Scotus Academicus, Tomus secundus: De Deo Intelligente et Volente

It is certain, first. That God is endowed with infinite knowledge is abundantly clear from what has been said, both in the preceding article and in the third introductory theological question. It is established, moreover, that divine knowledge is not intrinsically multiple: for by one and unchangeable act of cognition God perceives all things. Hence the whole variety of divine knowledge must be referred back to the different terminations of the same knowledge with respect to the different states of creatures.

It is certain, second. A varied and especially fourfold division of divine knowledge has been assigned by the ancient theologians, the first of which is into speculative and practical. The former is so called because by it God only knows things, and does not produce them, by giving them true and real existence; such is the cognition which is concerned with things that are merely possible and that have never had any existence, nor ever will have:

The latter is that by which God not only knows, but also produces the things known; such is the knowledge of vision, which through the divine decree tends toward the real production of things. — The second division is into necessary and free knowledge: the first is that which precedes the decree and the free determination of the divine will, and which is not concerned with the contingent existence of things, but terminates at their unchangeable and necessary essence. The second, however, is called free for this reason, that it presupposes the free decree of God and is borne toward things either present, or past, or future, freely determined by God. — The third, and the most celebrated of all, is into the knowledge of simple intelligence and of vision: by the former God is said to know the essences and the possibility of things; by the latter, however, their existence, whether future, present, or past. This division, however, is not to be taken as though it were made into members opposed per se; since the knowledge of simple intelligence is also intuitive, and God perceives possible things as clearly and intuitively as present ones: but it is to be employed only in this way, that the same cognition is distributed into adequate and inadequate; so that the knowledge of vision comprises the whole and adequate vision of God, while the knowledge of simple intelligence signifies only the inadequate cognition of God, namely inasmuch as it terminates at purely possible things: to both of these knowledges some add a third, which they call middle. — Finally, the fourth division of divine knowledge is made into the knowledge of approbation and of disapprobation. The former is the knowledge of vision itself inasmuch as it is concerned with the good and as it presupposes the decree and approbation of the divine will: the latter, however, is the same knowledge of vision, inasmuch as it is borne toward evils and sins, by which God neither decrees them to be done, nor approves them when done; but only permits them, and so it does not presuppose a positive and absolute decree of God, but only a permissive one.

This division is drawn from Sacred Scripture, since with regard to the knowledge of approbation it is said in Genesis 1.: God saw all the things that he had made, and they were very good. And in Psalmo 1.: The Lord knows the way of the just. With regard to the knowledge of disapprobation, however, is understood that of Habacuc 1.: Your eyes are pure, so that they may not see evil, and you cannot look upon iniquity. Likewise that of Lucae 13.: Depart from me, you workers of iniquity, I know you not.

Since, however, all the aforesaid divisions especially converge and are resolved into the third, therefore, so that an exact knowledge of divine science may be had in a fitting order and as far as possible, we shall distribute the present article into three sections, of which the first will be on the knowledge of simple intelligence and of possible things; the second, on the knowledge of vision and of things absolutely future; the third, finally, on conditional knowledge and on things future only under a condition.

The knowledge by which God perceives possible things is therefore called the knowledge of simple intelligence, because God contemplates those things speculatively, without any order to their production and existence. With regard to this divine knowledge, two things above all present themselves for resolution: first, whether possible creatures are of themselves intelligible beforehand and have some being in themselves before they are understood by the divine intellect; second, in what manner and in what the divine intellect perceives those possible things.

Note 1. As to the resolution of the present Question, a threefold being of creatures can be distinguished: first, indeed, virtual and eminent being, which they have in the divine Essence and Omnipotence, which can represent and produce them. Second, known and objective being, which all things have in the divine Intellect knowing them from eternity. Third, finally, entitative being, which they have in themselves while they truly and really exist. Here there is no question of entitative being, nor yet of virtual and eminent being, which is not the proper and formal being of creatures, but is the very divine being itself, that is, the divine Essence itself, inasmuch as it is the first being and the principle of the other beings. Whence just as the being of heat in the sun is nothing other than the being of the sun itself, as able to produce heat, so likewise the virtual being of creatures in God is not distinct from the divine being, but is the divine power itself, by which God can produce creatures. Only the known being, therefore, which they have in the divine Intellect, is in question here. But it must be noted that this known being is taken in two ways: first, for the divine knowledge itself, by which God knows possible creatures; second, for that extrinsic denomination, as it were, resulting in creatures from this divine knowledge and by which creatures are denominated known, just as a wall is said to be seen from a vision. Here, however, we are not speaking of the former known being. For it is certain that it is truly real, because it is the divine knowledge itself, in which creatures are comprehended. Whence it comes about that they are said to live in the Word, according to that saying of John: What was made, in him was life, — Life, says Augustine, creative, because the knowledge of God is really creative life. Only the objective being taken in the second way, therefore, is in question here.

Note 2. A threefold possibility of things can be distinguished from the Subtle Doctor in 1. dist. 2. q. 7. and elsewhere, namely logical, metaphysical and physical. The first is the non-repugnance of things to existing, or as he speaks in n. 10., the logical Possible is a mode of composition formed by the intellect, namely of that whose terms do not include a contradiction. The second possibility is called by the same Doctor in 2. dist. 12. q. 1. that objective being by which a thing can be perceived and can be the object of a knowing potency. The third, finally, is that being of creatures expressing a respect to the divine Omnipotence, by which they can be produced. The present question concerns only metaphysical possibility, and not the others.

Note 3. From the same Doctor in 1. dist. 13. quaest. unica, n. 5., in disclosing the possibility of things, three instants of nature can be distinguished, in the first of which the divine intellect produces creatures in intelligible and objective being, namely by conceiving them according to that being which they can really have if they are produced. In the second, a creature can be conceived as having possible being of itself: *Because, says the Doctor, of itself formally it is not repugnant to it to have being, and of itself formally it is repugnant to it to have necessary being from itself, and in these two things stands the whole notion of the possible. In the third, finally, the creature expresses a respect to the divine Omnipotence, by which it can be produced. In the first instant it has metaphysical possibility, in the second logical, and in the third physical: or as the Doctor speaks in the same place n. 6.: in the prior instant creatures have possible being principiatively from the divine intellect, in the second they have formal possible being from themselves, in the third they have complete possible being from the respect which they express to the divine Omnipotence.

But whether things are so in fact, the Doctors do not agree. For first, Henry Quodlib. 8. q. 1. and 9. attributes to creatures some real being of essence, eternal, by reason of which creatures are said to be intelligible and are known by the divine intellect: which opinion Waldensis reports and condemns in Wycliffe as a most wicked error, lib. 1. Fidei, cap. 8. — which error likewise Cajetan, prima parte quaest. 14. art. 5., and Bannes, q. 10. art. 3., wrongly ascribe to the Subtle Doctor.

Second, Suarez disp. 30. metaphysica sect. 17. distinguishes a twofold possibility of things, one negative, which is the non-repugnance of the thing to be produced; the other positive, which consists in a certain extrinsic denomination proceeding from the omnipotence of God, from which creatures are formally denominated possible. He says that creatures have the former by reason prior to being understood by God; the latter, however, while they are known. Third, our Aureolus in 1. dist. 30. art. 4. affirms that the possible being of creatures is nothing other than the virtual being, that is, the being of a cause able to produce them. Finally, Vasquez 1. parte, disp. 104. cap. 4. and 5., and likewise almost all the other recent authors, say that creatures are possible, at least incompletely, independently of the divine intellect. But that what is truer may appear, three things are to be resolved in the present Question: first, whether creatures have had any real possible being from eternity; second, from what precisely they have their first possible being distinct from the divine Essence — namely, whether from themselves, or from the divine intellect; third, what that possible being of creatures is formally.

First conclusion. — Possible things have absolutely no real, formal being from eternity. This is the express opinion of the Doctor in 1. dist. 36., which he proves against Henry with seven arguments, of which the principal one is drawn from the creation of things. Whatever is created is produced from nothing; but creatures are formed through creation: therefore they are produced from nothing; and so before their creation they were nothing, and therefore they had no real being. It is confirmed; because just as that which presupposes the matter out of which it is produced is not judged to be produced through creation, but through eduction or generation, so neither is that judged to be created from nothing whose some real being is presupposed.

Henry replies. Creation is indeed made from the nothing of existence, so that what is created was not previously existing, but not from the nothing of essence, so that what is created had true being beforehand.

On the contrary. thus I press with the Doctor: creation is a production from non-being to being simpliciter; but that which presupposes its real being is not produced to being simpliciter, but only to being secundum quid, namely to the being of existence: therefore what is created presupposes no real being, otherwise, says the Doctor, creation will be less a production simpliciter than Alteration is, where there is a production of at least something as to absolute being.

Add. that existence is only a mode of the thing: therefore if a thing is produced only according to existence, it is not produced according to being simpliciter.

Second: That real being, if creatures had any from eternity, would either be communicated by God, or not. Not the first, because God does not communicate being except through production, and production terminates at an existing thing, and so those possible creatures would have been existing from eternity, which is against the faith. Nor the second, because the whole being of the creature is participated and dependent from God.

Some moderns reply. that the whole being of creatures is indeed dependent and participated as to existence, but not as to essence.

Against. existence is only a mode of created things: therefore if created things depend on God only according to existence, they depend only according to some mode of themselves, and considered in themselves, they are absolutely independent of God. Next, if a creature depends on God only as to its existence: therefore it will be an essentially independent being, for its essence will depend on nothing. Finally, the essences of creatures would seem to be equally necessary as the divine Essence, which depends on nothing: but it is unbecoming for Christians to admit these and similar consequences: therefore also that from which they are inferred.

Third: If a creature before its production has real essential being, it follows that it cannot be annihilated, for just as, says the Doctor, the real being of the essence would be presupposed to creation, by like reason it would remain after annihilation. But that whose essence really remains after its corruption ought to be judged less annihilated than that whose matter remains; for that essence really subsisting is more the proper being of the thing than matter is, which before its corruption was a constitutive part of it.

Finally: the Doctor adds other arguments, arguing ad hominem against Henry. First, if creatures had real essential being from eternity, it would follow that something is necessary besides God; for since the essences of things are invariable and necessary, if they had true real being from eternity, there would also be something essentially necessary besides God. Second, since the divine intellect is a natural cause, and acts naturally, what it produces more immediately it also produces more perfectly, because it produces them according to all its activity and fecundity: therefore, since the divine intellect produces the ideal notions and the essences themselves in the notion of essence, but the ideal notions before the essences, because the essences are made only insofar as they are exemplified; therefore those ideas would have truer and more perfect being than the essences themselves, and so the essences would not be real. See the other arguments in the Doctor himself in the same place.

You will say 1. That has real being whose real truth is from eternity; but the real truth of the essences of creatures is from eternity, for this proposition, Man is a rational animal, is true from eternity: therefore likewise the essence of man signified by that proposition is real from eternity.

I deny the major. For fictitious beings also have truth from eternity, and yet not true entity: whence the falsity of the minor is clear. For in like manner I could infer, Chimaera is a fictitious and impossible being, is true from eternity: therefore the chimaera is real from eternity — which inference is utterly null, and so from the truth of a thing it is not lawful to infer its reality. — Or I say with Saint Thomas 1. part. q. 10. a. 3. ad 3. that this proposition is true inasmuch as the signified thing was objectively in the divine mind, but not subjectively, that is, real in itself. To this the Doctor consents in the above-cited n. 11., saying:

When you say further: therefore it has no definition unless it is existing, I deny that consequence, because a definition is a distinct knowledge of the defined thing according to all its essential parts, and a distinct knowledge can be of something, although it itself is not a firm being; and it does not follow: a firm being is understood by definition: therefore a firm being exists.

— Or I say with the same Doctor in 1. dist. 3. quaest. 4. n. 18. that the necessary truths of things are and are seen in God in four ways: first, as in the proximate object, because the divine intellect gives intelligible being to creatures from eternity, in whose power they necessarily shine immutably. Second, as in that which contains the proximate object, because the divine intellect, like a book, contains those intelligibles, which can be called an eternal light secundum quid. Third, as in something by whose power it moves the object, because just as the divine intellect produces things other than itself in intelligible being, so it gives the notion of object by which it moves. Fourth, as in a remote known object, because the divine Essence is the first principle of things to be contemplated and the ultimate end of things to be done, and so the truth of things can stand from eternity, although the true things are not real in themselves.

You will insist. The knowledge by which God knows the essences of creatures is real from eternity: therefore the known object is real. The consequence is clear, both because correlates are simultaneous in nature: therefore God knowing creatures and creatures known are simultaneous in nature. And because knowledges are specified by their object.

I concede the antecedent, but I deny the consequence. both because the reality of the divine Knowledge is not derived from the secondary object, such as creatures are, but from the primary object, that is, from the divine Essence: and because, as the Doctor infers num. 6. from St. Augustine lib. 5. in Genes. 7., God does not know things made otherwise than as things to be made. He therefore foreknew the being of existence, just as the being of essence, and yet on account of that founded relation he does not concede that any being of existence was true being from eternity: therefore by like reason this is not to be conceded about the being of essence.

You will say 2. According to Aristotle and the other Philosophers, the essences of things are eternal, invariable, ungenerable and incorruptible: but they would not be such if they had nothing real from eternity, etc.

I distinguish the major. They are eternal according to entitative being, I deny; according to ideal, objective, virtual being, which they have in the divine intellect and in the divine omnipotence, I concede. And with the minor similarly distinguished, the consequence is to be denied. And so, that creatures are said to be eternal and ungenerable according to essence, but not according to existence, these things are not to be understood as if they were produced in time according to existence only; for it is certain that everything whatever that is in them is truly produced and generated, whether it be essence, or property, or existence. But these things are to be understood in this way: that the objective concept and the essential predicates of things abstract from existence and are altogether invariable, so that whether man exists or not, this proposition is always true, Man is a rational animal.

You will say 3. What is placed in the predicamental line is real, for reality is one of the conditions for the notion of a category: but creatures are placed in the predicamental line even before they exist and insofar as they are possible, indeed they must necessarily abstract from existence in order to be placed in the categories: therefore insofar as they are possible they are truly real.

I distinguish the major. It must be real, either objectively or entitatively, I concede; entitatively only, I deny. To the minor I say that possible creatures are not indeed real entitatively and formally in themselves, but only objectively, ideally, and in the divine intellect, which suffices for them to be able to be placed in the categories.

Second conclusion. — The first distinct being of creatures is from the divine intellect. So the Subtle Doctor in many places, but especially in 1. dist. 43. n. 5., where he speaks thus:

Through the potency itself, under the notion according to which it is omnipotence, it does not have an object that is first possible, but through the divine intellect producing it in the first instant in intelligible being, and the intellect is not formally the active potency by which God is formally called omnipotent, and then the thing produced by the divine intellect into such being, namely intelligible being, in the first instant of nature, has of itself possible being in the second instant of nature.

By which the Doctor plainly signifies that creatures have their first being from the intellect, namely known being. Second, that they have from themselves a non-repugnance to existing, which non-repugnance is accompanied by a relation of reason to the omnipotence able to produce them, and so this non-repugnance is accompanied, or followed, by their formal and complete possible being.

Proof first. by the authority of St. Augustine lib. 5. De Genesi ad litteram cap. 18., where he says:

These visible things before they were made did not exist; how then were they known to God, which did not exist? Again: how would he make those which were not known to him, for he made nothing in ignorance? Therefore he made them as known, he did not know them as made; accordingly, before they were made, they also were: they were in the knowledge of God, they were not in their own nature.

consequently, according to the mind of St. Augustine, possible creatures have no other being besides the objective being which they have in the essence, that is, in the intellect of God; for if they had any other being, it would especially be essential being: but St. Augustine excludes that by saying that things were not something in their own nature, and consequently neither in their own essence, because essence and nature are the same.

It is also proved by reason. Every being that creatures have, since it is neither in themselves nor from themselves, is produced either by the intellect or by the will of God; but the first being of creatures is not produced by the will: therefore by the intellect of God.

The minor is proved. The being that creatures have from the will and omnipotence of God from eternity is willed and future being: but before that willed and future being, creatures first have possible and intelligible being, for nothing is willed unless it is foreknown, and nothing future is decreed unless it is first possible: therefore the first possible being which creatures have is not from the will, but from the intellect of God.

Further, if creatures had some being before the divine intellection, they would have it most of all either from themselves or from God: but not from themselves, as has already been proved, otherwise they would not be creatures: therefore whatever being they had, they would have from God. But they cannot have any being from God before the divine intellection, because if they had it, they would have it either by emanation or by production. Not the former, for nothing emanates from God except what is divine and really undivided from the divine Essence, such as are the divine perfections and the relations of origin: but creatures are neither something divine nor really undivided from God. Nor the latter, for the first operation of the Godhead, both ad intra and ad extra, takes place through the intellect, as is evident: therefore the first being that creatures have is from the divine intellect.

Finally, the fecundity of the divine intellect is greater than the fecundity of the created intellect: but the created intellect bestows known being upon the things which it understands. For just as a seen stone has seen being through vision, so the same stone, known through knowledge, has known being; yet with this twofold defect: first, that that known being in the created intellect is not the primary being, but a secondary one, because the created intellect presupposes its effect, but does not truly produce it; second, that that known being is extrinsic to the things; since these defects cannot fall upon the divine intellect, inasmuch as it is most perfect, the consequence is that in producing creatures in known being, it produces them according to their primary and intrinsic being, and so the first being that creatures have must necessarily be from the divine intellect.

You will say 1. The possibility of creatures consists in their non-repugnance to existing: but they have that non-repugnance from themselves: therefore they also have possibility from themselves.

I distinguish the major. Complete possibility consists in that non-repugnance with an order to omnipotence, from which creatures are not repugnant to be produced, I concede; first and inchoate possibility, or the first concept of a possible thing, consists in that non-repugnance, I deny: for since the non-repugnance is the non-repugnance of some thing, it necessarily presupposes the concept of the thing, in which that non-repugnance is grounded: therefore, for creatures to be said to have non-repugnance to existing, they must first be supposed to have some being: but they cannot have that being from any other than the divine intellect, and consequently they have their first being only from the divine intellect.

You will say 2. Speculative knowledge does not produce its object, but presupposes it: but the knowledge by which God knows possible creatures is speculative: therefore He does not produce those possible creatures, but presupposes them.

I distinguish the major. Speculative knowledge does not produce its object in the real and entitative being which it has in itself, I concede; it does not produce it in the intelligible being which it has in the intellect, I deny; because, says the Doctor num. 6, Even if something does not exist, it can nevertheless be understood by us, whether its essence or its existence, and yet it is not posited on account of our intellection that it has true being of existence. Nor is there any difference in this regard, as it seems, between our intellect and the divine one, except that the divine intellect produces those intelligibles in intelligible being primarily, ours does not produce primarily.

They press again. Things are intelligible in the divine Essence before they are understood by the divine intellect: therefore they do not have only known being. — I distinguish the antecedent, with our de Bassoli, in 1. distinction 36, question 1, article 2: they are intelligible before, formally and distinctly, so that they shine forth in it as in a mirror, I deny the antecedent; they are intelligible before, virtually and indistinctly, as effects in their cause, I concede the antecedent. Moreover, for something to be called intelligible, formally speaking, it must actually be represented, either in itself or in a species, which is not how possible things are in the essence, before they are supposed to be understood.

You will insist. If creatures are produced in possible and diminished being by the knowledge of God, the consequence is that when God knows Himself, indeed also when He knows creatures already existing, He produces them in possible and diminished being: but the consequence is false: therefore so is the antecedent.

I deny the major. For the divine intellect really to produce things in diminished and possible being, the known thing must presuppose no being at all, and so when God knows either Himself or creatures already existing, He must in no way produce Himself or the known creatures in known, possible, and diminished being.

