if the condition were fulfilled. For example, Genesis 18:26 says that He would not destroy Sodom if fifty just men were found there. But the decrees asserted here by the Bañezians are conditional on a condition that depends on God alone, and God makes them so that in them He may know the conditionally future free act. But again, the principal reason for rejecting them is that they are decrees of physical predetermination.

364. How, then, is the matter to be conceived? A conditionally future free act is determinately true and has determinate truth, since it is determinately known by God¹. But it is not true, nor is it known, in the antecedent sign before its futurition, as has just been proved. Therefore it is true, and can be known, only in the futurition itself. As every truth must be grounded in God, so too must the truth of a conditionally future free act. Hence it must be shown how this truth, which is distinct from the truth of possibles, is grounded in God; by that very fact we learn (in accordance with what was said above, nos. 292f.) in what means God knows it. But its foundation is not God's essence simply, as it is the foundation of the truth of possibles; rather, it is God's essence together with a relation of reason to the conditionally future act. The truth of the conditionally future free act is grounded in God precisely through that by which its being conditionally future—its futurition—is grounded in God, namely, through God's concurrence conferred hypothetically. For a conditionally future free act, as an act conditionally future, is nothing other than divine concurrence conferred conditionally, considered in its term. By this hypothetical concurrence, or by God's hypothetical will to concur in this way, the being and truth of the conditionally future act are grounded in God; and in this conditionally conferred concurrence God knows the truth of the conditionally future free act. God's knowledge of this conditionally future free act—“If Peter were in these circumstances, he would do this”—can therefore be rendered as follows: “If I placed Peter in these circumstances, I would concur in this act.” Thus the truth of a conditionally future free act is grounded in God, not in something prior to the conditional positing of the act, but in something absolutely simultaneous with it, so that neither is freedom harmed nor is the creature independent of the first cause. As said above, the determinate truth itself of the conditionally future free act is not proved in this way; rather, on the supposition that it is true, it is shown how this determinate truth is grounded in God.

Objections

365. 1. A difficulty arises concerning that conferred concurrence and God's knowledge in that concurrence.

In the antecedent sign before that concurrence is conferred, God either knows the creature's determination or does not know it. If He knows it, the creature's determination would have to be presupposed in the antecedent sign before the divine concurrence, and the creature's essential dependence on the Creator in acting would be removed. If He does not know it, God concurs blindly, which is unworthy of God. Therefore the explanation is impossible.

I answer. As to the major: I grant that the disjunction is complete, and I choose the second member. As to the second member of the minor, I distinguish: God would concur blindly in some improper sense, namely, blindly in the same sense in which a human being blindly determines himself (for before performing an act even a human being neither knows nor can know which act he is going to perform): I grant. But I deny that anything unworthy of God follows from this, since in that sign the determination is not knowable. He would concur blindly in the proper sense, which would introduce a privation in God; I subdivide: if God concurred with the creature as one creature with another—namely, by cooperating extrinsically, contributing part of the effect, and cooperating in something that follows the creature's determination—I grant or pass over. If He concurs in a way essentially different, namely, by working intrinsically as the human being himself does, producing the whole act and precisely producing the choice itself, I deny or ask for proof. With the same distinction, I distinguish the consequence: the explanation would be impossible if God concurred with the creature as one creature with another: I grant or pass over. If He concurs in a way essentially different, and precisely different in those respects from which the need for prior knowledge in cooperating agents arises when one creature cooperates with another, I deny or ask for proof.

Since we form our concepts of dependence and cooperation according to the dependence and cooperation found among creatures, and know the creature's dependence on God and God's cooperation with the creature only by inference, we must think of God's cooperation with the creature by means of the concepts we form from creatures—that is, according to the mode of dependence and cooperation found among creatures. We then deny the imperfections proper to the cooperation of creatures, but even in this denial our concepts remain essentially the same. Among the imperfections to be denied in God's cooperation with a creature in a free act of will are these: in the cooperation of creatures, individual cooperating creatures never physically produce the whole effect, but only parts of the total effect; and there is never cooperation in physically producing the very determination of the will, but only in producing something that already presupposes it. Because of these imperfections in the cooperation of intelligent creatures, the total effect must be known beforehand. And because we think of God's cooperation with the creature according to the mode of such cooperation, the proposed difficulty must arise. But we know that this difficulty arises precisely from, and is grounded in, that imperfect mode of thought. Therefore it cannot be proved to be present objectively, and for this reason our explanation cannot be shown to be impossible. At the same time, we know that the “difficulty” remains and must remain as long as we have to think about God's cooperation by means of such concepts. It cannot be “solved” directly unless we immediately perceive the creature's dependence on God and God's cooperation with the creature in themselves. The proposed solution is nothing other than an application of what was said in nr. 118².