Third conclusion. — That possible being, known formally in itself and considered insofar as it is conceived as something distinct from the Essence and Intellect of God, is not something real. This is the express opinion of the Doctor in 1. dist. 36, quaest. unica, in the reply to the second argument, where he says:

I say that this production in known being is in a being of another notion from every being simpliciter, and it is not a relation of reason only, but also of an absolute foundation, not indeed according to the being of essence or of existence, which is true being; but according to diminished being, which being is being secundum quid, even of an absolute being, which absolute being, however, according to that diminished being, is accompanied by a relation of reason.

In the same place, dist. 13, quaest. unica, he says:

a being of reason has being only in the intellect, because a being of reason is not caused by the object except insofar as it is known, and as such it has being only in the intellect, which is diminished being, from 6. Metaphys.; but nothing, insofar as it is diminished being, is the proper notion of true being.

And in dist. 36, n. 10, where, after he had said that that diminished being produced by the divine intellect has the notion of a being not respective but absolute, he says:

that absolute being, however, according to that diminished being, is accompanied by a relation of reason. An example of this: if Caesar had been annihilated and yet there were a statue of Caesar, Caesar would be represented through the statue. That represented being is of another notion from every being simpliciter, whether of essence or of existence, nor is it the diminished being of Caesar, as if something of Caesar had this being and something did not. Just as an Ethiopian is diminishedly white, because something of him is truly white and something is not; but the whole Caesar and his being from his cause is true being of existence and of essence, of which whole, according to its total being, there is that being secundum quid, and in it, according to that being secundum quid, there can be some relation to the statue.

By these words the Doctor signifies that just as the formal representation of Caesar imports nothing real either in the statue or in Caesar, so neither does that diminished representative being of creatures signify anything real, either in itself or in the creatures themselves.

Further, that is a pure being of reason which has being only objectively in the divine intellect in the way in which second intentions have being in the created intellect: but that diminished being has no other being than the objective being in the intellect of God: therefore it is formally in itself a being of reason.

Finally, if that objective being had some reality, it would have it most of all either according to essence or according to existence: but neither can be said. Not the first, because, as has already been proved, creatures have no real being in themselves from eternity; nor the second, because creatures, as possible and according to that known being, have no existence in themselves: therefore they are a pure being of reason.

You will say 1. Possible creatures, and creatures in known being, have something beyond a chimera, for existence is repugnant to the latter, but not to the former: but a chimera is a being of reason: therefore creatures, according to that possible and objective being, are not a being of reason.

The Doctor cited above denies the major, num. 14, saying:

the first and utterly irreducible reason why being is not repugnant to man is that he is formally a man, and this whether really in the thing or conceptibly in the intellect; and the first reason why being is repugnant to a chimera is the chimera insofar as it is a chimera. Therefore that negation of nothingness inheres in man in eternity and in the chimera in different ways, and yet the one is not on this account more nothing than the other.

To this reply he had prefixed the reason num. 13, saying that the negation of something inheres in another either on account of the mere defect of the cause producing it, or on account of the repugnance which it has to receiving it. In the former way whiteness is denied of a wall that is not white. In the latter way it is denied of an Angel, and in this case a wall that is not white is no less nothing of whiteness than an Angel. And the reason, he says, why this negation is not more than that one is that any negation denies the whole affirmation opposed to it, from whatever reason it is such. For it is just as true to say that a black wall is not white as that an Angel is not white. The same must be said by way of similitude of possible creatures and of the chimera, because real being is truly denied of both from eternity.

You will say 2. A being of reason is that which is fashioned by the intellect after the manner of a real being when it is not a real being: but a possible being cannot be so fashioned by the divine intellect: therefore it is not a being of reason. The major is evident from Logic. The minor is proved: for such a fiction, since it imports the highest imperfection, cannot be attributed to the divine intellect, which is most perfect in every way.

I distinguish the major. A purely fictitious being of reason is so fashioned by the created intellect, I concede; a being of reason arising through a certain resultant of some operation, I deny. To the minor I say that that possible or diminished being is not indeed fashioned by the divine intellect, nor fabricated by it through a true and real fictitious operation; but is conceived by us after the manner of a diminished being resulting from the infinite knowledge by which the divine intellect, comprehending the divine Essence and Omnipotence, and intuitively knowing their infinitely representative and productive power, first conceives creatures in possible being, that is, that they do not repugn, from which concept arises the denomination of known being, which is a being of reason, and which can result from the knowledge of a being that can at some time be true and real; and so the divine intellect makes a being of reason, not by fashioning, but by conceiving a true being.

You will say 3. If possible creatures are truly said to be produced from eternity according to diminished being by the divine intellect, and to be known by it from eternity, by the same reasoning the divine Essence, known also from eternity by the divine intellect itself, could be said to be produced by it according to diminished being: but the consequence is false: therefore so is the antecedent.

I deny the sequel of the major. For a thing to be able to be produced in known being and to have the notion of diminished being, it must first have no real being, whether of essence or of existence, before it is known by the divine intellect: but the divine Essence, prior by nature to being known by the divine intellect, already has the being of existence in itself and formally, for existence is of the Essence of God; and so the divine Essence itself, however much it may be known by the divine intellect, cannot have the notion of diminished being.

You will say 4. From what has been said it is evident that the Doctor affirms that that known being and diminished being is the foundation of a relation of reason: therefore, in the mind of the Doctor, either that diminished being is not a being of reason, or the Doctor contradicts himself.

I answer. The Doctor for that reason calls that diminished being something absolute, because it is conceived after the manner of some form resulting from the knowledge of a true being and bestowing the denomination of known being; which resulting form, namely, is also conceived as founding a relation to that from which it results and to that which it denominates. This denominating form, however, and the relation to the denominated thing have nothing of reality in themselves, but are a pure being of reason, not indeed a fictitious one, but as it were one arising through resultant; for since a being of reason arises from the knowledge of a true being, and since every denomination of known being is a being of reason, it is clear that the divine intellect, in understanding possible things, forms a being of reason not by fiction, but by denomination and resultant, in the way, namely, in which the bodily eye, in seeing a wall, is said to produce a being of reason through resultant, because the being seen, which the intellect conceives to remain in the wall after the vision, is a pure being of reason.

Corollary I. — From these things gather, 1., how wrongly Cajetan and some Thomists charge the Subtle Doctor, affirming that he fell into the error of Wycliffe. For as Thomas of Walden reports, libr. 1. Fidei antiquae, cap. 1., Wycliffe was involved in this error, that he called the threefold being of creatures — namely, the intelligible being in the divine intellect, the virtual being in second causes, and the entitative being in its own genus — being simpliciter, so that the objective being which creatures have in the divine intellect is as real as the entitative being which they have in themselves while they exist; moreover he affirmed that that intelligible being is properly and formally in God. Hence he contended that God could absolutely and simpliciter be called a horse, an ass, etc.; indeed he also contended that creatures, formally existing in God by reason of this intelligible being, could truly be called God; how foreign both of these are to the opinion of the Subtle Doctor is abundantly clear from what has been said.

Corollary II. — Gather, 2., that creatures are not represented actually and formally in the divine Essence before they are understood; both because creatures as such are not contained in the divine Essence except as effects in a cause: but effects are not contained actually in the cause, but only eminently and virtually: therefore neither are they represented actually and distinctly; and because if creatures had represented and intelligible being in the divine Essence before they are understood, it would follow that they pertain to the memory of the Father, which is the intellect itself fecundated by the object, rather than to the intelligence, which is the intellect with actual intellection: but this conflicts with the mind of the Doctor, who in 2. dist. 1. qu. 1. affirms that creatures do not have being in the memory of the Father.

Add. that since according to D. Aug., lib. 15 De Trinitate, the divine Word is born from the whole memory of the Father, and consequently from everything which is actually contained and represented in the memory of the Father; if creatures shone forth in the memory of the Father itself, they would be the reasons for producing the divine Word, and by the force of its production it would be the likeness and image of creatures, which whether it is true we will disclose in the Treatise De Trinitate.

Three things are especially to be resolved in the present Question: First, whether God truly beholds intuitively, distinctly and clearly, the quiddities, properties and appendages of all possible things: Second, whether this knowledge pertains in no way to the knowledge of vision: Third, finally, whether He beholds those possible creatures intuitively in His essence, or in His omnipotence, or in His very divine knowledge itself; so that they may become known more clearly.

Note 1. In any possible being two things must be distinguished: one, which it signifies in recto; the other, which it signifies only in obliquo. The first is the being itself according to its whole entity, which it would have if it truly existed in act; for that is called a possible being which can exist, and it is true that an existing being, according to its whole entity, was first possible. The second, however, is that twofold possibility which that being imports: one intrinsic and logical, which is the non-repugnance of the thing to existing, that is, whose extremes involve no contradiction, so that they are united with one another to constitute some thing, as animal and rational to form man; the other extrinsic, which consists in the relation and order of reason which those possible things are conceived to bear to the divine omnipotence, by which they can be produced. The former possibility is as it were radical and remote, the source and origin of the latter; for this reason indeed the divine power can produce possible creatures, because they import no contradiction in their concept and existence.

Note 2. The difference of the knowledge of simple intelligence from the knowledge of vision does not consist precisely in this, that they know the same object abstractively and intuitively; for each cognition of God is intuitive and penetrating; nor is it required for intuitive knowledge that the thing be known inasmuch as it is existing; but only inasmuch as it is present, whether in itself, or in another as in a previously known medium, just as, v. g., some object is seen intuitively either in itself, or in a mirror in which, as present, it is represented. Nor again do the two kinds of knowledge differ in this, that the former is terminated at non-beings, the latter at beings, that is, one at possible things, the other at things actually existing; for both can be terminated at things actually existing, since the knowledge of simple intelligence perceives in things actually existing their possibility; for existing things still retain their logical possibility, since truly they have no repugnance to existing, although they do not have physical possibility and the order to the divine omnipotence by which they could be produced, being already de facto produced; and thus they have a relation to that omnipotence productive of them, not further as producible, but as produced. Therefore the whole variety of the two kinds of knowledge consists chiefly in this, that God perceives the same things by both these kinds of knowledge in a diverse manner and by a diverse notion.

Note 3. Philosophers commonly distinguish a twofold medium leading into the cognition of another thing: one as that by which, which is called the unknown medium, such as is the impressed species, which is not known as that which, but is only the reason for knowing the object that it represents; the other as that which, which is called the known medium, such as is a mirror, v. g., which must first be seen before the objects that it represents are seen in it. The doubt, however, is whether possible creatures are seen in the divine Omnipotence more distinctly and expressively than in the essence, or in the divine knowledge as in a known medium.

First conclusion. — God knows possible things most distinctly as regards their quiddities, properties and appendages. This is the common teaching, and it remains sufficiently proved in the last Question of the preceding Article: nonetheless it is strengthened again by this reason: God is a productive agent of things through intellect and will: but such an agent has knowledge of the things to be made and produced by itself: therefore God distinctly knows the things which He can produce, and which He has produced.

Proof of the major. To the most excellent cause must be attributed the most excellent mode of producing and causing: but God is the first and most excellent of all causes; and the most excellent mode of producing things is effected through intellect and will: therefore that manner of causing must be attributed to God.

Proof of the minor. An agent acting through intellect and will acts in the manner of an artisan: but the artisan first knows the thing before he produces it; for as Aristotle says in 7. Metaphysicorum lib. 5., The house ad extra comes from the house which is formed within the mind of the artisan.

Add. that an agent acting through the will necessarily presupposes knowledge of the object about which it operates; for nothing is willed unless it has first been known: therefore an agent acting through the will necessarily has foreknowledge of the thing which it effects; and so, since God acts most excellently through the will and does all things according to the counsel of His will, He must necessarily foreknow the things to be made by Himself.

It is confirmed. from the Apostle speaking to the Romans about God: He calls those things that are not as those that are: that is, according to the common opinion of the interpreters, God knows equally well the possible things and those which do not yet exist, as those which are in the nature of things. Which the Apostle himself again proves to the Hebrews 4.: There is no creature invisible in His sight, but all things are naked and open to His eyes; and consequently possible creatures are not hidden from Him, and He beholds them distinctly.

You will say. If God knows a possible being inasmuch as it is a possible being, He knows a non-being inasmuch as it is a non-being: but God cannot know a non-being: therefore neither can He know possible things. The major is evident from the preceding

Question, in which it was proved that possible creatures, considered formally and in themselves, are not something real, but a pure being of reason. The minor is proved: God cannot know except what is knowable: but a non-being is not knowable, for knowability is a property of being, which consequently cannot belong to a non-being.

I answer 1. That although possible creatures, considered formally and in themselves, have nothing real, nevertheless they are not pure nothing; for they are conceived as the exemplars of those things which are someday to come forth really, and therefore they have at least some exemplar intelligibility. Secondly, although those creatures, inasmuch as they are possible, are not per se formally intelligible; nevertheless they can be understood in the divine Essence, in which they shine forth as soon as they have been produced according to their diminished and objective being by the divine intellect: they can likewise be understood from the comprehension of the divine Omnipotence, to which, as to the cause productive of them in esse reali, they have a relation of reason, which suffices for them to be distinctly perceived by the divine intellect, as we will prove in the third following Conclusion.

Second conclusion. — Possible creatures are known by God only by the knowledge of simple intelligence. The conclusion is evident from the second Note: for in this the knowledge of simple intelligence differs from the knowledge of vision only in this, that the knowledge of simple intelligence is concerned with things inasmuch as they are possible and in their causes, and inasmuch as they import no repugnance in their formal concept to existing. But the knowledge of vision is borne toward present, or past, or future things, or as St. Thomas speaks in quaest. 2. De Veritate Art. 9. ad 2., The knowledge of vision is said to be in God after the likeness of bodily sight, which beholds intuitively the things placed outside itself. Whence by the knowledge of vision God is not said to know anything except what is present, or past, or future: but the knowledge of simple intelligence is also of those things which neither are, nor will be, nor have been. By which words St. Thomas openly confesses that the knowledge of simple intelligence is distinguished from the knowledge of vision, because the former is concerned with the possibility of things; the latter, however, with the existence of the same things.

Nor does it matter that God beholds possible things intuitively, and thus has them present in esse cognito et obiectivo. For this presence does not suffice for the notion of the knowledge of vision, which per se demands to be terminated at the real existence of things, whether present, or past, or future. Nevertheless it could not incongruously be said that the knowledge of simple intelligence is distinguished from the knowledge of vision precisely not by the variety of the object, but by the notion of the adequate and the inadequate; so that the knowledge of vision totally and adequately comprehends the whole breadth of divine knowledge, for this reason, that all divine knowledge per se properly is intuitive: but the knowledge of simple intelligence only signifies and imports the inadequate and partial notion of that divine knowledge, namely inasmuch as it is terminated at things as they are only possible.

Third conclusion. — Possible creatures are distinctly known in the divine Essence and Omnipotence, in which they shine forth as effects in the cause, able to produce and represent them. This is the common teaching; for in this possible creatures are known as in a known medium, in which they have their distinct intelligible being, and from which they can truly have their real being: but they have both, the first indeed in the divine Essence, which, since it has infinite power of representing any being whatsoever, immediately distinctly represents possible creatures in their known and objective being, and the second they have from the divine omnipotence, to which as to a cause they have a relation and order of reason, from which they have that they are completely and proximately producible. For although from themselves they have the non-repugnance to be produced, nevertheless they would not be proximately producible, nor consequently completely producible, if there were no cause which could produce them.

You will say. What is known in the Essence and Omnipotence is only perceived as in a general and universal cause: but what is so perceived is not known distinctly: therefore either possible creatures are not known in the divine Essence and Omnipotence, or they are not known distinctly. The minor is evident: for to know a thing in a universal cause is nothing other than to attain the thing in genus and in the universal: but so to perceive a thing is not to know it distinctly and inasmuch as it is such a being, adorned with such special properties: therefore, etc.

I distinguish the minor. To know a thing in a universal cause concurring only generally and in common to the production of things, just as the Sun, v. g., is said to be the universal cause of all generable and corruptible things, because it concurs to certain of their common principles — so not to know the thing distinctly, I concede: but to know the effect in a universal cause, not only in genus and universally, but also in species and in the individual, concurring to the production of any particular effects whatsoever, such as is the divine omnipotence with respect to all formable things — not thus to know the thing distinctly, I deny: for just as God through His Omnipotence distinctly concurs to the production of any things whatsoever, however particular, and since the divine omnipotence virtually and distinctly contains all particular things, the consequence is that the divine intellect, by comprehensively knowing the divine omnipotence, also comprehends all those things themselves to which it has relation and order.

You will say 2. If God knew creatures in His Omnipotence as in a previously known medium, it would follow that the knowledge of God would be posterior to the attribute of Omnipotence: the consequence is absurd: therefore God does not know possible creatures in His Omnipotence. The major is evident, for the formal object specifying and the previously known medium must be prior to the cognition: therefore if Omnipotence is the previously known medium and specifies the cognition, it will be prior to the cognition itself: but this is absurd; for omnipotence is an attribute posterior not only to the intellect, but also to the will. Next, the Knowledge of God directs omnipotence; therefore it is prior to omnipotence. Finally, God is not omniscient for this reason, that He is omnipotent; for if per impossibile He were not omnipotent, it would not therefore follow that He would not be omniscient.

I distinguish the major. That the knowledge of God would be posterior to the attribute of omnipotence, inasmuch as that knowledge is terminated at its primary object, namely at the divine essence, I deny; for considered in this way it is a divine attribute prior to omnipotence itself, even as operative in actu primo: that it would be posterior to omnipotence operative in actu primo, inasmuch as that knowledge is terminated at the secondary object producible by that omnipotence, I concede. And so the divine Omnipotence can be considered operative, either in actu primo, namely inasmuch as it is that divine power by which God can produce other things besides Himself, and thus it is prior to the intellect and will of God inasmuch as it is terminated at secondary objects and at creatures known and willed: secondly, inasmuch as that divine omnipotence is considered as it is operative and productive in act, and thus it is posterior to the intellect and knowledge; since the knowledge of God directs that omnipotence operating in actu secundo, but not that operative in actu primo; whence it follows that God de facto is omniscient with respect to creatures, because He is omnipotent, and that if He were not omnipotent He would not be omniscient in the way in which He now is.

You will insist. Omnipotence is not completed except by the knowledge by which it is directed: therefore also the Knowledge of God is prior to omnipotence as operative in actu primo, and thus omnipotence will not be able to be a known medium perfecting the divine cognition.

I distinguish the antecedent. Omnipotence is not completed adequately in the notion of the proximately operative except by the knowledge directing it, I concede; it is not completed in actu primo in the notion of operative potency absolutely taken, I deny; whence the divine knowledge is indeed prior to omnipotence as proximately operative in actu primo: but it is not prior to omnipotence itself absolutely taken.

You will say 3. If God knew secondary objects in His omnipotence as in a previously known medium, it would follow that He would not know sins, beings of reason, and impossibles; for these have no connection with the divine Omnipotence, since they cannot be produced by it: but the consequence is false: therefore so is the antecedent.

I distinguish. That God could not know those things at least mediately and indirectly in Himself, inasmuch as He sees in Himself the secondary causes from which sins and beings of reason can be made, I deny: that He could not know them first immediately and directly in those things themselves, but only secondarily, I concede. And so God, by comprehending His omnipotence, also comprehensively and intuitively knows all that which is factible by it; He likewise knows whatever can be done, or not done, by the creatures themselves to be produced through His Omnipotence; and thus He does not see sins, beings of reason, and impossibles directly indeed and first, as He sees the creatures themselves; but only secondarily does His divine cognition terminate at them.

This present Section embraces huge and almost innumerable waves of difficulties, like a second Ocean full of sandbars and rocks; and it is all the more dreadful and dangerous in that, up to now, many too-curious investigators of this divine Science, having fallen into open heresy and foul error, have made a lamentable shipwreck of the faith; so that each of them could justly exclaim with the Royal Prophet: I have come into the depth of the sea, and the tempest hath drowned me. Hence St. Augustine, the summit and eagle of theologians, fixing his mind's gaze upon this inscrutable and uncertain knowledge of future things, is so weighed down by the weight and majesty of its rays that he bursts forth into these words lib. 11. Confessionum, c. 19.:

What manner is that by which Thou teachest things to come, to whom nothing is future, or rather dost Thou teach present things about the future? For what is not, cannot by any means be taught. That manner is too far from my sight. It hath prevailed beyond me; I shall not be able to reach it; but I shall be able through Thee, when Thou shalt have given the sweet light of my eyes;

and so, even if sacred Scripture and the doctrine of the holy Fathers shine upon us and irradiate us, we undertake to unlock as best we can this inscrutable divine knowledge.

Four things are resolved in the following Questions, in the First of which it will be resolved whether God certainly knows future contingents; in the Second, by what means, known beforehand, He knows them; in the Third, whether this certainty of divine knowledge does not impede the contingency of things and human freedom; in the Fourth, finally, whether things are future because God knows them; or on the contrary, whether God knows future things because they are future.

Note 1. Being is commonly wont to be distributed generally into necessary and contingent. That is called necessary which has so firm an existence from itself that non-being is repugnant to it, in the way in which God alone and all those things which surround the divine Essence are said to be necessary; for non-being is repugnant to them. But that is called contingent which can be or not be, and just as it was produced from nothing, so it can cease and pass away into nothing, in the way in which all creatures are said to be contingent. Moreover, the contingency of things can be considered either in order to the first cause or to the second. In the former way all creatures and all their effects are absolutely contingent; for just as God freely produces creatures, so He freely concurs in the production of their effects. In the latter way, since the order of natural causes is twofold — some of which are natural and necessary, namely those which, with all things required for acting being posited, necessarily produce their effects, so that unless they are hindered by the First Cause through the denial of His divine concurrence, they cannot be moved away from the production of their effects nor be retarded; others, however, are free, namely those which, with all circumstances desirable for action being posited, can freely determine themselves to acting or not acting — the effects of the former causes, namely of the natural ones, are said to be necessary, that is, by order to the second cause, by which they are necessarily produced, although they are contingent absolutely by order to the first cause, which can impede their production; but the effects of the latter causes, namely of the free ones, are altogether contingent by order to both causes, as much the First as the Second. And it is especially about these that the present Question is moved, namely whether God certainly and infallibly knows all contingent effects according to whatsoever circumstances of them.

Note 2. That is called future which, although it does not really have actual existence, nevertheless will have it at some time according to the determination of the divine will and the certain connection which it has with the causes from which it can be produced. Hence there is a threefold genus of future effects, according to the threefold disposition of causes. For first, there are some causes from which the effect necessarily follows, unless they are hindered in their operations by the First Cause, such as, v. g., the vicissitudes of days and nights; the eclipses of the Sun, the Moon and certain other stars, which, since they have a certain and determinate connection with their causes, can even be known demonstratively. Second, there are some causes from which effects follow for the most part, inasmuch as those causes are more determined to one thing than to another, and from these conjectural knowledge about future effects can be had. Third and finally, there are some causes which are altogether indifferent to either effect, such as all free causes are, from which the future effect can scarcely be known. When, therefore, we ask whether God certainly knows future contingents, the discourse is especially about effects of the third genus.

Note 3. According to the Doctor, quaest. 14. of the Quodlib., artic. 2., Litt. S., this order can be distinguished in the divine cognition of created things: that after the divine Essence moves the divine intellect to the cognition of itself and of all those things which are formally in God, first it moves that intellect to the simple cognition of created being, inasmuch as it abstracts from existence and has only the notion of an intelligible and possible being, which motion is necessary, not contingent. Second, the divine intellect as it were exhibits and offers those possible creatures to the divine will, as if demonstrating to it that such creatures can exist or not exist; and in this sign the divine will decrees the future existence and production of such creatures for such a time: with that decree posited, the divine Essence immediately exhibits to the divine intellect itself the determinate future existence of those creatures, and so the divine intellect certainly knows the futurition of contingent things: not that it is moved by the things themselves; for then it would be degraded, if it were moved by something other than the divine Essence; but in the way in which the divine Essence moves to the cognition of future contingents: with this difference, however, that to the cognition of the former it moves antecedently to the operation of the divine will, but to the cognition of future contingents it moves only consequently to the determination of the divine will itself, from which all the contingency of things proceeds.

These things being presupposed, there is a celebrated controversy among Theologians and pagan Philosophers whether God certainly knows future contingents; for Cicero denied the foreknowledge of future things in l. 2. De Divinatione; and he was incited to this opinion especially by the fact that, as St. Augustine says in lib. 2. De Civit. Dei, cap. 6.,

He judged that both could not be true; but if one is confirmed, the other is taken away; if we choose the foreknowledge of future things, the free choice of the will is taken away; if we choose the free choice of the will, the foreknowledge of future things is taken away. He himself, therefore, as a great and learned man, and consulting most expertly for human life, chose from these two the free choice of the will; and that it might be confirmed, he denied the foreknowledge of future things: and thus, while he wishes to make men free, he made them sacrilegious.

The Stoics fell into the same error, as the holy Augustine, cited above, reports. And among the heretics, John Wycliffe, art. 27., and Luther, art. 36., as well as other sectaries of our time: although some of them subject all things to fate not so much on account of divine foreknowledge as on account of the efficacy and immutability of the divine will: against all of whom stands.

Only conclusion. — God certainly and infallibly knows all future contingents. This is of faith and is proved by open texts of Sacred Scripture. Ps. 138.: You have understood my thoughts, and you have searched out my cord, and you have foreseen all my ways: Daniel. 13.: Eternal God, who are the knower of hidden things, who know all things before they are made: Eccles. 23.: The eyes of the Lord are much brighter than the Sun, surveying all the ways of men, that is, they survey them more clearly than the Sun, and, beholding the depth of the abyss and the hearts of men in their hidden parts; for to the Lord God all things are known before they are created; and cap. 39.: The works of all flesh are before him, and there is nothing hidden from his eyes, from eternity to eternity he looks, and nothing is wonderful in his sight. — It is confirmed likewise from those texts which proclaim God's frequent predictions about future things. Hence also the foreknowledge of future things is wont to be called Divination, because, as Origen says in lib. 5. contra Celsum, the prediction of future things is the mark and character of Divinity: and Tertullian in the Apologetico cap. 20.: The truth of divination is a suitable testimony of divinity: which the Lord himself confirms in Isa. 41., where, to demonstrate the emptiness of the pagan deities, he says: declare the things that are to come hereafter, and we shall know that you are gods: and cap. 44.: I am the first and I am the last, and apart from me there is no God; who is like me? Let him call and declare and set forth in order to me, from the time I appointed the ancient people, the things that are to come and the things that shall be; let him declare them to them; whence the holy Augustine, cited above: To confess that God exists and to deny that he has foreknowledge of future things is the most manifest madness. — All the Prophecies which the divine Scripture itself contains prove the same thing; for the prophetic light is a certain participation in divine foreknowledge: whence Tertullian, lib. 2. contra Marcionem cap. 5.: The foreknowledge of God has as many witnesses as he has made Prophets.

The same truth is proved by reason. God certainly knows whatever is knowable; for since he is infinite and unlimited in every genus of perfection, his divine cognition must especially be infinite and unlimited: but future contingents are truly knowable, because they are truly future; and whatever is true is equally knowable. The minor is proved: whatever truly exists at the time at which it is, was truly future with respect to the whole time antecedent to its existence; for the future is nothing other than that very thing which is called present for that time at which it in fact exists, and future with respect to the preceding time, and past with respect to the subsequent time: therefore, just as its being present is true, or just as it is true that it is present with respect to the time with which it coexists, so likewise it is true that it is future for the antecedent time and past for the subsequent time.

It is proved 2. Of two contradictory propositions about a future contingent, even a singular one, one is determinately true, the other is determinately false: therefore they are likewise determinately knowable by God. The consequence is clear, for God can know whatever is knowable: but everything true is knowable, and consequently can be known by God. The antecedent is proved: first, because one is determinately conformed to the object and the other is not conformed; for from the fact that the thing either is or is not, at the time at which it is signified to be or not to be, the proposition signifying this is conformed or not conformed to the object, and so is true or false. Second, if an indeterminate and uncertain truth hung between both propositions, and only the disjunction, Peter will sin or will not sin, were true, it would follow that each member of this disjunction taken separately is false: but this is evidently impossible. For if Peter will sin is false, then the other, which says Peter will not, will be true, because it is conformed to the object. Third, it implies a contradiction to give a middle between two contradictories, because it implies a contradiction to give a middle between being and non-being, that is, between being and not being: therefore it also implies a contradiction that one of the two contradictories, which affirms or denies that a thing is, should not be judged true or false, whether it affirms or denies for the present time, or for the future, or for the past; for it would be no less contradictory for a thing to be future or not to be future, past or not to be past, than to be present or not to be present: therefore, since the signified thing is at once future and not future, and it is not only indeterminately future or not future, but is truly distinctly future or distinctly not future: the consequence is that if it is not future, the proposition which denies that it is future is true distinctly and determinately; but if it is future, the proposition by which it is affirmed to be future is determinately true, and the other by which it is denied to be future is determinately false. Fourth, every proposition revealed by God is determinately true and not only indeterminately true or false: but God reveals one of the two contradictory propositions about a future contingent: therefore that one is determinately true, and consequently is determinately knowable by God.

It is proved 3. God certainly knows future contingents when they receive existence at their determinate time and are produced by him: for he operates ad extra as an artisan; but an artisan knows the thing before he makes it, and so God also knows the things which he must produce, otherwise he would act without providence and wisdom: therefore he knows them even long before they are produced. The consequence is clear, otherwise divine knowledge would be mutable and would take increase according to the existence of things, which is altogether unbecoming of God. — St. Augustine presses this argument wonderfully lib. to Aurelius contra Priscillianistas et Origenistas cap. 8., where, after he had said these words of John: all things were made through him, he concludes:

Therefore God knew all things which he made before he made them; for we cannot say that he made things unknown to him and learned them only after they were made: that he did not know what he would make, but knew what he made. For if we said this of some artisan, we would think most foolishly. He knew, therefore, that they were to be made; he did not know them as made, in order to make them, not because he had made them. Accordingly, although they were already known, because they would not be made except by one who knows, nevertheless they did not begin to be made, which were known to be made before they were made.

They object 1. The heretics and philosophers, especially Wycliffe. If a proposition about a future contingent is determinately true or false, it follows that it is not indifferent, nor consequently contingent: for that is contingent which can be or not be: therefore either one proposition is not determinately true, or there is no contingency in things.

I distinguish the antecedent. That it follows that it is not indifferent to truth or falsity, I concede: that it follows that it does not signify a thing indifferent and contingently existing, I deny: for although the proposition is true or false, nevertheless it connotes a thing contingently, although determinately, future: for these two are not repugnant, that an effect be contingent and at the same time determinately future. For it is called contingent on account of the indifference of the cause in actu primo; but it is called determinately future on account of the determination of the same cause in actu secundo, because, namely, that cause which can operate and not operate will in fact operate, and will freely determine itself to the production of the effect at the time signified by that proposition.

They object 2. Several texts of Sacred Scripture, in which God speaks doubtfully about future things, which is an indication that he did not certainly know them, as Matt. 11.: They will perhaps fear my Son: and Jer. 26.: Do not withdraw a word, if perhaps they will hear.

I answer 1. that by this particle "perhaps" there is not signified a doubtful cognition about future things: but first, to show the free choice of man, by which the divine word can be heard or not heard; for the ambiguous word (forsitan), says Jerome on cap. 26. of Jeremiah, cannot suit the Majesty of the Lord, but he speaks in our manner of feeling, so that man's free choice may be saved. 2. To designate the greatest malice of man, from which scarcely anything good can be expected or produced. For so St. Augustine, in tractate 37. in Ioannem, interprets these words, if you knew me, perhaps you would know my Father also; he, he says, because he knows all things, when he says perhaps does not doubt, but rebukes: it is a word of doubt when it is said by a man doubting for this reason, because he does not know; but when it is said by God, since nothing is hidden from God, by that doubt unbelief is reproved, the Divinity does not opine. 3. That Sacred Scripture may signify that the outcome of future things is uncertain to men; whence St. Augustine in Psal. 2., explaining those words: Lest perhaps he be angry, says: perhaps is not properly said on account of uncertainty; but by reason of those who are admonished, who are wont to think with doubt of God's future wrath.

They object 3. If there were in God a certain and infallible knowledge of future contingents, vain and idle would be providence and the solicitude of men as much about temporal as about spiritual things; for whether we are solicitous about them or not, they will infallibly come to pass, since divine foreknowledge cannot be deceived.

I deny the consequence. For when God foreknows and predefines some future effect, he at the same time foreknows and defines the causes and means by which it must come to pass, and so he indeed knows that it will infallibly come to pass, but through such causes and such means: whence, since human industry and solicitude is one of those means and causes by means of which things, spiritual as much as temporal, must be done and come to pass, it must necessarily be employed as much in spiritual as in temporal things: according to that of 2. Peter 1.: Strive to make your calling certain through good works.

They object 4. With Marcion, in Tertullian lib. 2. cap. 5.

If God is good, prescient of the future and powerful to avert evil, why did he permit man, and indeed his image and likeness, yes even his substance, through the census, namely, of the soul, to slip from obedience to the law into death, circumvented by the Devil? For if he is both good, who would not will such a thing to happen: and prescient, who would not impede that it would happen, and powerful, who could drive it away, in no way would that have happened which could not happen under these three conditions of the divine majesty. But if it has happened, it is settled on the contrary that God is to be believed neither good, nor prescient, nor powerful.

Tertullian himself answers in the same place cap. 6. and following, that God was indeed prescient of the future transgression of Adam, which, although he could have prohibited it, he ought not to have, lest, namely, he should injure man's liberty; It was fitting, he says, cap. 6., that God be known as good, and this certainly also as rational.

It was fitting that there be something worthy which would know God. What so worthy could be provided for than the image and likeness of God? And this was good without doubt and rational. It was fitting, therefore, that the image and likeness of God be established with free choice and its own power, in which this very thing, the image and likeness of God, would be accounted, namely, the freedom and power of choice..... For of what sort would it be that man, possessing the whole world, would not first reign in the possession of his own soul, lord of others, servant of himself..... Therefore the whole freedom of choice was conceded to him in both directions, so that he might constantly meet as lord of himself, both by voluntarily preserving the good and by voluntarily avoiding evil; since also, with man otherwise placed under the judgment of God, it was fitting that he render that judgment just from the merits of his choice, namely a free one. Moreover, neither the reward of good nor of evil would be rightly weighed out to him who had been found good or evil by necessity, not by will. For this reason too the law was established not confining but proving freedom, by voluntarily rendering obedience or voluntarily committing transgression; so in both outcomes the freedom of choice lay open.

To these things Tertullian concedes that God had to commit man to his own choice, so that he might thence be rewarded with the prize, if he were an observer of the divine Law, and be subjected to punishments, if he turned out a transgressor. For he could not coerce man without rescinding the freedom of choice conceded to him, which he had permitted by reason and goodness. Which certainly was unbecoming of him.

They object 5. If God knew future contingents, it would follow that foreknowledge of things is to be admitted in him: but the consequent is false: therefore so is the antecedent. The minor is proved from St. Augustine, lib. 2. of the quaestionum ad Simplicianum, q. 2.: What, he says, is foreknowledge except knowledge of future things? But what is future to God, who surpasses all times? For if he holds the things themselves in knowledge, they are not future to him, but present; and through this it can be called not foreknowledge, but knowledge.

I answer. That St. Augustine by these words does not deny to God the cognition of future things, but only wills that divine cognition, since it has all things in its view, should rather be called knowledge than foreknowledge. With him St. Gregory agrees, lib. 2. of the Moralium cap. 25., where he proposes and dissolves the same question thus:

He is said, he says, to foreknow who sees each thing before it comes, and foresees that which is future before it becomes present, etc. But how is God prescient, when nothing is foreknown except things which are future? And we know that to God nothing is future; before whose eyes there are no past things, present things do not pass away, future things do not come to be, since, indeed, everything that was and will be for us is present in his view, and everything that is present he can know rather than foreknow. But soon, because he sees the things that are future to us, and yet they are not always present to him, he is called prescient, although he in no way foresees as future what he sees as present.

— With whom Boethius also agrees, writing thus:

But to God there is always an eternal and present state. His knowledge also, having surpassed every motion of time, remains in the simplicity of its own foreknowledge: and, embracing the infinite spaces of the past and of the future, it considers all things as if they were now being done, in its simple cognition. Therefore, if you wish to weigh the foreknowledge by which he discerns all things, you will more rightly judge that it is not foreknowledge, as it were, of the future, but knowledge of a never-failing instant.

They object some other reasons by which they strive to prove that divine foreknowledge greatly harms the contingency of things and the liberty of men; but we will expressly propose and solve them in the third following Question: but first let there be

Since every act of knowledge necessarily presupposes a formal object moving the intellect to form it, otherwise something would be known without a reason for knowing it: so whenever the knowledge is certain, it likewise requires a formal notion in the object that is altogether certain, otherwise the object would be known more perfectly than it is knowable. It is asked, therefore, in the present circumstances, what that certain and infallible formal notion may be which has so necessary a connection with the uncertain future contingent that it infallibly moves the divine intellect to the knowledge of it. In resolving this difficulty the most keen-sighted theologians labor diligently, and so that their various and manifold opinions may appear more clearly

Note 1. Future contingents are conceivable in two ways, namely either in themselves, or in their causes. In themselves, indeed, either by reason of the determinate truth which they have in themselves and in their objective or entitative being, or by reason of the presence and existence which they have; or in the divine Essence in which they are represented, or in the divine ideas. In their causes, however, either in the proximate and created causes by which they are to be produced, or in the uncreated cause, insofar as they are contained virtually in the divine Omnipotence, which can bestow on them true and real existence. Moreover, according to either mode they can be considered either antecedently to the divine decree, or in the divine decree itself, or after the divine decree: whence the various opinions of the theologians concerning the resolution of the present question can be reduced chiefly to three heads. For some affirm that future contingents are known by God in their objective truth; others, in the divine ideas; others, however, in their entitative being antecedently to the divine decree, namely through that infinite power of God's understanding which penetrates and knows what each created will placed under any state and condition will determinately will. Some judge that they are known in the divine decree foreseen before it is in fact formed. Finally, the rest contend that they are seen by God only in the divine Essence and Omnipotence, the divine decree about their futurity being first presupposed; but what is to be held more truly will appear below.

Note 2. In order that something may be able to have the character of a means leading to the knowledge of another thing, two things are chiefly required. First, that it precede by at least a priority of nature and causality the very thing which it makes known: for if it were purely concomitant and correlative to it, it could not lead to the knowledge of that thing; because since correlatives are simultaneous in knowledge and in nature, they would be known simultaneously, and either could be the reciprocal reason for knowing the other, as is evident in the case of mutual relations, namely Paternity and Filiation. Second, that which has the character of a means of knowledge with respect to another thing must have a necessary, or at least an infallible, connection with it; otherwise it would not be lawful to infer the one from the other: for since the knowledge of one thing from another, or in another, is equivalent to a virtual discourse; and since no discourse is legitimate unless the consequent has an infallible connection with the means and the antecedent: it is necessary that the means which certainly and infallibly leads to the knowledge of another thing have a necessary, or at least an infallible, connection with it.

Note 3. Propositions about a future contingent are determinately true, or false, from eternity for every real instant; so that no real instant can be assigned in which God has not determined Himself, absolutely or conditionally, concerning the futurity or non-futurity of all possible things. Whence, when it is asked whether God knows future contingents before or after the decree, by those particles before and after is signified not a real priority and posteriority, but a priority and posteriority of reason with some foundation in reality, namely by reason of dependence on, or independence from, the decree. Whence to affirm that God knows future contingents before the decree is the same as asserting that He knows them independently of the decree. Hence three signs or instants of reason can be distinguished in the divine Knowledge, in the first of which God knows Himself with knowledge wholly divine, namely by intuitively beholding His divine Essence and all His divine excellencies. In the second He knows all possible things through the knowledge of simple intelligence, antecedently to any decree of His will, namely by determining nothing concerning the futurity and existence of things. In the third, however, He knows future things with the knowledge of vision, namely with a decree about their production going before.