366. 2. Then the final answer is the same as the Bañezian one: it is a mystery. But if this must be admitted, the arguments brought against them in this and the preceding thesis no longer seem effective.

I answer. The parity between those “mysteries” must be denied. For the Bañezians are concerned with physical predetermination, a created entity received in a subject and prior by nature to the subject's determination. In that case, before its determination the subject would already be determined to one thing on the one hand and, because it is free, undetermined at the same time on the other. This does not seem to be a mystery but a contradiction: the same thing is affirmed and denied of the same thing in the same respect. In our explanation, however, the question is not about some created entity distinct from the creature's free act and prior to it by nature, but about God's very intrinsic cooperation in producing that whole act, which is the creature's free determination; moreover, it can be shown that the difficulty arises from our way of thinking. If the Bañezians merely affirmed that God, as first cause, cooperates intrinsically in the created will to produce a free act, that could be granted. But if they add that God acts by physically predetermining, it must be denied, because created freedom is not preserved.

367. 3. But in the doctrine proposed, although created freedom is preserved, divine dominion does not seem to be preserved sufficiently; for in the explanation given, it is the creature, not God, that determines what will be. But this seems contrary to God's supreme dominion; therefore.

I answer. As to the antecedent: that dominion of God which is established by revelation and reason is not preserved, I deny; the dominion some people have invented for themselves, I set aside.

As to the proof: I distinguish the major. The creature determines what is actual: I deny. What would be the case under certain conditions: I subdivide. Independently of God: I deny; with essential dependence on God: I grant. I contradict the minor: it is contrary to God's supreme dominion if the creature determines what is actual: I grant; what would be the case under certain conditions: I subdivide. If the creature determines this independently of God: I grant; if with essential dependence on God: I deny.

God's dominion must be conceived as it truly is, not as someone might imagine it. We know best what it truly is from the sources of revelation. In them, God's dominion never appears as requiring that the creature be determined by a physical created entity that, prior by nature to the creature's self-determination, determines it to one thing; on the contrary, revelation teaches the creature's freedom. Any conception of God's dominion that cannot be reconciled with the creature's freedom is therefore erroneous. So too would be erroneous any conception of God's dominion from which physical predetermination, efficacious by its nature or intrinsically, logically followed, since, as stated, it would not leave created freedom intact. God's dominion is greater than to need physical predetermination.

Hence it is not right to say that the Molinists do not proceed scientifically: in order to resolve a difficulty—namely, the difficulty concerning created freedom—they call evident principles into question, such as the principle of universal divine causality, of absolute independence, and the like. The Molinists do not call evident principles into question; rather, they say that those principles are conceived or applied incorrectly if physical predetermination logically follows from that conception or application. They say this not in order to resolve a difficulty, but because what is contained in the sources of revelation must be the theologian's foundation and norm. It is therefore certain that a “principle,” or an application of a principle, that does not agree with some revealed truth is false. But revelation establishes the reality of freedom with certainty. Hence physical predetermination cannot be admitted; hence the principle of God's absolute independence and universal causality, if conceived or applied so that physical predetermination logically follows, is either conceived falsely or applied falsely. This is the path followed by the Molinists, not to establish their own system, but to show that the Bañezian system cannot be admitted.

Rather, a methodological defect seems to underlie the system of Bañezianism. “Our opponents invent a priori some conception of God as supreme Lord and first free agent, with which the existence of created freedom conflicts; hence they commit a methodological error like that of the Occasionalists, who form a conception of God as first cause with which all created causality conflicts, or even of the Pantheists, who posit an idea of the absolute being that excludes the coexistence of contingent beings”³.

368. 4. The explanation given in this thesis of conditionally future free acts seems readily applicable to absolutely future free acts as well. Thus one would arrive at the system of con-determination (above, no. 334) for these acts, and the explanation proposed in the third part of the preceding thesis would not be needed.

I answer. If the only question here were how to reconcile divine foreknowledge with created freedom, perhaps one could say that. But divine providence is also at issue, and it necessarily requires that God already know in the antecedent sign before the absolute decree of this present order what would be future in such an order. Therefore the system of con-determination could be admitted if it presupposes and employs middle knowledge; but if it neither presupposes nor employs it, it is insufficient.