It is asked, therefore, whether in the second sign of reason, in which a decree about the futurity of things is not yet conceived as formed, God knows future contingents either in esse entitativo, which they will have in themselves, or in esse obiectivo which they have in Himself, or in the decree to be formed, but not yet formed and exercised, about their futurity, or in the divine ideas representing future things; or finally whether He knows them only after His divine decree has been formed, and insofar as they are contained virtually in the divine Omnipotence, or in the divine Essence representing them.

Since, however, it would be too laborious, and foreign to our undertaking, to discuss each of those opinions individually, therefore, striving for brevity and deeming it worthwhile to strengthen our own opinion rather than to overthrow the foundations of others, let this suffice:

Only conclusion. — God infallibly and determinately knows future contingents in His Essence, the decree about their futurity being first presupposed. This is the common opinion among the faithful interpreters and followers of St. Thomas and of the Subtle Doctor: and the Subtle Doctor openly teaches it in 1. dist. 39. q. unica n. 23., where, after he had expressly proved that the divine will and the divine decree are the primary root and cause of the futurity and contingency of things, he proposes two ways in which the divine intellect can be said to have known those future contingents: First, that God sees in Himself the decree and volition about the things to be produced, and likewise sees that the divine will is immutable and cannot be impeded; and consequently sees that those things which He decrees to be future are truly future: He proposes, however, another way of speaking, namely that those future contingents are known only in the divine Essence, after the decree about their futurity has been formed, and this by a simple intuition. He rejects, however, the former way as less probable, because it seems to argue some discourse in God; for this knowledge, which God would thus have of future contingents, seems to be deduced in this manner: It is decreed that this be future; but what is decreed is invariable, because my will is immutable; therefore this will certainly be future; which inference is truly discursive and unbecoming to God. Whence the Doctor, proposing another more probable and truer way of speaking, says:

It can be put otherwise, that the divine intellect either offers simple things, one of which is contingent in reality: or if it offers a complex, it offers it as neutral: and the will choosing one part, namely the conjunction of these for some now, in reality makes that determinately true: this will be for that now. This being determinately true, the Essence is the reason for the divine intellect to understand that truth: and this naturally, as far as it is on the part of the Essence. So that just as it naturally understands all necessary principles, as it were before the act of the divine will, because their truth does not depend on that act, and they would be known by the divine intellect if per impossibile it were not willing: so the divine Essence is the reason for knowing those things in that prior instant of nature, because then they are true. Not indeed that those truths move the divine intellect, nor even their terms, to apprehend such truth: because then the divine intellect would be debased, since it would suffer from something other than its essence: but just as the divine Essence is the reason for knowing simple things, so also such complexes; but then they are not true contingents, because there is nothing then through which they have determinate truth. Once, however, the determination of the divine will is posited, they are now true, namely for that second instant, and this same will be the reason for the divine intellect which there was in the first (of understanding those things) which are now true in the second instant, and would have been known in the first instant, if they had been in the first instant.

By these words the Doctor lays open the whole order which the divine intellect and the divine will observe in decreeing and certainly knowing the futurity of contingent things; so that first the divine intellect offers to the will the concepts of possible things, which can exist or not exist, namely if the decree of the will comes or is denied: Then, the divine will freely determines itself to produce some of them, and decrees their futurity; which being done, the Essence, from its infinite power of representing any true being, immediately exhibits and represents to the divine intellect the futurity of those things as to be certainly known; and so, in the mind of the Doctor, the divine intellect does not know certainly and infallibly the futurity of contingent things except in the divine Essence and with the divine decree presupposed. — The Angelic Doctor embraces and defends the same opinion, as the more skilled modern interpreters of him contend; and Gonet confirms the matter with many texts and arguments of that Angelic Doctor, Disp. 1. De Scientia futurorum contingentium, art. 5., but especially from lib. 1. Contra Gentes cap. 68. in the second argument, where the Angelic Doctor reasons thus:

God, by knowing His essence, knows other things, just as effects are known through the knowledge of the cause; therefore God knows all things by knowing His essence, to which His causality extends; it extends, however, to the operations of the intellect and of the will; therefore God knows the thoughts and affections of the mind. And in argument 3. he speaks thus: Just as the being of God is first, and through this the cause of every being: so His understanding is first, and through this the cause of every intellectual operation. Just as, therefore, God by knowing His being knows the being of anything whatsoever: so by knowing His understanding and willing, He knows every thought and will, that is, nolition. Finally he concludes: And so causality remains in the first cause, which is God, with respect to the movements of the will, so that God, by knowing Himself, can know things of this kind.

From these passages that argument can be deduced according to St. Thomas: God knows the free acts of our will in His essence as in a cause: but the divine Essence is not their cause except as determined through the free decree of His will, since God is not a natural agent but a free one; therefore, according to St. Thomas, God knows the free acts of our will in His decree.

The Conclusion is proved. First, indeed, by the authority of the holy Fathers expressly affirming that the foreknowledge of future things is founded on the decree of the divine will; and this first from St. Dionysius, already often praised, affirming that God knows all things in His essence as in a cause; but the divine Essence is not the cause of futurity except insofar as it is determined through the free decree of the divine will. For God does not act from the necessity of nature, but from the good pleasure of His will, according to that saying of the Apostle to the Ephesians 1. He works all things according to the counsel of His will: therefore God knows all future contingents in His essence, the decree of His will being first presupposed. — It is confirmed from St. Hilary 9. De Trinitate: What God, he says, decreed to do, He knew in His will. Likewise from St. Augustine, lib. 26. Contra Faustum cap. 4., where, giving the reason why he does not know whether something will be future, he says: Therefore I do not know, because what the will of God holds concerning this matter is hidden from me: that, however, does not escape me, that it will without doubt be future, if the will of God holds this. Which consequence would be null, if the foreknowledge of good works were not founded on the decree of the divine will: therefore it is truly so.

It is therefore proved by reason. Future contingents cannot be known before they have the character of future; but they do not have it without the divine decree being presupposed; therefore they cannot be known before the divine decree. The major is evident, for a thing is knowable in the way in which it is, and so future things cannot be known determinately before they are conceived to have determinate futurity. The minor is proved; The decree of God is the first root and first principle of the determinate futurity of things: therefore antecedently to it things can neither be, nor be conceived as, determinately future. The Antecedent is proved: that is the first root and first principle of the determinate futurity of things which first leads them from the state of possibility to the state of futurity: but that is the divine decree itself: for since God is not a natural agent but a free one, He does not operate, nor does He produce anything, except from the free determination of His will; and consequently, since possible things are of themselves indeterminate to existing or not existing, they are not determined to future existence except through the divine will. — It is confirmed: creatures can be considered in a threefold state, namely of possibility, of futurity, and of existence; in which states they necessarily depend on God as on the first Principle; in the state indeed of possibility they depend on the divine intellect first producing them in esse intelligibili, and completely on the divine omnipotence, which can produce them; in the state of futurity they depend on the divine decree, determining the power of God to bestow on them existence at such a determinate time: in the state, however, of existence, they depend on the actual influx of God producing and conserving them in esse: therefore, just as it is repugnant that something be possible independently of the intellect and power of God, and existent independently of the actual influx of God: so likewise it is repugnant that something be, or be conceived as, future independently of the divine decree, whether absolute or conditional.

Proof 2. If contingent things were determinately future antecedently to the absolute or conditional decree of God, such futurity would belong to them either from themselves and from their own nature, or from the causality of God, or from the efficacy of another cause; but neither of these can be asserted. Not indeed the first; then because it would follow that those future things would be necessarily and ex natura rei, not indeed freely and contingently; and so God could not bring it about that future things were not; for what belongs to something from itself and from its own nature belongs to it necessarily, nor can it be impeded by God. Then because things have futurity from eternity from the same principle from which they have existence in time; but future contingents do not have existence in time from themselves, nor from their own nature; therefore neither futurity from eternity. Not even the second; for since God is not a natural agent but a free one ad extra, no causality can be in Him, nor any conceived, antecedently to the decree and free determination of His will. Not, finally, the third; for since secondary causes depend on the determination and concurrence, if no causality and determination concerning creatures existed in God, as in truth none exists before the divine decree about producing them, likewise no efficacy can be conceived in the secondary causes from which that determinate futurity of things could proceed.

Finally; This same truth is proved from the brief but efficacious overthrow and refutation of the other opinions. If future contingents could be known by God before the decree, then chiefly first either in His Ideas, as Egidius Romanus teaches in 1. dist. 38., asserting that God knows future contingents before the decree in His ideas, or in His essence precisely, insofar as it has the character of an idea or of an impressed species; or secondly in the supercomprehension of secondary causes and of free choice, as Molina asserts in Disputation four, saying that God, antecedently to His decree and the determination of His will, by His infinite power of understanding penetrates and knows what each created will placed under any state and condition will in fact will, and toward which part it will incline; which penetration and most perfect knowledge of the human will he therefore calls supercomprehension, so that the divine knowledge may be distinguished from the angelic, which, although it comprehends the will of man, nevertheless does not know in it our free acts; or thirdly; He would know them in the decree as future and to be formed in the following sign or instant of reason, as Suarez teaches lib. 2. De Scientia Dei, cap. 8.; or finally in the objective truth of those future contingents, which Vasquez and some other recent authors say they have independently of the divine decree; but neither of those can truly be affirmed; therefore it remains that those future and free contingents be known in the divine Essence, with the divine decree presupposed.

The minor is proved with respect to the first part. God cannot know creatures either in His ideas, or in His Essence having the character of an idea, except in the way in which they are represented in it; but antecedently to the decree creatures are not represented in the divine Essence as future, but only as merely possible; therefore in it they cannot be known as determinately future, but only as merely possible. The major is evident. The minor likewise; then because all things antecedently to the divine decree are in the state of mere possibility, and are indifferent to futurity or non-futurity; then because the divine Essence antecedently to the decree represents naturally and necessarily, and such representation belongs to the natural knowledge and that of simple intelligence, not indeed to the free knowledge and that of vision; and so such knowledge would be necessary, not indeed free. Nor does it matter that the divine Essence antecedently to the decree has infinite power in representing; for from that it follows only that it represents all things which are representable, and in the way in which they are representable. Whence, since antecedently to the divine decree about the futurity of things nothing is representable as future, but only as possible: therefore neither can they be known in them certainly and infallibly. The foundations of Molina will be proposed and solved, by overthrowing middle knowledge, of which he boasts so greatly, but vainly, as devised by himself. — The third part of the same aforementioned minor likewise appears false: then because the decree of God cannot be conceived as future: therefore neither can God know future contingents in His decree as future in the following sign: then because, in order that God might foreknow His decree, He would have to distinguish, in our manner, instants of reason in the indivisible instant of eternity: but this is repugnant to the perfection of the same divine intellect, namely that it should distinguish those things which in reality are not distinct a parte rei: then because if God, in a sign of reason antecedent to the existence of His decree, knows it as future, He will know it as future necessarily and not freely: but this is absurd and repugnant to divine freedom: The sequel of the major is clear: because what is known as future must be known as determined in its cause to exist in the following instant: but in that sign, in which God would know His decree as future, that decree would not be determined freely but necessarily; otherwise it would have to be determined through another decree, and so on to infinity; for every free determination of the divine will is a decree: therefore, etc.; then finally because if the divine decree had the character of future, it would have it either in its actual entity, or in its termination: not the first, for this is repugnant to divine immutability: not even the second, because in the termination futurity is not understood unless futurity is also understood in the term; but in the term of the divine decree no futurity is understood prior in reason to the decree being posited: then because the term, or object, of the divine decree is the futurity of created existence: but created existence has this futurity prior in reason to the decree being posited: then because if such an object had the being of futurity before the decree, it would have that being either from itself, or from another: but neither can be said, as was proved above: therefore it can in no way have future being antecedently to the decree.

— Fourthly, finally, the same minor is clear with respect to the last part, namely that future contingents cannot be known in their objective truth antecedent to the decree: then because objective truth consists in the connection of the predicate with the subject; but in the sign antecedent to the divine decree no such connection can exist, since there is no cause, neither divine nor created, which joins them together: not indeed a created one, as is clear; not even a divine one, because this would be either the divine intellect or the divine omnipotence; but not the intellect, for that is not the cause of the futurity of things: nor even the omnipotence, which does not operate concerning creatures except consequently to the divine decree: therefore likewise in that sign there is no determinate objective truth of things contingently future: then because every determinate objective truth is necessarily founded in some being; for truth is a property of being: but there is no being in which that objective truth of contingent things could be founded before the decree: for it would be founded either in esse which they have in themselves, or in esse which they have in their causes. Not the first, for contingents, as long as they are future, have no being in themselves. Not even the second, for since the secondary causes, from which they could proceed, are indeterminate and impedible, neither can they have certain and determinate being in them.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF SUAREZ ARE SOLVED.

He objects 1. Suarez: God conceives by reason that His will can will, before He conceives it as willing: therefore He can also conceive by reason that it will will, before conceiving it as now willing. It is confirmed by the example of an Angel, whom if God had created from eternity as operating, God could know him by reason beforehand as about to will for another sign, because He would first have known that he could will, before that he de facto wills. — I deny the consequence: For more is required to conceive something as to be posited, than to conceive it as positable: for to this latter is required something determining the positable itself to being posited: but with respect to the divine decree nothing can be conceived that would determine it to being posited, or from non-future to being future. — To the confirmation: I deny the parity; for on the hypothesis that God had created the Angel from eternity as operating, v. g. as loving, He would de facto indeed first know such dilection as posterior, and in a certain way future with respect to the nature of that Angel, because in creatures being is prior to operating; and this especially since the substance of the Angel and its dilection are measured only per accidens by eternity, as by a measure not proper and essential to them: but it is otherwise with God, in whom being is not prior to operating, and whose essence as well as operation and decree are measured by eternity, as by a measure proper and essential to Him.

He objects 2. For the divine decree to be known as in the future, it suffices that in some sign it abstract from actual existence; and in this way it truly abstracts in the first sign of eternity, in which it is not yet conceived as posited: therefore in this first sign, by reason before it is posited, it is conceived as future: the minor is evident, for in that sign of reason the divine will is not yet conceived as determined to create, v. g., man; for it is conceived as determining itself to this creation only in a posterior sign. — I answer 1. by denying the major: for that something in some sign be seen as future, it does not suffice that for that sign it abstract from being; for precisely from the fact that it abstracts from being, it is not deemed more future than not future; since even non-futures and mere possibles abstract from being. Therefore beyond the abstraction from being, there is required for the notion of future that something be given from which it can be determined from possible to futurition: but nothing before the divine decree can so determine: therefore neither can it have the notion of future. — I answer 2. That would indeed be true if that instant were a real sign and in quo, but not if it were a sign of reason and a quo, as in fact it is. For that sign in quo the divine will is conceived as indifferent to forming the decree about creating or not creating man is not a real sign, but one of reason, and therefore does not suffice for the true notion of future; otherwise the Son could be said to be future with respect to the Father, because in the sign of origin and of reason the Father is conceived before the Son.

He objects 3. In that prior sign, in which God precedes His free decrees and is conceived as having the knowledge of simple intelligence, this proposition, God will not decree in the following sign to create the world, is false: because it is not conformed to its object and consequently its contradictory, namely, God will decree in the following sign to create the world, is true: therefore the decree about the creation of the world in that prior sign is determinately future, and consequently is knowable as such by the divine intellect. — I answer 1. God does not precede His free decrees by some priority and instant in quo, but only a quo. Second, it is false that of contradictory propositions one is determinately true and the other false in a sign preceding the divine decree, because nothing is future before that decree. Third I say: indeed one or the other of the contradictories must be verified for any instant of real duration; but not for any instant of nature, or of reason; for in that prior sign one can prescind from both; which is evident by the example: for in the prior sign, in which humanity is prior to risibility, there is neither risibility, otherwise the nature itself would not be posterior, nor non-risibility, otherwise it could not belong to humanity:

Finally he objects: God for that sign of reason in which He is not yet conceived as having the free decree, comprehends His essence and will: but He cannot comprehend it unless in it He knows His decrees as future in the following sign; since comprehensive knowledge is most perfect, it must extend to everything that is contained in its object: therefore since the decrees are directly contained really in the will and essence of God, God cannot know His essence and His will without likewise knowing His decrees.

I answer 1. That inference would be true if some priority in a real instant were given between necessary and free acts; and it would be true that God in a real instant would first know Himself, before He formed the decrees; but since that supposition is false, that also which is inferred from it is false.

I answer 2. That although God in that prior sign, in which only natural acts are conceived, and free acts are not yet conceived, comprehends His essence; yet He is not said to know His decrees as future; for since the divine will in that sign is conceived as indifferent and indeterminate toward the production of things, it cannot be a means for determinately knowing those decrees; for in an indifferent and indeterminate principle, a certain and determinate effect cannot be known.

The foundations of others are set forth, and are resolved.

The Assertors of the last opinion object: the reason and force of contradiction necessarily brings it about that one of two contradictory propositions is determinately true and the other determinately false, as these propositions, If Paul be called at such a time and occasion, he will truly consent: And if he be called at such a time and occasion he will not consent, are truly contradictory for that prior sign antecedent to the divine decree; therefore for the sign prior to the divine decree, one of them is determinately true and the other determinately false, and consequently it is knowable by God before the decree.

I answer 1. By distinguishing the major: the reason of contradiction requires that one of the contradictories be determinately true and the other determinately false for every real instant, I concede: for every instant of reason, I deny: and the minor being conceded, I deny the consequence.

I answer 2. By denying the minor: namely that those propositions in the sign antecedent to the divine decree are contradictory, because for a contradiction, the essence of the proposition must necessarily be supposed. But since before the decree nothing at all is future, or not future; therefore neither is there then the essence of a proposition which would enunciate the thing as future or not future for that sign, and so neither is there a contradiction.

They insist: Truth and falsity are properties of the proposition, as is taught in Logic: therefore they must belong to the proposition for every imaginable sign in which this proposition can be conceived: but those propositions can be conceived antecedently to the divine decree: therefore in that sign they are true, or false.

I distinguish the major. truth and falsity are properties of the formal proposition, I concede: of the material, I deny: but in that sign antecedent to the divine decree they are not propositions formally, but only materially. Or otherwise, truth and falsity are respective properties of the proposition, I concede: absolute, I deny: for just as equality together with inequality are properties of quantity, not indeed absolute, but respective; because one quantity is said equal or unequal by order to another which it exceeds, or by which it is exceeded: so likewise truth or falsity are said to be respective properties, because they are taken by order to the object, so that from the conformity or difformity which they have to it, they are true or false. Whence if the object in some sign of reason is not determinately future, or not future, even the propositions will not be determinately true or false, but indifferent to truth and falsity.

You will object 1. In general against the Conclusion: if divine Knowledge of contingently future things were founded in the divine decree and presupposed it, it would follow that the Knowledge of Vision is formally distinguished, and is a divine attribute distinct from the Knowledge of simple intelligence: but the consequent is false: therefore also the antecedent. The sequence of the major is evident, for the distinction of the sciences is sought from the part of the means and motive; but the motive of each science would be diverse: for that one would know possible things in omnipotence, but this one would know them in the decree.

I deny the sequence of the major, and I distinguish its proof. The sciences are distinguished by diverse motives and means in quibus, I concede; a quibus, I deny: that is, they are indeed distinguished by diverse means in which they are formally represented, but not by those a quibus such representation is, as it were, causally. But those sciences behold their objects in the same means, namely in the divine Essence, which represents possible and future things, the former indeed to be seen through the knowledge of simple intelligence, the latter through the knowledge of vision. Therefore although the motives a quibus are diverse, namely because things are not completely possible except through omnipotence, nor are they future except through the divine decree; yet they should not be distinct sciences, because both Omnipotence and the Decree of God are only, as it were, conditions applying His intellect to seeing possible and future things through that distinct Knowledge of simple intelligence and of vision.

You will object 2. God knows future sins: but He does not know them through His decree: therefore He does not know future things through the decree. The minor is evident; for God does not decree future sins, otherwise He would be the author of sin. — I distinguish the minor. God does not decree future sins by an absolute and positive decree, I concede; by a permissive decree, I deny: and so the divine decree is twofold, one indeed Positive, which decrees to concur positively to the physical entity of any action, whether good or evil: the other Permissive, by which He has determined to permit the malice of sin, namely by not suspending His concurrence to that physical action from which such malice follows; because it is of the notion

of universal Providence, that it permits some defects both in the natural and in the moral order, so that from this the beauty of the universe may shine forth more, and the order of justice may appear. Whence St. Augustine in the Enchiridio, c. 5: Nothing is done unless the Omnipotent wills it to be done, either by Himself doing it, or by permitting it to be done: by the former decree He does not decree sin, but only by the latter.

You will press: For something to have the notion of a means leading to the knowledge of another, it must have a certain and infallible connection with it; but the permissive decree does not have a certain connection with future sins: therefore through it God cannot certainly foreknow sin. The major is evident: The minor is proved: The permissive decree imports two things, namely the purpose of concurring to the entity of sin, and of conferring on the part of the first cause everything that is necessary for the second cause to act. Moreover, it also imports the suspension of efficacious help for resisting temptation, or for performing the commanded act of virtue: but the permissive decree in neither of these ways has a necessary connection with future sin: not indeed because of the suspension of help, otherwise it would follow that the human will with only the general concurrence would be determined to evil, and could not produce any moral good; nor yet because of the purpose of concurring to the entity of sin, otherwise God would be the author of sin, because He would cause that from which the malice would necessarily be caused: therefore through the permissive decree He cannot know future sin.

I deny the minor. and also the minor of that proof, for God in both ways sees future sin: first indeed by reason of the denied efficacious help, because to such denial sin infallibly follows, not by a physical consequence and of causality, but by a consequence, as it were, logical and of inference. For since that will cannot overcome grave temptations without efficacious help, it follows that at its denial the will is overcome and consents to sin. God likewise sees the same in the purpose of concurring to the physical entity of sin, because since this entity has a connection with the sinful moral act, it follows that in concurring to this entity God also sees that moral deformity which is connected to it. Yet it does not thence follow that He is the cause of sin, because He does not per se concur to that deformity; for the reason that that is not an effect, but a defect, as we will open more fully in the following Disputation on the divine will:

This celebrated question was debated not only by the theological Doctors and by all the more recent among the holy Fathers, but also by the more skilled pagan philosophers, some of whom, as was observed in the previous Question, being unable to reconcile divine foreknowledge with the contingency of future things and with human freedom, denied to God the foreknowledge of future things: others, however, said that there is no contingency in things, and no freedom in men, but that all things come to pass by a certain blind necessity. From which it is evident how difficult is the resolution of the present Question, and how far it escapes the weak grasp of the human mind, unless it is first illumined and strengthened by the light of faith. In order, therefore, that this hidden truth may shine forth more evidently

To be supposed 1. The foreknowledge which God has of things that are to be freely future is not productive of those future things, nor does it influence their futurition in any way; rather, it presupposes them, just as the effect follows the cause. For this divine foreknowledge is a purely speculative act, immanent in God and not operative ad extra, by which God Himself merely contemplates and sees the object presented to Him by the creature, an object He certainly would not see, if it were not offered by the creature: indeed He would see the opposite, if the opposite were done by the creature. So that in that divine foreknowledge God is like a mirror representing diverse objects and the free gestures of men, and the movements opposed to them; or like a man who from a lofty tower should behold all those things which are done on the low-lying plain, and should see some men falling into a pit, others fighting with an adversary, others dancing, others doing something else: which diverse vision certainly would in no way be the cause of those diverse actions; rather, those diverse actions would be the cause of that diverse vision. And so, keeping the proportion, we must reason in the same way about divine foreknowledge; for since the divine intellect is of itself indifferent to knowing the futurition of a thing, or its non-futurition, it is as it were determined to see the futurition by the thing itself, which is truly going to be future, the divine decree being supposed: whence future things could rather be called the causes of divine foreknowledge, than foreknowledge be called the cause of future things; as the Greek holy Fathers openly teach: Origen indeed, in l. 3. in Epist. ad Rom., explaining those words of cap. 8., Whom He foreknew and predestined, says thus: In the foreknowledge of God lies neither the cause of our salvation nor of our perdition. For a thing will not therefore be, because He knows it to be future; but because it is future, it is known by God before it comes to be. For even if we imagine that God does not foreknow something future, without doubt it will be.

The same Justin Martyr, in question 58 ad Orthodoxos, where, giving the reason why the foreknowledge of God was not the cause of the sin of Adam and of the Angels, speaks thus: Foreknowledge is not the cause of that which is future: but that which is future is the cause of foreknowledge. For indeed the future does not follow upon foreknowledge, but foreknowledge follows upon the future; and the one who foreknows is by no means the cause of the future.

Similarly, Saint Athanasius in the sermon de Cruce Domini says that they did not dare such things against Christ as serving the Prophetic words; but they perpetrated them of their own accord, spontaneously and willingly, so that the Prophet is not the author or cause of those things: but their own will, or rather they themselves were the cause that the Prophets foretold such things about them. The Latin Fathers think the same, and above all St. Jerome on cap. 26. of Jeremiah: For it is not, he says, because God knows that something is future that it is therefore future: but because it is future, God knows it as the foreknower of future things: and Augustine, lib. 5. De Civitate, cap. 10.

For a man does not therefore sin because God foreknew that he would sin: rather, for this reason it is not doubted that he sins, when he sins, because He, whose foreknowledge cannot be deceived, foreknew not fate, not fortune, not something else, but that the man himself would sin; who, if he be unwilling, certainly does not sin; but if he should be unwilling to sin, this also He foreknew.

Doubtless because God accommodates Himself to the freedom of the creature, so that He foreknows nothing other than what it will freely have done or omitted, so much so that the free determination of the creature is, as it were, the rule and measure of that divine foreknowledge. Finally, St. Anselm in the Elucidatorio, around the middle: All the things which men were going to do as future, God foreknew as future, and foretold through the Prophets that they were to be done. Foreknowledge, however, brought no necessity upon them that they should be done; rather, they themselves brought the necessity, when they fulfilled their own will. By which it plainly appears that divine foreknowledge is not the cause of future things, nor are things therefore future because they were foreknown by God: but they are therefore foreknown, because they are future.

To be supposed 2. That a twofold necessity can be distinguished, namely antecedent and consequent, or of the consequent and of the consequence. That is called antecedent which does not presuppose the use of freedom, nor the exercise of the will, as, v. gr., a man is necessarily risible, because he is rational, independently of man's freedom. The consequent necessity is that which arises from a supposition following the use of freedom, and depends in some way on our will, so that such necessity would not have to follow from it, unless our will freely determined itself. Whence just as the will can absolutely not determine itself to the act which it freely produces, so it can bring it about that such a supposition never exists in the nature of things. Thus it is necessary that something be future ex hypothesi and on the supposition that it will be future. For it cannot simultaneously be future and not future in the composite sense. For just as it implies a contradiction for the same thing to be and not to be at the same time, so likewise it implies a contradiction for the same thing to be future and not future. The former necessity excludes the freedom of the act, because it certainly follows from a supposition antecedent to the use of freedom, such as, v. g., is the necessity of dying; for when the necessity is antecedent, then it is not in the power of the will to bring it about that, given such a supposition, the act which necessarily follows from it does not exist. The latter necessity, however, namely the consequent, does not destroy, but preserves the whole use of freedom, such as is the necessity of speaking while someone in fact freely speaks, because it neither takes away nor impedes the free potency; but rather presupposes it and its free exercise. Whence although while the will wills it cannot not will, because whatever is, when it is, necessarily is, nevertheless it can absolutely not will, because it was free to will or not to will.

To be supposed 3. From the Doctor, on the first book of the Sentences, dist. 39, single question, number 26, this is the difference between the determinate truth of propositions about the past, about the present, and about the future: that, says the Doctor, there is not a like truth in those about the future as in those about the present and the past. In present and past things, indeed, there is determinate truth, so that one of the extremes is posited, and, as it is understood to be posited, it is not in the power of the cause that it be posited, because although it is in the power of the cause, as it is naturally prior to the effect, to posit the effect or not to posit it, nevertheless the effect is not understood to be already posited in esse. Such, however, is not the determination on the part of the future, because although for some intellect one part is determinately true, and even one part is determinately true in itself, even if no intellect should apprehend it, nevertheless not so but that it is in the power of the cause, for that instant, to posit the opposite. By which he indicates that the necessity of the consequent is greater in the past and the present than in the future, because the past and the present are already outside their causes, so that the will cannot in any way take away or impede their position: the position of the future, however, since it is not yet outside its cause, can still be judged capable of having that supposition taken away and impeded, at least hypothetically: for when the will is not yet determined to willing, it is still judged able to suspend and not elicit the future volition; but where it has in fact willed, or wills, it can no longer suspend that volition. Hence consequent freedom is less with respect to a present or past act than with respect to a future act. Whence if, notwithstanding the consequent necessity, my actual speech is free, much more will my future speech also be free, notwithstanding such necessity.

First conclusion. — The certainty and infallibility of divine foreknowledge does not destroy the contingency of things. This is common among Theologians and

Proof 1. Divine foreknowledge does not produce, but presupposes, its object: therefore it does not destroy, but presupposes, the contingency of things. The antecedent is clear from the authorities of the holy Fathers cited in the first supposition, which is also urged by reason. The knowledge which is the cause of a work is that which directs the will and power of the artisan, from the knowledge of the one operating, in producing his work; but that which does not direct the artisan to produce the work, but the work would come to pass just the same, even if it did not exist, manifestly is not the cause of the work, but rather presupposes that work: such, however, is divine foreknowledge, which although in time it precedes existing things, nevertheless does not precede, but presupposes, their futurition represented in the divine Essence and decreed by the divine will: therefore it does not produce the futurition of a contingent thing, but presupposes it, and so does not destroy its contingency.

Proof 2. The contingency of things stands with their determination, made by the divine will, to one of the two parts of a contradiction: therefore much more will it stand with the infallibility of divine Knowledge, which presupposes that determination. The antecedent is clear. First, because a future contingent will come to pass through contingent causes and causes not operating necessarily: therefore although its existence is determined by the divine will, it will be no less contingent. — Secondly, a cause does not take away from something that which belongs to it from its formal notion, unless it confers on it something opposed: but the divine will determining a future contingent confers on it nothing intrinsic which is opposed to its contingency: therefore this determination does not destroy the contingency. — Finally, the determination of a future contingent is wholly free, and about a thing truly contingent; for in the same instant of eternity in which the divine will determined the thing as future, it could have not determined it as future: therefore that futurition was determined not necessarily, but freely. — The first consequence is also clear: for if the divine determination, which precedes and produces the futurition of things, does not destroy it, much less will knowledge, which presupposes that contingent futurition, destroy it. Add that, once the determination of the divine will about something future is made, that thing would come to pass infallibly, even if per impossibile God did not know it: therefore much less does the certainty of divine knowledge destroy the contingency of future things, than the determination of the will decreeing that futurition.

Proof 3. Just as our intuition is related to those things which we see, in the same way divine knowledge is related to those things which God intuits: but our intuition imposes no necessity on the things seen by us: therefore neither does the divine intuition impose any necessity on the contingent things known by Him. Whence Boethius, book 5 De consolatione, prose 6: What, then, do you demand that those things which are illumined by the divine light become necessary, when not even men make all the things which they see necessary? Does your intuition add any necessity to the things which you discern as present?

You will say 1. What God necessarily knew will necessarily come to pass: but God necessarily knew future things, v. g., that the Antichrist will be: therefore he will necessarily come to pass. The major is clear: for in a good argument, in which the antecedent is necessary, the consequent also is necessary: but the antecedent of this consequence, God knew that the Antichrist would be: therefore he will be, is necessary, namely, God knew, because that knowledge is eternal and absolute, since it is the very substance of God, and therefore is necessary: therefore also the consequent, namely, the Antichrist will be, is likewise necessary. But what is necessary is not contingent, because necessary and contingent are opposite modes of being; for the necessary is that which cannot not be, the contingent, however, that which can not be: therefore if divine knowledge is necessary, future things will not be contingent.

I distinguish the major. That they will necessarily come to pass, with absolute and antecedent necessity, I deny: with hypothetical and consequent necessity, I concede. Similarly, regarding the proof, I say that the antecedent of that consequence, God knew that the Antichrist would be: therefore he will be, is not necessary with simple and absolute necessity, but only with consequent and hypothetical necessity; for just as God freely decreed that the Antichrist would be, so likewise He could freely decree that the Antichrist would not be; and therefore just as He knows that the Antichrist will be, so likewise He could know that the Antichrist would not be; and consequently His divine knowledge about the future Antichrist is necessary only with the necessity of the consequent, and from the presupposed free divine decree about the futurition of the Antichrist. Nor does it matter that that divine knowledge is simpliciter necessary as to entity, because it is really the same as the divine Essence, which is the supremely necessary being: for it is not less free as to its termination upon secondary objects, upon which it terminates as they are. Whence it sees contingent things as contingent, and necessary things as necessary.

You will say 2. If divine foreknowledge cannot be deceived and is altogether certain, the things which God foreknew will necessarily come to pass: therefore either divine knowledge is not infallible and certain, or the things which are foreknown by God are not contingent, but necessary.

I distinguish the consequence of the antecedent. That they will necessarily come to pass with simple and absolute necessity, which would destroy the contingency of things, I deny; with conditioned and consequent necessity, which does not destroy, but presupposes, the contingency of things, I concede.

Second conclusion. — Divine foreknowledge does not hinder human freedom. This is of faith, and it is clear from all those texts of Sacred Scripture by which human freedom is established, but especially Deuteronomy, cap. 30: I call heaven and earth to witness today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose therefore life, that both you and your seed may live. Iosue 24.¹ A choice is given you: choose today what pleases you, whom you ought especially to serve. By which words Iosue entices the children of Israel to obey the true God freely, to whom all responded: We will serve our God, and we will be obedient to His precepts.

Psal. 94.: Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts. That is, if you perceive the internal voice and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, acquiesce to it and do not resist. It presupposes, therefore, that it is in their power either to obey the divine admonition or to resist it. — Ecclesiastici 15. vers. 14.: God from the beginning constituted man, and left him in the hand of his own counsel. And vers. 17.: He has set before you water and fire: stretch forth your hand to whichever you will. Before man are life and death, good and evil: that which shall please him shall be given him, etc. From which I argue thus: that which stands with freedom does not hinder our freedom: but the certainty and infallibility of divine foreknowledge stands with freedom: therefore it does not destroy it.

Proof 2. and this by the reason of St. Augustine lib. 5. De Civit. Dei, cap. 9. where he teaches that although God necessarily foresees the things which we are about to do, nevertheless they are to be done by us not necessarily, but freely, because in foreseeing our wills He also foreknew that they would operate spontaneously; for, answering Cicero, who says: If there is a certain order of causes, by which everything that comes to be comes to be, all things come to pass by fate, he says:

It does not follow that if the whole order of causes is certain to God, therefore nothing happens in the free choice of our will; for our wills themselves are in the order of causes, which is certain to God and is contained in His foreknowledge, since human wills are the causes of human works; and so He who foreknew all the causes of things certainly could not be ignorant, among those causes, of our wills too, which He foreknew as the causes of our works.

It is evident, therefore, that divine knowledge does not hinder freedom, but rather presupposes and establishes freedom. For if it hindered it, it would destroy itself, because it would know that something would be free which would not be free, nor would it know a free thing as being truly free.

Proof 3. That which presupposes freedom does not destroy it: but divine foreknowledge presupposes freedom: therefore, etc. The minor is proved. For knowledge presupposes the knowable: therefore knowledge of the future presupposes the future. The antecedent is evident: the consequence is proved from all those sayings of the holy Fathers in the first supposition. It is confirmed moreover from St. Jerome, Dialogo contra Pelagian.: Adam did not sin because He had known this as future; but God foreknew, as God, that he was going to do it by his own will. D. Leo, serm. 16.: The Lord did not thrust the impious hands of the raging men upon Himself, but admitted them; He did not, by foreknowing what was to be done, act that it should be done. St. John Damascene, Dialogo adversus Manichaeos:

That foreknowledge was by no means the cause to the Devil of his becoming evil is evident from this: for neither does a physician, while he foreknows a future disease, supply a cause to the disease. But the cause of the disease indeed consists in a perverse and immoderate manner of life, while the foreknowledge of the physician is a proof of his own learning. The cause of the foreknowledge, moreover, is this, that it was going to be so.

And Augustinus lib. 5. De Civit. Dei, cap. 6:

Therefore it is not for this reason that there is nothing in our will, because He foreknew what would be in our will. For it is not because He foreknew this that He foreknew nothing. Moreover, if He who foreknew what would be in our will foreknew not nothing, but something: assuredly, with Him foreknowing, there is something in our will. Wherefore we are in no way compelled, either, retaining the foreknowledge of God, to take away the free choice of the will, or, retaining the free choice of the will, to deny that God is the foreknower of future things (which is impious): but we embrace both, and we confess both faithfully and truthfully, the former that we may believe rightly, the latter that we may live rightly.

By which it is evident that divine foreknowledge presupposes our free acts, and so does not hinder them.

You will say. Divine foreknowledge presupposes the decree: but what is decreed by God is necessary, not free: therefore divine foreknowledge presupposes a necessary thing, not a free one. The major is clear from the preceding Question. The minor, however, is proved: that is necessary which cannot not be; but what is decreed by God cannot not be: therefore it is necessary.

I distinguish the major. That what is decreed is necessary with consequent necessity, I concede; with antecedent, I deny. For just as God decreed that the thing would be future, so likewise He could freely decree that it would not be future. And so although the thing decreed by God as future cannot not be future, because what is truly future cannot not be future, just as what is truly present cannot not be present: nevertheless this necessity is only consequent upon the free determination of God about future things. This consequent necessity, moreover, does not destroy freedom, but presupposes it; for God does not decree the future acts of our freedom, except where, in the instant of His eternity to which all things are objectively present, He sees it freely determining itself to its acts; for He does not predetermine it physically, but condetermines it, as we have proved in morals and in physics.

From the preceding Question it is clear that all theologians agree among themselves in asserting a certain knowledge in God concerning contingents that are absolutely future; but their opinion is not the same concerning contingents that are only conditionally future, that is, those whose existence depends on some condition, and which, if that condition were posited, would truly exist; but because such a condition will never be posited, so there will never be any existence of those contingents. For the diverse opinions of the Modern theologians are split into three main schools: there are some who deny to God this certain knowledge of conditionally future things; some indeed affirm that God certainly knows contingents that are conditionally future, but with a conditional decree presupposed beforehand; the rest, finally, contend that God has that certain knowledge of conditionally future things antecedently to every conditional decree, and independently of any hypothetical determination of the divine will. But what ought more truly to be asserted in so great a controversy will be resolved in the three following Questions: in the first of which it must be proved that God certainly knows contingents that are determinately future; in the second, that conditional decrees are to be admitted in God; in the third, indeed, it must be resolved that God knows these conditionally future things only dependently on a conditional decree, and so the middle knowledge is to be rejected, which not a few Modern theologians so greatly vaunt.

Note 1. Future conditionals are of three kinds, the first of which have a necessary connection with the condition to be posited, v. g., if Peter runs, he will be moved; if God produces John, he will be a rational animal. The second have indeed a connection with the condition, but not a necessary one, rather a contingent one, yet nonetheless so fitting that the consequent is inferred from the antecedent, at least probably, by reason of such a condition, v. gr., if Peter is called by God, he will consent; if he has long remained in mortal sin, he will fall into other mortal sins. Finally, the third are futures in which there is no apparent connection of the antecedent with the consequent, and they are wholly disparate, such as are these propositions: if Judas betrays Christ, Nero will kill his own mother; if the Turk sits at Constantinople, Peter will be converted at Paris. But the present difficulty is not raised about the first futures, because although they appear conditional and are explained by the conditional particle (if), nevertheless in reality they are absolute and necessary. It remains, therefore, only to be discussed whether God certainly knows the conditionally future things of the second and third kind.

Note 2. This is the greatest difference between created and divine knowledge: that the latter, since it is infinite and in every way comprehensive, not only knows things before they exist, and sees the necessary and natural connection which some things have with others, for example risibility with rationality, the effect with its cause; but beyond this it also intuitively beholds the free connection which certain things, although wholly disparate, have with one another, not indeed from their own nature, but from the free ordination of God, who at His nod establishes and decrees the outcomes of certain things from the existence of others, for example the complete victory which Joash, King of Israel, was to win over the Syrians, if he had struck the ground with the javelin six times, as the Prophet Elisha said: if he had struck five or six or seven times, he would have struck Syria even to consumption. For in this way God had decreed that the devastation of Syria by King Joash would be general, if he had struck the ground with the javelin more than three times. But it is otherwise with limited and dim-sighted created knowledge, which, since it does not perceive that condition prescribed by God among disparate things, also judges that there is no connection between them, and hence that propositions conditionally inferred from disparate things are wholly false. This Nemesius, the Christian philosopher, expressly expresses, 44. cap. of the lib. De Natura hominis: for we, he says, knowing nothing at all of future things, and gazing only at present things, wrongly judge events; but for God even future things are just as present things.

Note 3. Regarding the resolution of the present Question, the opinion of the authors is chiefly threefold. Curiel, lib. 1. controversiarum, controv. 7., Corneio here art. 13. disp. 3. dubio 2., and Claudius Typhanius, the most recent writer of the Society, in the book De Ordine deque priori et posteriori cap. 25., teach that conditionally future contingents are not known by God with certainty, but only conjecturally. But Navarret devised another opinion, controv. 56. § 2.; for he affirms that in God there is not only no conjectural knowledge of such conditionals, but not even a formal one, but only a virtual and eminent one, for the reason that, he says, there is in God no formal and actual decree concerning such conditionally future things, but only an eminent and virtual one. But the other theologians with unanimous consent teach that God certainly and actually knows such conditionally future things, with whom, that we may think alike, let there be

Only conclusion. — God certainly knew the conditionally future contingents.

It is proved 1. by several, but chiefly three witnesses of Sacred Scripture, by which certain and infallible knowledge of these conditionally future things is attributed to God. The first text among the more distinguished is read in 1. Reg. cap. 23.¹ where David, when he had questioned and consulted God in these words, Lord God of Israel, your servant has heard a report that Saul plans to come to Ceila to destroy the city because of me: if the men of Ceila will deliver me into his hands. The Lord, answering, said, he will come down. Again David, if the men of Ceila will deliver me, and the men who are with me, into the hands of Saul? And the Lord said, they will deliver. By which words it is established, first, that David asked, not only about the present disposition of Saul and of the Ceilans, but about the future event, for he says "if they will deliver." 2. That event was only conditionally future, since in fact David did not remain at Ceila, nor did he wait there for the arrival of Saul. Hence this deliverance by the Ceilans was not absolutely, but only conditionally future. 3. God answered absolutely and without any modification of His assertion concerning Saul, "he will come down," and concerning the Ceilans, "they will deliver": therefore He foreknew both certainly and infallibly; otherwise He would have exposed His assertion to the danger of falsity, which it would be impious to assert.

Add. That God responds concerning the future event as He knew it, and affirms that that deliverance would be future, if David remained at Ceila: therefore He had determinately and certainly known that deliverance from the condition, as St. Jerome expounds those words, if the men deliver me and if Saul comes down, he will come down, he says, as if he were saying, if you stay here, he will come down; and what he says, if the men of Ceila deliver me and the Lord said, they will deliver, this is the sense, if Saul comes down and finds you here, they will deliver. — The second text is drawn from Sapientia 4. cap., where of the just man taken from this life by sudden death it is said: he was taken away, lest malice change his understanding, or lest fiction deceive his soul. By which words it is signified: first, that that change and deception would be future only under a condition not to be posited, namely if such a man had lived longer. Second, that God, at whose nod the life and death of men is loosed, certainly knew that change and deception would be future, if that just man had lived longer; otherwise He would rashly have snatched him from the living by sudden death, lest malice change his understanding. — The third text is read in Matth. 11. and Luca 10., where Christ, reproaching two cities of Israel on account of the hardness of their citizens, says: Woe to you, Chorazin, woe to you, Bethsaida, because if the mighty works which have been done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would long ago have done penance in sackcloth and ashes. But I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you. By which words it is established, first, that Christ speaks only of a conditionally future event, namely of the penance of the Tyrians and Sidonians, if Christ had worked among them those miracles which He had performed in the cities

Chorazin and Bethsaida: which penance in fact did not exist, nor was absolutely future, because the condition had not been posited, namely the working of the miracles. Second, Christ certainly knew that penance would be future, if such a condition had been posited; otherwise He would neither have reproached so sharply, nor so certainly have asserted that the Tyrians and Sidonians would do penance in ashes and sackcloth; otherwise He would have exposed His assertion to falsity. But if Christ as man knew that penance as conditionally future, much more did He know it as God, and since every knowledge of God is certain and infallible, He also certainly and infallibly knew that penance as conditionally future. — Finally, the fourth distinguished locus is drawn from 3. Regum cap. 11. and Exodi 34., where God forbids the children of Israel to contract marriages with the foreign wives neighboring upon them. You shall not go in to them, He says, nor shall any of them come in to yours, for most certainly they will turn away your hearts so that you follow their gods; the outcome of which prediction, although it really came to pass in Solomon, whose heart, when he was already old, as the sacred text in the same place declares, was corrupted through women so that he followed foreign gods; nevertheless such an event, predicted by God, was only conditionally future with respect to all those who could contract marriages with foreigners and yet did not contract them. — To all these texts many others can be added, but especially that of Ezechielis 3. cap.: You are not sent to a people of deep speech and of unknown tongue, etc. And if you were sent to them, they would hear you. Likewise that of Ieremiae 38. The Prophet says to King Zedekiah: if you go out to the princes of the King of Babylon, your soul will live, and this city will not be burned with fire, and you and your house will be safe. Which, however, in fact did not happen; for Zedekiah did not go out according to the counsel of the Prophet. Likewise Matthaei 24.: Unless those days had been shortened, no flesh would have been saved, but for the sake of the Elect they will be shortened. God therefore sees that many could have perished, if the persecution of Antichrist had lasted long, who nevertheless will not perish on account of the shortened days of that persecution. Finally, prima ad Cor. 2: We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, which is hidden, and which none of the princes of this world knew. For if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory. That is, they would not have committed so unspeakable a crime by crucifying Christ, if they had known Him. And since that knowledge in fact did not exist, neither likewise did the crucifixion fail to take place.

Proof. This same truth is proved by the authorities of the holy Fathers, some of whom everywhere suppose that God has conditioned knowledge in the administration of His providence and of the predestination of the Elect, whereby it comes about that He removes some from life in the state of grace, lest, if they lived longer, they should fall into sins and so incur eternal damnation. Thus in the first place Gregory of Nyssa, in the Oratione de infantibus, qui praematura morte substrahuntur e vivis, says: It belongs to divine providence and to its perfect wisdom not only to heal diseases already contracted, but also to provide that no one at all remain in unlawful things. And he renders the reason for this, so as to assert that God most certainly knows what would become of that infant, if he drew out his life to a longer age: for it is fitting that by Him who knows the future no less than the past, the progress of the little one to perfect age should be prevented, lest that evil which that prescient power and faculty has known in him who was going to live should be so brought to completion, and, as if one was going to live with that will and choice, life should become the matter of wickedness. By which words St. Gregory shows that the inference does not rest in God's knowledge as probable, nor as suspended and doubtful with an uncertain outcome, not only concerning what could have been, but concerning what in fact would have been, if the infant had lived longer. With him agrees Cyril of Alexandria, libr. 3. contra Iulianum, where, treating of the fall of Adam and of the punishment soon after subjected to it, he praises the opinion of Porphyry: Porphyry, he says, writes thus in the lib. ad Nemertium: But God, who knows future things, snatches some from life while still young on account of piety, others on account of the losses which were to be brought by them upon His own necessities, and others again He removes beforehand on account of the great calamities which were to come. To these St. Chrysostom assents, libr. 1. ad Stagyrium, where, resolving what is wont to be objected against divine providence, especially why some are punished before they have reached that age in which they can discern good from evil, as though they had committed great crimes; he answers that God knows many of them would otherwise be evil, and therefore, as with certain fetters, He restrains them with those punishments.

The same truth is proved by reason. Whatever is true is known by God: but future conditionals are true: therefore God knows that they are true. The major is evident; for God, since He is endowed with infinite power of understanding, most evidently beholds and knows whatever is knowable; but what is true is knowable, and so if conditionally future contingents are true, they are knowable, and consequently are known by God. Thus the minor is proved. First indeed, conditionally future things are no less true than those which are absolutely future: but absolutely future things are determinately true, as has been proved: therefore conditionally future things are also true.

The major is proved. The precise and immediate contradiction between conditionally future contingents and their contradictory enunciations is no less than between absolutely future ones: v. g., the contradiction of these propositions is no less: if Saul is called by Christ in such a manner, he will be converted and become a vessel of election, and if he is called in such a manner he will not be converted, than it is between these two propositions: Saul called by Christ in such a manner will be converted, and called in the same manner he will not be converted: therefore since by reason of this contradiction one proposition enunciating an absolutely future thing is determinately true and the other determinately false, so likewise of two contradictory propositions concerning a conditionally future contingent, one will be determinately true and the other determinately false, and consequently that which they enunciate will be determinately true or false.

It is confirmed. A conditional proposition does not differ from the absolute one concerning the same object except by the condition, which, if it is posited, the proposition will be absolute: therefore as the absolute one is determinately true or false, so the same conditional concerning the same conditionally future object is distinctly and determinately true or false. This consequence is evident, because the condition by which alone the conditional proposition differs from the absolute one does not prevent it from being equally conformed to its object, and consequently from being equally true. — Second, that knowledge is certain and infallible which is founded on a certain and infallible medium: but the knowledge which God has of conditionally future contingents is founded on a certain and infallible medium, namely on a decree conditional on the part of the decree, but absolute on the part of the subject: therefore in like manner the knowledge must be certain and infallible. The major is evident. But the minor will be proved in the following Question. — Third, every possible knowledge which involves no imperfection is not to be denied to God: but this certain knowledge of conditionally future contingents is neither impossible nor unworthy of God: therefore it is to be attributed to Him. The major is evident: for God, since He is the most excellent of all beings, must necessarily include all possible perfections which involve no imperfection in their concept. The minor is proved; first indeed that this knowledge is possible; for what is true is also knowable by God: but those future things are true, as has been proved: therefore in like manner they are knowable by God. Second, that it is also not unworthy of God; for it is the highest perfection to know whatever is knowable, indeed it would be an imperfection to be ignorant of it: therefore since those contingents are knowable, it is not an imperfection, but the highest perfection, to know them.

They object 1. Against those who think thus, they reply that nothing can be inferred from the cited texts of Scripture in confirmation of our Conclusion, since these things are brought forward by Scripture either only by human exaggeration, or according to only probable knowledge which God has of future things of this kind, considering namely the inclination of secondary causes, by which, with those conditions posited, they were of themselves more inclined to these foretold effects than to the opposite ones. And they confirm this from the following words of Matth. 11., where, when Christ had reproached Chorazin and Bethsaida, He adds: And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted up to heaven? You will descend even into hell, because if the mighty works which have been done in you had been done in Sodom, perhaps they would have remained to this day, where the particle "perhaps" seems to denote only a conjectural and probable knowledge, not an infallible and certain one.

I answer 1. That this reply is of no moment, and is impugned by St. Augustine himself, who in the book de bono perseverantiae cap. 9., treating of the Tyrians and Sidonians, says, but can we say that even the Tyrians and Sidonians, when such mighty works had been done among them, refused to believe, or would not have believed if they had been done? Since the Lord Himself bears witness for them that they would do penance with great humility, if those signs of divine powers had been done among them. By which words St. Augustine confesses that the Tyrians would certainly have believed, if they had seen such signs. Then, if Christ's knowledge of the future penance of the Tyrians and Sidonians had been only conjectural, He would have had no cause to reproach the hardness of the Jews so sharply, nor was it fitting for Christ, in order to reproach the unfaithful Jews with their grave sins, to assume doubtful things exposed to falsity.

Add. What we have already said: that the particle "perhaps" does not signify the doubt of God asserting, but is taken up to disclose the contingency of the event and the freedom of choice. Finally, the certain truth of those contingents is evident also from this, that they are sometimes predicted and foretold by the Prophets; but prophetic prediction, which is not comminatory, is in every way certain and infallible; otherwise there would in no way be prophetic certainty.

They object 2. St. Augustine in the lib. De Praedestinatione Sanctorum cap. 14., where, explaining that text of Sapientia 4: He was taken away, lest malice change his understanding, says: It was said according to the dangers of this life, not according to the foreknowledge of God, who foreknew what was to be future, not what was not to be future. By which words St. Augustine seems to signify that God does not certainly and infallibly know this conditioned future, namely that the man would sin, if he had lived longer; but that He had of him only a conjectural knowledge founded on the danger, nor would he be changed on account of the vehement occasions which He absolutely foresaw. Likewise he often affirms that it is a fiction that things which are not future are foreknown by God; thus in lib. 2. contra duas Epistolas Pelagii, how, he says, did He foreknow those future things, namely the works of infants dying before adult age, which they would have done if they had grown up.... because His foreknowledge cannot be deceived, He did not foreknow things not future. Likewise in the libr. De Praedestinatione Sanctorum cap. 12.: Whence it came into the mind of such men, that is, the Semipelagians, that the merits of infants, future things which are not future, should be punished or honored. With him agree St. Prosper in the Epistle to St. Augustine, where, speaking of the same Semipelagians, he says: they invent future things which are not future. And St. John Damascene in the Dialogo adversus Manichaeos, refuting the error of those who said that God ought not to have created men or angels whom He had beforehand foreknown would sin, says: but in what way can He foreknow what is not future? For if He had foreknown that someone would sin, He would not have created him; this foreknowledge would not be foreknowledge, but imposture; just as cognition is of those things which are, so foreknowledge is of those which will certainly be future: therefore, according to the mind of SSt. Augustine, Damascene and Prosper, there is not given in God a certain, but only a conjectural, knowledge of conditionally future things.

I deny the consequence. For St. Augustine in the cited places speaks only of foreknowledge that is not conditioned but absolute, which the Pelagians and Semipelagians admitted as independent of the divine decree, and prior to it, as St. Prosper reports in the same Epistle, and according to which foreknowledge they wanted God to be moved by foreseen works to grant the first grace and the first calling to faith; which absolute foreknowledge Augustine and Prosper rightly call fictitious; but they do not speak of conditioned foreknowledge which supposes a conditioned decree, such as we defend; otherwise they would openly contradict themselves. Indeed St. Augustine, for in the lib. De Correptione et Gratia cap. 8., speaking of those who have not been snatched away by God, lest malice change their understanding:

Let them answer, he says, if they can, namely the Pelagians, why God did not then snatch those men, when they were living faithfully and piously, from the perils of this life, lest malice should change their understanding and lest deception should beguile their souls? Did He not have this in His power, or did He not know their future evils? Surely nothing of these things is said except most perversely and most madly.

To these words St. Augustine affirms that God could, by such foreknowledge, prevent that change for the worse from taking place in reality: but He could not prevent it by absolute foreknowledge, for this presupposes the thing as absolutely future: therefore by conditional foreknowledge, which, he says, cannot be denied to God except most perversely and most madly. St. Prosper agrees with him in Response 8. ad excerpta Genuensium:

When some perish, he says, let us not doubt that it is attributed to their own merits that they perish; whom God could certainly justly damn if He willed. And when some are delivered, let us not dare to define that they were worthy of being delivered: whom God could certainly justly damn if He willed, etc. But concerning the Tyrians and the Sidonians, what else can we say than that it was not given to them to believe; whom the very Truth says would even have believed, if they had seen such signs as were wrought among the unbelievers?

And shortly after he says that not only the Tyrians and the Sidonians, but also Chorazin and

Bethsaida could have been converted, and believers made out of unbelievers, if the Lord had willed to work this in them. In a similar way St. John Damascene is to be interpreted, for he speaks only of absolute foreknowledge, as is evident from his very words, This foreknowledge would not be foreknowledge, but imposture; but he does not speak of conditionally future things, with which alone we are concerned here.

They object 3. If future conditionals presupposed some certain knowledge in God, this would hold especially because they are foretold by Him and announced beforehand by the Prophets: but it does not follow from this that that knowledge is certain. Proof: God foretold many things in Sacred Scripture, per se or through the Prophets, only by conjecture drawn from the disposition of secondary causes, v. g. Isai. 38.²: Set thy house in order, for thou shalt die, and not live: and Ionae 3. Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown: neither of which, however, came to pass: therefore certainty and infallibility of divine cognition is not gathered from the predictions.

I deny the minor. For all divine predictions are true and infallible, according to the sense intended by God who foretells them, although in some a condition is not expressed but understood, and most of all in threatening predictions. For, as St. Thomas teaches 2. 2. q. 174. art. 1.³ prophecy is threefold, namely of Foreknowledge, of Predestination, and of Commination; between which he places this distinction, that the first and the second terminate at future things in themselves; whence from them the truth of future things is evidently gathered from themselves. But the third does not regard future things as they are in themselves, but the disposition and ordination of causes to them; and it presupposes a condition, namely if sinners repent and are converted to God, and strive to placate Him by penance, according to that of Ieremiae 18. If that nation shall repent of the evil which I have spoken against it, I also will repent of the evil which I thought to do to it. For those comminations are made only that men may forestall divine vengeance by their repentance, according to that of Ezechielis 18. Is it my will that the impious man die, says the Lord, and not that he be converted from his ways and live? But once repentance is posited, the punishment which God had foretold He would inflict does not follow, under the tacit condition, if the sinner did not repent.

They object 4. Future conditionals do not have determinate truth: therefore they cannot be known distinctly and determinately by God. The consequence is clear, for God knows things as they are, and consequently those which are not determinately true cannot be determinately known by God. The antecedent is proved: if they had determinate truth, it would be especially either in themselves, or in their causes: but neither can be said. Not indeed the first: for in that manner they have truth in which they have being, but they do not have determinate being, because they will never exist: therefore neither do they have determinate truth in themselves. Nor the second either, for even with the condition posited their productive causes are still indifferent and undetermined to producing or not producing them: therefore they do not have determinate truth, nor consequently determinate knowability.

I distinguish the antecedent. That they do not have determinate absolute truth, I concede: determinate conditional truth, I deny: for once the condition is posited, the created will was going to determine itself: with the decree to be posited, absolutely indeed on the part of God decreeing, but only conditionally on the part of the thing decreed; which decree does not hinder freedom, nor predetermine it, but only codetermines it. And so those future contingents have determinate conditional truth, in their causes, namely in the created will and in the divine decree.

They press. Determinate truth presupposes determinate being, for truth is a property of being: but the being of those conditionally future things is not determinate: therefore neither is their truth determinate. The minor is proved: the being of those things is not determinate which will never have determinate existence, but will be merely possible things and pure nothing: but such are for the most part future conditionals; for many of them will exist nowhere, therefore, etc.

I distinguish the minor. That their being is not determinate absolutely, I concede: conditionally, I deny: nor does it follow from this that they are pure nothing, for they have true objective real being in the divine mind, from the presupposed conditional decree, concerning their conditional futurition; whence just as absolutely future things have absolute being represented in the divine Essence; so likewise future conditionals have conditional being represented in the same divine Essence by virtue of the conditional decree.

They insist. If future conditionals had determinate truth, they would be of eternal and perpetual truth: but this cannot be said: therefore, etc. — The minor is clear: for propositions are of eternal truth for this reason, because they are formed about beings determinately true, even insofar as they abstract from all existence; but propositions about conditionally future things would be such, if they had determinate truth, therefore, etc.

I distinguish the antecedent. That they would be of eternal truth through the necessary inference of the consequent from the antecedent, such as are absolute futures, which will have true being, by reason of the presupposed absolute decree, I deny: that they would be of eternal truth conditionally and by reason of the prevision by which God sees that they are in fact future or not future, namely because of the condition to be posited or not to be posited, I concede: nor does this involve any contradiction.

They press again. If propositions about conditionally future things were determinately true, they would likewise be necessarily true: but the consequent is false: therefore so is the antecedent. The consequence of the major is proved: for the conditional particle (If) either signifies a necessary connection of the consequent with the antecedent, or not: if the first, that proposition is necessarily true: if the second, it would follow that there is a true antecedent and a false consequent; and so every conditional proposition would be false, because it would infer from the antecedent a consequent legitimately following, when yet it would not so follow from it. The minor is also clear; for propositions about conditionally future things are not necessarily true, but contingent, because they enunciate things that will be future contingently.

I distinguish the major. That they would be necessarily true by reason of the necessary inference of the consequent from the antecedent, if the conditional particle (If) be taken illatively and signify a necessary connection of the consequent with the antecedent, I concede: if it be taken only conditionally, or promissively, I deny: and so the conditional particle (If) can have a threefold signification: for it can be taken: first, Illatively, when the consequent states a necessary connection with the antecedent, v. g. If Peter runs, he is moved: second, Promissively, when the consequent has a connection with the antecedent by reason of the will of the one promising, v. g. If you conquer, I will give you the crown of life: third, it is taken Conditionally, when the consequent is really posited together with the antecedent, although from its nature the antecedent could stand without it; for the reason that the consequent does not have a necessary connection with that antecedent, but only a contingent one by reason of the contingent condition; which condition, however, is certainly known by God as to be posited or not to be posited. And therefore this connection of the antecedent with the consequent is indeed certainly known by God, although it is not necessary.

Note 1. The divine decree is that volition of God by which He decides the future actuality of things; and this either absolutely, so that the decreed things will infallibly come to pass; or only conditionally, when of course the outcome of things depends on some condition, which if it is posited, that thing will truly exist; but if such a condition is not posited, the thing likewise will not be. Again, this conditional decree can be considered either on the part of the one decreeing, or on the part of the thing decreed, that is, on the part of the willing subject, or on the part of the object willed. In the former way it signifies not so much a firm and stable will as a certain velleity of having this stable and firm will about some object, if some condition were posited; such is this proposition, I would will to wage war against the Turks if it were lawful for a religious man: in which proposition there is not signified directly an efficacious will of waging war, but directly there is only expressed a velleity and a certain desire of forming such an efficacious volition on the hypothesis, that that efficacious and sincere volition would not be unbecoming to a religious man. In the latter way the decree is said to be conditional on the part of the thing decreed, or of the object willed, when of course a determinate volition is actually formed on the part of the one willing; but the outcome is suspended until the condition is posited; v. g., If Peter will have heard Mass tomorrow, I will give him the book: for the volition of giving the book is efficacious and sincere; nevertheless that gift depends on the condition to be posited, namely on the hearing of Mass.

Note 2. There is this difference between those two conditional decrees, that the first involves the greatest imperfection, in that it signifies an inefficacious volition and imports a certain potentiality; by which the one decreeing, as it were, hangs suspended, and seems powerless to form an efficacious volition about the outcome of things: which of course inefficaciousness and indetermination of the will, since they are altogether unbecoming to God, who is omnipotent in every way and a most necessary and most actual being, such a conditional decree cannot even be found in Him on the part of the subject decreeing and willing. But the second is not so; for the whole potentiality and indetermination is referred back not to the one willing himself, but to the thing willed, whose future actuality and existence depend on some condition, which if it is posited, that thing will truly be future, but if it is not posited, it will not come to pass. We speak only of conditionals in the latter way, not of conditionals in the former way.

Note 3. The present question is moved only about conditionals, both consequent and disparate, which are declared in Sacred Scripture or become known through some revelation. But about the others, which are manifest in neither way, since it is altogether uncertain whether they have any connection among themselves, whether on the part of the thing consequent upon another, or on the part of God decreeing that consequence of one thing from another with which it has no connection of itself, it would be absurd to determine anything: since such an inference of the consequent from the antecedent is in no way made known in conditionally future things that are not related, v. g., in these propositions: If some Turk should sleep at Constantinople, Peter will be converted at Paris: if Socrates had set out for war, I will devote myself to philosophy. And so we have only to resolve whether conditionally future things, which become known through revelation, for instance the conversion of the Tyrians and Sidonians if they had heard Christ preaching, etc., suppose in God some conditional decree.

Only conclusion. — Decrees are to be admitted in God, absolute indeed subjectively and on the part of God decreeing and willing, but conditional objectively and on the part of the thing decreed, and of the object willed.

Proof first. From all those texts of Sacred Scripture by which God signifies His will about things conditionally future, if the condition had been posited, but especially 4. Regum 13: If you had struck the earth five or six or seven times, you would have struck Syria even to destruction: by which words the Prophet Elisha announces to King Joash that God had decreed the general devastation of Syria and had determined with King Joash himself to concur in driving out the Syrians, if King Joash himself had struck the earth with the spear five, six, or seven times: therefore it supposes a decree about that conditionally future thing, which nevertheless did not come to pass for lack of the condition not being posited. Likewise 3. Regum cap. 9. God foretells to Solomon:

If you will walk before me as your father walked, in simplicity of heart and in uprightness, and will do all things which I have commanded you, and will keep my statutes and my judgments; I will set the throne of your kingdom over Israel forever, as I spoke to David your father, saying: there shall not be taken away a man of your kindred from the throne of Israel. But if you and your children, turning away, shall have turned away from me, not following me, nor keeping my commandments and my ceremonies which I have set before you, but shall have gone and worshipped strange gods and adored them, I will take away Israel from the face of the earth, etc.

From which it is clear that God decreed under condition that He would preserve the Israelite throne with Solomon's family, on the presupposed condition that both Solomon himself and his descendants would keep His divine commandments: since that condition was not fulfilled, and Solomon himself worshipped strange gods, therefore in cap. 11. the Lord, appearing to him again, says: Because you have had this with you and have not kept my covenant and my precepts which I commanded you, rending, I will tear your kingdom and will give it to your servant. By which it is established that the Israelite empire was to be preserved by God in the family of David and Solomon under a condition; and so it is established that there are in God some conditional decrees.

Proof 2. This same truth from the opinion of all the holy Fathers praised in the previous Question, who affirm that the divine predictions about things conditionally future, yet never to be fulfilled, were sincerely ordained by God. To which is added the almost unanimous opinion of the older Scholastics, who raise various questions about conditionally future contingents; and some fight expressly for one part of the contradiction, others for the other; and so they judge that one or the other part in these contingents is determinately true, and therefore willed by God. Such are those questions, whether if Adam had not sinned the Son of God would have been incarnate: whether if the state of original innocence had persisted, in it the Sacraments would have been instituted, sacrifices ordered, the dominion of things prescribed: and other things of that kind, which, the condition being removed, did not come to pass: the resolution of which questions most certainly supposes a decree of the divine will about the event, or about the non-event, of such effects in the state of innocence. For how could these things have existed unless God had willed them, especially since most of them depend on the will of God alone, such as the Incarnation of the Word, the institution of the Sacraments? etc.

Nor should you say. The Scholastic Doctors in these questions only inquire into and resolve, not what would truly have been future if such a condition had been posited, but only what would have been more expedient and what would have been more fitting, this condition being supposed.

I answer. For it is not debated by them alone what in this hypothesis would have been more fitting, but also what would truly have come to pass, as is clear from the reasons adduced by them, which are drawn not only from the will of God sweetly and fittingly disposing all things, but also from theological arguments deduced, namely from Sacred Scripture and the authorities of the holy Fathers, as well as from reasoning and discourse, as may be seen in their writings, and most especially in the Subtle Doctor.

Proof third, by reason. The future actuality of those events supposes a divine decree, which cannot have the notion of future except from the divine decree itself: but conditionally future things can in no way have the notion of future except from the divine decree itself: therefore they presuppose it. The major is evident per se.

Proof of the minor. First indeed, from those things which we have already said to prove that the future actuality of things is formed and depends only on the divine decree. For in the same way we must reason about the future actuality of conditional contingents as about the future actuality of absolute contingents: but the future actuality of these depends on the absolute divine decree, both on the part of God decreeing and on the part of the object decreed: therefore likewise the conditional future actuality of contingents will depend on a conditional decree on the part of the thing decreed, although absolute on the part of the one decreeing.

— Secondly: The future actuality of those things supposes a conditional decree of God, whose consequent does not follow from the antecedent except dependently on the will of God so establishing and decreeing: but the devastation of Syria, v. g., was not to follow from the earth being struck six or seven times with the spear by King Joash, except because God had so ordained, since there was no connection between the two from their own nature: therefore this general devastation supposed a divine decree; not indeed an absolute one, since in reality this devastation did not exist: therefore it supposed a conditional decree, and so it is given. — Thirdly: Every divine promise and divine pact expresses the sincere will of God promising and covenanting, who truly wills to fulfill what He promises, if of course the presupposed condition is present: but God in fact promised many things and established pacts about things under condition, yet never to be fulfilled: therefore God has volitions and decrees, absolute indeed as to the act, but conditional as to the object and by reason of the condition not to be posited. The major is evident per se: for if God did not will sincerely to fulfill what He promises, it would follow that He mocks men, and He could be accused of falsity and lying in His promises and pacts. The minor, however, is proved from the already cited promises about the perseverance of the Israelite empire with the family of Solomon, if they kept His commandments; since this was not fulfilled, even Solomon's descendants were cast down from the Israelite empire: for the empire was divided at the time of Rehoboam the son of Solomon, and stood only over Judah and Benjamin until Zedekiah, who was the last of the kings of Judah. — These all are confirmed by the words of Christ, Matth. 26., where, rebuking Peter because he had struck with the sword the servant of the prince of the priests, He says: Do you think that I cannot ask my Father, and He will show me now more than twelve legions of Angels? From which words I argue thus: Christ asserts that the divine Father would minister angelic help to Him if He were asked by Him: but such a ministration and exhibition of angelic help would not be so constantly asserted by Christ, unless He certainly knew that the Eternal Father had decreed that help, if His divine Son had so entreated and wished; otherwise He would assert that the Eternal Father willed what in reality He did not will: therefore in reality a conditional decree had been posited about ministering such angelic help if Christ had entreated: therefore consequently such a decree is admitted.

You will say 1. If conditional decrees were given in God, they would have to be free; but those decrees cannot be free: therefore they are not given. The major is clear, for the decree is that free determination of the divine will by which God wills to produce something outside Himself, or not to produce it. The minor is proved: a divine decree is not judged to be free, except by reason of a free termination to something extrinsic, which of itself can be and not be: but conditional decrees have nothing extrinsic to which they could be terminated, or not terminated: therefore they cannot be free. The major is evident: for since God is a most necessary being and is immutable, He cannot be free with a freedom to opposite acts, but only to opposite objects, or to the positing or not positing of the same object; and so He is judged to be free in this way by reason of free termination. The minor is also evident; for since a conditional future sometimes has a condition not to be posited, it is also about a thing not future; and so for the most part it has nothing extrinsic to which it is terminated.

I deny the minor. For just as absolute decrees are said to be free, because the absolutely decreed effect could have been decreed or not decreed absolutely; so likewise conditional decrees ought to be said to be free, because the conditionally decreed effect could have been decreed or not decreed conditionally by God. To the proof I distinguish the minor: conditional decrees cannot have a free termination to effects which will never be, that is, which are altogether impossible and repugnant, I concede: that is, which will not be future, because the condition will not be posited, which is the specificative condition of that decree, I deny: and so just as the absolute decree is said to be that which is terminated to an effect absolutely to come; so likewise the conditional decree is called that which is terminated to an effect future under a condition, to which respect it would also have a free termination.

You will say 2. That ought not to be asserted to be in God which is gathered neither from revelation nor from the Scriptures: but such conditional decrees are gathered neither from Scripture nor from revelation to be in God: therefore they are not to be asserted. The minor is clear: since there is no text of Scripture which signifies such decrees; indeed Sacred Scripture expressly affirms that all the decrees of the divine will have been fulfilled or are to be fulfilled: For the Lord has done all things whatsoever He willed, Psalm. 113. But those things which He is said to have willed conditionally, He would not have done, and so He cannot be said to have willed them.

I deny the minor. For nothing is more frequently suggested in Sacred Scripture than either promises made under condition, or pacts expressed under condition, which bear the sincere will of God, not indeed absolute, but conditional, and so they also import a conditional decree.

Add. That as the will of God was to confer original justice on the descendants of Adam, if Adam himself had preserved the innocence given to him and had obeyed the divine command about not eating the forbidden food; such also was the pact entered into with David and repeated with his son Solomon about saving the Israelite Sceptre with their posterity forever, if they obeyed the divine precepts, as David himself indicates Psal. 131. The Lord has sworn truth to David and He will not frustrate it (which words indicate an open decree of God and His sincere volition) of the fruit of your womb I will set upon your throne, if your sons will keep my covenant and these my testimonies which I will teach them, and their sons forever will sit upon your throne. Which decree, however, was not fulfilled, because the condition to be posited was lacking, namely the observance of the divine commandments, as we said above.

You will say 3. Those conditional decrees are ridiculous and nugatory: therefore they are to be kept away from God. The antecedent is proved: a promise would be derisory and nugatory which depends on the free choice of the promisor, which when he could posit the condition, he nevertheless would not will: v. g., if someone promised that he would give something to another on the hypothesis that he would come to him at such an hour, and he himself had in mind not to await such a coming, he would mock him: similarly if someone formed this decree: I will give you a hundred coins, if within an hour you will have gone from Paris to Rome and returned: this decree would be imprudent and illusory. But such would be the conditional decrees, v. g., the decree about the future conversion of the Tyrians and Sidonians on the supposed condition that Christ would preach among them, which condition would be impossible, since God had otherwise established that Christ was not going to preach among the Tyrians: therefore such decrees would be illusory.

I distinguish the antecedent. The decrees would be illusory and ridiculous, if they were about a vain and useless thing, and from a condition altogether repugnant and impossible, I concede; otherwise, I deny: but such are not the divine conditional decrees; for all those either signify the administration of divine providence, or the inclination of divine mercy to relieve man's misery, or the affection of divine kindness by which God accommodates Himself to our freedom and will. Neither are they about an impossible or repugnant condition: because that condition is not repugnant ex natura rei, but only by reason of something extrinsic and from some accidental supposition, which, although it is not fulfilled, nevertheless a promise made under condition, and a derisory decree, ought not to be judged such; because it pertains to the notion of the supreme and general Provider to decree many things under condition, which nevertheless He does not will to execute absolutely, on account of the hidden reasons of His providence.

You will say 4. Every divine decree imports and effects some physical and real change in the creature; for it brings it from the state of possible to future and existing being: but conditional decrees, whose condition will never be fulfilled, cannot effect any physical change in the things decreed, since such a decreed creature will never exist: therefore such decrees are impossible.

I deny the major. For it is not necessary that the divine will and the divine decree infer some real and physical change in the creature, in order that it be said to be freely determined to it, for a moral change suffices for this. For God could have willed from eternity that a man be obliged for some time to some vow or precept, and be entangled in some liability of punishment; and in the following time be released from all these bonds, namely by dispensing him from the vow and from the observance of the precept and by dissolving the liability, either through sufficient contrition and satisfaction already exhibited, or through merciful indulgence and the gratuitous remission of the offense; all of which effect only a moral change in the man; nevertheless they suffice to terminate God's free volition: and so a real and physical change is not required for this. To the minor I say, that conditional decrees do not indeed effect in the things future under a condition to be posited any physical change, but only a moral one, in that they cause in the object a certain objective change, transferring it from purely possible being to future being under condition, and ordering it to an existence to be had conditionally.

You will say 5. If conditional decrees were given in God, it would follow that God has contrary and opposite affections: but the consequent is false: therefore also the antecedent. The consequence of the major is proved: if God had decreed, v. g., the conversion of the Tyrians as conditionally future upon the preaching of Christ, He would have willed that conversion, and since He had elsewhere absolutely decreed that Christ would never preach among them, He would have at the same time willed and not willed the same thing; and consequently He would have had at the same time opposite affections.

I deny the consequence of the major. For those affections are not judged to be opposite which are not engaged about the same object considered in the same way; but such are the divine volitions, for one is efficacious with respect to the effect absolutely to come, v. g., the volition that Christ never preach among the Tyrians: but the other is only inefficacious, v. g., the conversion of the Tyrians on the supposed preaching of Christ among them. But God can at one and the same time will the same thing with an efficacious will, and nill it with an inefficacious will, under a different notion; for He wills inefficaciously to save even all those to be damned, because they are His divine images; nevertheless He also wills to damn them, redeemed by the precious Blood of His Son and about to depart from the living in final impenitence, because they are sinners; which two volitions, although they seem opposite, nevertheless are not such, because they regard the same object by a different means.

You will say 6. Those conditional decrees can neither be proved a priori, because they are free, and nothing precedes in the divine will with which they have a necessary connection; nor can they be proved a posteriori, because they truly have no effect, since they are engaged about things which are simpliciter possible: nor can that very thing be inferred from revelation, for those conditional decrees are inferred neither from Scripture nor from the holy Fathers: therefore in reality there are none.

I deny the antecedent. For first, those decrees can be proved a posteriori, for although they have no absolutely future effect, they would nevertheless have it by virtue of the conditional decree preexisting in God, if the condition, upon the positing of which the future is enunciated, had been fulfilled: whence conditionally future things are not in a state of mere possibility, like another world which God could produce if He willed; but they participate in some way in the notion of future, not indeed absolutely, but on hypothesis; those decrees are likewise gathered from Sacred Scripture, as is clear from the first proof of the Conclusion.

You will say 7. Those conditional decrees bring a great absurdity: therefore they are in no way to be admitted. The antecedent is proved: for from them it follows that God would be the cause of sins through a double decree: first indeed through the conditional one, by which God decreed that sins would happen, if certain conditions were present: second, through the absolute one, which results from the former, namely with those conditions posited and foreseen as about to be, by which it comes about that by this double decree the will, indifferent of itself, is as it were predetermined to committing all crimes: whence it follows that God not only permits, but also truly causes sin.

I deny the antecedent. For no Catholic affirms that there is in God any decree, whether absolute or conditional, by which He decreed that sins would happen, nor does anyone likewise assert that He predetermines the will to sin: but the Theologians establish in God an absolute or conditional decree, by which God wills to permit the sin as future absolutely or on hypothesis, and to concur to the entity of the sinful act insofar as they are physical acts and beings, namely according to every notion of entity and goodness which they have, not however according to the notion of deformity and malice by which, on account of the deviation of the created will, they are morally affected.

You will insist. In reality from those conditional decrees God would be judged to be the author of sin, not only according to entity, but also according to deformity: therefore, etc. The antecedent is proved: he would be judged to be the author of sin who, revolving in his mind all the orders of things and all the circumstances of times and places, would determine to bring help to the committing of all crimes under a certain condition, namely if they asked help from him for committing crimes: but this very thing follows from the conditional decree, by which of course God decrees that He will concur with all free causes to all things, even crimes, if namely they determine themselves to committing those crimes and demand His concurrence for this: therefore, etc.

I deny the antecedent. And to its proof I say, that God does not decree that He will concur to the sinful act precisely insofar as it is sinful, but only insofar as it is an entitative act, to elicit which the created will freely determines itself, to which God, as the general and universal cause, ought not to deny His concurrence, as we will teach more fully in Tractatu de Providentia.

You will say 8. From this opinion it would follow that innumerable decrees are to be established in God, indeed imprudent, ridiculous and absurd ones about singular things; namely with useless and ridiculous conditions added, under which almost infinite propositions can be made, v. g.: If I take the book, I will die; if a Turk sits at Constantinople, I will be a religious at Paris; and other similar things, which since they are altogether unbecoming to God, those conditional decrees are also to be removed far from Him.

I deny the antecedent. For we do not admit in God conditional decrees about all the combinations of possible things, but only about those conditionals which are written in the Sacred Scriptures, or are gathered from them. Whence this argument rather militates against the defenders of middle knowledge, who of course assert that God, before every free decree of His will, certainly knows what would be determined, with any combinations whatsoever, even possible ones, of any conditional future being posited.

You will say finally. The same is the reason for conditionally future things as for absolute ones: but prescinding from any divine decree, at least antecedent, there is saved in God the certain knowledge of absolute future contingents: therefore by a similar reason, prescinding from any conditional decree, there is saved in God the knowledge of conditionally future things; and so there is no necessity of admitting those decrees.

I deny the minor. For since all contingents which are absolutely future depend intrinsically on the decree of the divine will, which is eternal; hence it cannot come about that, any divine decree being prescinded, something is de facto future; and so neither can it come about that it is known under the notion of future, since Apocalypsis 4.: All things are yours, and by your will they were, and were created. Whence to suppose something future independently of the divine decree is altogether to deny that God is the First cause of all things.

Note 1. By the name middle knowledge (concerning which a celebrated controversy arose before Clement VIII and Paul V in the Congregation de Auxiliis, between Father Thomas de Lemos, a Dominican, and Fathers Gregory of Valencia and Ferdinand de Vastida of the Society of Jesus) the more recent theologians understand the certain and infallible knowledge which God has of things conditionally future, before the actual and exercised decree by which He decides and predetermines their futurity. It is called middle knowledge, moreover, either first because (they say) it stands between the knowledge of simple intelligence and the knowledge of vision, and shares something of both; for it is necessary on the part of the subject, just as the knowledge of simple intelligence is, namely on the part of God, in that it precedes every actual free decree concerning the futurity of things, in much the same way as our first thoughts are said to be necessary because they precede all deliberation and choice of our will; it is also free on the part of the object, like the knowledge of vision, because it terminates at free objects, namely at conditioned contingents, which are known through that middle knowledge. Or, secondly, this knowledge is called middle, because through it God knows conditionally future things, which hold as it were a middle place between mere possibles, which are known through the knowledge of simple intelligence, and absolutely future things, which are attained through the knowledge of vision. Or finally, as some acknowledge, this knowledge is called middle because it seems to be a divinely inspired means for uprooting all the errors of the Pelagians, Semi-Pelagians, Lutherans, and Calvinists concerning divine predestination, the necessity and efficacy of grace, and the reconciliation of man's freedom with divine foreknowledge and efficacious grace; inasmuch as, namely, this knowledge holds that the choice and determination of the human will is foreseen by God under a condition, before He predefines or determines anything concerning the free acts of that same will which are absolutely future.

Note 2. All the advocates of this middle knowledge almost agree in this, that they affirm it to have been recently devised and unknown to the holy Fathers and the older theologians. For Molina, in the Concordia, on quest. 23, art. 4 and 5, does not hesitate to write that in those things which he himself had delivered concerning the middle knowledge of things future under a condition lies the entire way of reconciling the freedom of free choice with divine grace and predestination; which, if it had always been given and explained, perhaps neither would the Pelagian heresy have arisen, nor would the Lutherans have so shamelessly denied the freedom of our free choice, alleging that it cannot cohere with divine grace, foreknowledge, and predestination. He adds: This way of ours for reconciling the freedom of free choice with divine predestination has up to now been delivered by no one whom we have seen; therefore it must be set forth a little more fully. He subjoins: If it had been given and explained by Augustine, the Pelagian heresy would never have arisen, nor would so many of the faithful have been troubled by Augustine's opinion and his contests with the Pelagians, nor would they have lapsed to the Pelagians. Fonseca has similar things in quaest. 6 of the metaphys., sect. 8, where he boasts that he was the first to devise in God a certain knowledge, which he says is middle between the natural knowledge of God and the free knowledge of free acts future under a condition. And Vasquez, in the first part, disputation 67, cap. 7: Why do the scholastic theologians wonder, he says, if besides the knowledge of simple intelligence and of vision we posit another of which they themselves made no mention? Finally, Valentinus Herice, 1. part., disputation 7, cap. 10, says: Who does not know that this middle knowledge lay hidden from the Scholastics, and was dug out by our Fathers, by the diligent and assiduous reading of the Fathers, from the darkness in which it lay hidden. Suárez, however, more prudent and humble than the others, does not affirm it to be a new invention, but contends that it has flowed down to us without interruption from Augustine, although it did not always become known to theologians so perspicuously. — Although, however, almost all the Fathers of the Society of Jesus champion that middle knowledge, they nevertheless do not agree among themselves in explaining and proving it: for first they differ in assigning the medium in which it is grounded. For some, as was said above, concede with Molina and Becanus that God knows conditionally future contingent things in the super-comprehension of secondary causes, and in the most eminent knowledge of free choice. Some, with Suárez, in the decree as future in the following sign of reason. Finally, others, in the objective truth which conditionally future things have antecedently to the conditional decree. Secondly, they disagree among themselves in establishing the special character of this knowledge; for some want it to be truly middle between each of the two kinds of knowledge, of simple intelligence and of vision. Some think that it must be reduced to the knowledge of simple intelligence. Finally, the rest contend that it must be connected with the knowledge of vision.

Note 3. From Didacus Alvarez, Archbishop of Trani, disputation 7, De Auxiliis, n. 10, there were once certain Arian heretics who constituted this middle knowledge in God as the principal foundation of their error, so that, namely, from the part of the foreknowledge of the future good use of free choice they might assign the cause on account of which Christ alone — whom they asserted to be the Son of God by grace, not by nature — was, alone, I say, among men, raised to the very dignity of divine filiation. So relates Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, in the Epistola ad Alexandrum Episcopum Constantinopolitanum, which is inserted among the acts

of the Council of Ephesus, whose words are:

When the opinion which follows next is objected to them, and they have spurned me because it plainly repugnates the nature of the Savior, who is by nature immutable, then, having cast off all piety and reverence toward God, they say: that God, since by foreknowledge and pre-sension He had known beforehand that he would by no means spurn Him, therefore chose him out of all: for they affirm that he had no prerogative by nature, nor anything beyond the other Sons (for they affirm that no one is a Son of God by nature, nor that there is anyone who is joined to Him by any property), but since he was of mutable nature and, on account of his singular diligence and zeal in rightly ordering his life and morals, did not turn aside to vices, God chose him, to such a degree that if either Paul or Peter had earnestly applied himself to this, they would have been Sons of God in the same way as he was. And in order to confirm their insane and pestilential doctrine, they also do violence to the Sacred Scriptures themselves, and twist to their own purpose the saying handed down in the Psalms concerning Christ, which reads thus, Ps. 44: You have loved justice and hated iniquity: therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows.

The Semi-Pelagians admitted the same middle knowledge, in order to establish predestination from foreseen merits arising from the primary good use of free choice without the benefit of grace, as will be clear below. And so it is certain that middle knowledge is not recent, but a most ancient dogma, devised in the first place by heretics, by which they might the more easily patronize their errors.

Note 4. Although some advocates of middle knowledge affirm that our opinion can easily be reconciled with theirs concerning middle knowledge, nevertheless those opinions differ by the whole heaven, and they conflict not only in the manner of speaking, but also in reality itself. First, because our opinion constitutes in God an actually conditional decree of producing through free secondary causes the event which is announced as future, if the condition is fulfilled: but the opposite opinion constitutes in God no decree, even conditional, actually, on which the infallibility of the event that is announced as future may be grounded, if the condition is verified. Secondly, they differ, for the conditional decree on the part of the act of willing included in the condition itself, which the contrary opinion posits, is only the decree of creating free causes and of constituting them in such circumstances and with such sufficient helps, by which they can operate if they wish, and of offering on its part a simultaneous concurrence, whenever they themselves wish to operate, as is clear from what has been said: but we judge that, in order that the conditioned event be infallibly future ex hypothesi, that decree of creating free secondary causes and constituting them in such circumstances, with sufficient power to operate if they wish, offering them a simultaneous concurrence, as they posit, does not suffice; but beyond all these things, in order that the contingent event be infallibly future under a condition, it is necessarily required that there precede in God an actual decree, by which He willed that such an event be infallibly future, yet under a condition, namely, if the condition under which it is predicted to be future were fulfilled.

Only conclusion. — No middle knowledge is to be admitted by which God knows conditionally future things antecedently to His decree concerning their conditioned futurity. This is common among the Thomists and the Scotists, the more faithful of their Doctors'

interpreters and disciples: and it is gathered first from the doctrine of the Subtle Doctor, who in 1. dist. 38. n. 2, resolving that the knowledge of God concerning contingent things is not practical, says: If before the act of the divine will the divine intellect could have any such knowledge, it would have it merely naturally and necessarily, because every knowledge there preceding the act of the will is merely natural and by essence, as it itself is the merely natural principle of understanding. With these words the Doctor affirms that every divine knowledge preceding the decree is necessary, merely natural, and by essence, such as is the knowledge of simple intelligence: but such would not be that middle knowledge, and consequently the Doctor rejects it. Then, in dist. 41. n. 10, impugning the opinion of Henry, who says that the reason why God predestines one but reprobates another is the good use of free choice foreseen on the part of the predestined, and the evil use on the part of the reprobate, he says:

But on the contrary it is argued against this; First, because God does not foresee that he will use free choice well, except because He wills or preordains that this one use it well, because as was said in dist. 39, the certain prevision of future contingent things is from the determination of the divine will: if, therefore, two men equal in natural endowments are offered to the divine will, I ask why He preordains this one to use free choice well and not that one? There is no reason, as it seems, to assign for this except the divine will: and this is the first distinction between them, from which, according to you, election or reprobation follows. Therefore in the first distinction pertaining to predestination and reprobation, the only reason is the divine will.

With these words the Doctor plainly affirms that divine knowledge supposes the decree, and that things have the character of future things only dependently on the decree: and so he explodes that knowledge by which future things are said to be known antecedently to the divine decree concerning their futurity.

THE FIRST IMPUGNATION OF MIDDLE KNOWLEDGE FROM ST. AUGUSTINE.

The conclusion is therefore proved. First, indeed, by the authority of St. Augustine, who disapproves and rejects this middle knowledge, as I make evident by this argument: St. Augustine rejects and reprobates that knowledge which the Massilians, called Semi-Pelagians, championed in order to reconcile human freedom with the decrees of God: but they championed, for that purpose, that a middle knowledge preceding the divine decrees was necessary: therefore St. Augustine reprobates it. In order that the major may become more clearly known, I first prove the minor from the Epistles of Sts. Prosper, Bishop of Riez, and Hilary, Bishop of Arles, in which the errors and opinions of the Semi-Pelagians are reported and referred to St. Augustine himself, that he might write against them, as he did in Lib. De Praedestinatione Sanctorum et de Bono perseverantiae. St. Prosper therefore writes that the Semi-Pelagians unanimously taught that divine predestination is based on foreknowledge, and that God predestines no one except on the supposition of the foreknowledge by which He foresees what his will will do, placed with the very help of grace in such or such circumstances: for he says at the beginning of the Epistle:

This is their definition and profession: that every man, indeed, sinned when Adam sinned, and that no one is saved by his own works, but by the grace of God through regeneration; that nevertheless the propitiation which is in the Sacrament of the Blood of Christ is offered to all men without exception, so that whoever wills to come to faith and to Baptism may be able to be saved. But those who are going to believe, or who are going to remain in that faith which afterwards, through

the grace of God is to be helped — God, they say, foreknew before the constitution of the world: and He predestined into His kingdom those whom, freely called, He foresaw would be worthy of election, and would depart from this life with a good end.

But that he professed this divine foreknowledge to be anterior to the divine decree, he indicates by subjoining:

But that this purpose of the calling of God, by which either before the beginning of the world, or in the very condition of the human race, the separation of the elect and the rejected is said to have been made, so that according as it pleased the Creator, some were created vessels of honor, others vessels of dishonor, and takes away from the fallen the care of rising again and brings to the saints the occasion of time; because on both sides the labor is superfluous, if neither can the rejected enter by any industry, nor can the elect fall away by any negligence: for in whatever manner they conduct themselves, nothing else can happen to them than what God has defined, and under uncertain hope the course cannot be constant, since if the election of the one predestining holds something else, the intention of the one striving is in vain.

Hence they concluded: That therefore all industry is removed and virtues are taken away, if the constitution of God (that is, the decree) precedes human wills: and under this name of predestination a certain fatal necessity is introduced. Hence the same St. Prosper, among other things, asks St. Augustine to teach:

Whether the foreknowledge of God so remains according to the purpose, that those very things which are purposed are to be taken as foreknown: or whether these things are varied according to the genera of causes and the species of persons; so that, because the callings are diverse, in those who are saved without working anything, the purpose of God alone seems as it were to exist: but in those who are going to do some good, the purpose may stand through foreknowledge: or whether, uniformly, although divine foreknowledge cannot be distinguished from the temporal purpose, foreknowledge is nevertheless, by a certain order, subjected to the purpose.

That is, whether the foreknowledge of future things is anterior to the divine decree, or rather posterior to it, and grounded in it. From which it is clear that the discourse is instituted by St. Prosper concerning middle knowledge, inasmuch as it is even now asserted by the more recent theologians. — It is confirmed from the Epistle of St. Hilary written on the same matter to St. Augustine himself, in which, likewise relating the errors of the same Semi-Pelagians, especially that they asserted that God does not grant the gifts of grace except by supposing some beginning of a good will: and when they were pressed with the example of adults to whom the Gospel was preached, but to others it was not; which could not be refunded into a beginning of a good will, since all were concluded under the sin of infidelity:

But when it is said to them, he says, why it is preached to some, or in some places, or is not preached, or is now preached what at one time was not preached to almost all, just as now it has not been preached to some nations: they say that this belongs to divine foreknowledge, that the truth would be announced, or will be announced, at that time, and there, and to those: when and where it was foreknown that it was to be believed.

He adds:

And they testify that they prove this not only by the testimonies of other Catholics, but also by the more ancient disputation of Your Holiness, where nevertheless you taught the same grace with no less perspicuity of truth: as that which Your Holiness says in the question contra Porphyrium de tempore Christianae Religionis: that Christ then willed to appear to men and to have His doctrine preached among them, when He knew, and where He knew that there were those who would believe in Him.

By which it is established that the Semi-Pelagians asserted that divine foreknowledge, of which the discourse here is, is anterior to the divine decrees. The major is therefore proved, namely, that St. Augustine rejected that middle knowledge: for here, in cap. 9 of the lib. De Praedestinatione Sanctorum, responding to that which the Semi-Pelagians used to usurp from his own writings, both against Porphyry and in the Commentario in Epistolam ad Romanos, to assert that foreknowledge is anterior to the divine decrees; after he had reported all those things which he had said against Porphyry, he concludes that the Semi-Pelagians wrongly assert that he had willed that divine foreknowledge is anterior to the divine decrees; nay, he affirms that he taught there that it is supported by those very decrees;

You see, he says, that I, without prejudice to the hidden counsel of God and other causes, wished to say this about the foreknowledge of Christ, which seemed sufficient for convincing the infidelity of the pagans, who had objected this question? For what is truer than that Christ foreknew who, and when, and in which places, would believe in Him? But whether, with Christ preached to them, they would have faith from themselves, or would take it with God giving, that is, whether God only foreknew them, or also predestined them, I did not think it necessary then to ask and discuss. Accordingly, what I said, that Christ then willed to appear to men, and to have His doctrine preached among them, when He knew, and where He knew that there were those who would believe in Him, could also be said thus: that Christ then willed to appear to men, and to have His doctrine preached among them, when He knew, and where He knew that there were those who had been elected in Him before the constitution of the world.

With these words St. Augustine refers back to the decree of the divine will and to His election the knowledge by which God foreknew, with the Gospel preached at these or those times, who would believe in Him. He therefore holds that the knowledge of those conditioned things presupposes in God some decree of His divine will.

It is confirmed. there St. Augustine, cap. 10, says:

Predestination cannot be without foreknowledge, but foreknowledge can be without predestination: for by predestination, indeed, God foreknew those things which He Himself was going to do. Hence it is said: He made the things which are to come: but He is able to foreknow even those things which He Himself does not do, such as whatever sins.

Hence I argue thus: the things which God is going to do, He foreknows from predestination, that is, from His decree: therefore there is not given in Him a foreknowledge of future things independently of His decree. The antecedent is clear from the words of Augustine himself, establishing only this difference between foreknowledge and predestination, that predestination is only of those things which God is going to do, but foreknowledge is also of those things which He is not going to do, such as sins; and therefore in his mind the foreknowledge of the future things which He is going to do is posterior to the decrees, not anterior.

It is confirmed 2. from the same St. Augustine, in lib. De Bono Perseverantiae, c. 9, expounding that which St. John says, 1:

If they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us; where, answering: They were not of them, because they were not called according to the purpose, they were not elected in Christ before the constitution of the world, they did not obtain a lot in Him, they were not predestined according to the purpose of Him who operates all things: objecting to himself on the part of the Pelagians; Certainly God could, foreknowing that they would fall, before that happened, take them away from this life; he answers: Are we going to return to this, that we should still dispute with how great an absurdity it is said that men are judged even for those sins which God foreknew they would have perpetrated, if they had lived? Which is so abhorrent to Christian or altogether human feelings, that one would be ashamed even to refute it.

With these words he plainly disapproves the foreknowledge of those things which precede the decrees. Then in the same place he confirms those things which he had said in cap. 9 of De Praedest. Sanctorum, namely, that when he said that Christ then appeared to men, and preached His doctrine among them, when and where He knew who were going to believe in Him, he understood that without prejudice of the hidden counsel of God, and without exclusion of the divine decree: therefore he always supposes the divine decree to precede divine foreknowledge.

They reply. the advocates of middle knowledge say that St. Augustine in these texts speaks of absolutely future things, not however of conditioned ones.

On the contrary. St. Augustine speaks of those future things about which he had been asked by Sts. Prosper and Hilary, and about which the Semi-Pelagians were dealing, otherwise he would not answer to the point; finally, those about which he himself had made mention in the book De sex quaestionibus Paganorum: but those future things of which the discourse is are conditioned. Proof 1. from the Epistle of St. Prosper, who, after he had distinguished two genera of Semi-Pelagians, some of whom inclined more toward the Pelagians, concludes:

The opinion of almost all is found to be equal, and one, by which they received the purpose and predestination of God according to foreknowledge, so that on this account God made some vessels of honor, others of dishonor, because He provided the end of each one, and foresaw under the very help of grace in what will and action he would be.

By which it is clear that the Semi-Pelagians held that God certainly reprobates some, because He foresaw that they would not even consent to grace if they had it; therefore he does not speak of absolutely future things. Then St. Augustine himself sufficiently indicates that he speaks of conditioned future things: both because he explains the question, whether, if Christ had preached at an equal time and place among the Gentiles, they would have believed or not: which certainly is not future absolutely, but conditionally. Finally, in cap. 10 of De Praedestinatione Sanctorum, he says: For by predestination God foreknew those things which He Himself was going to do: but the things which God was going to do are not future absolutely, but conditionally; for things that are absolutely future, He is going to do absolutely, but He was not going to do them: therefore there he deals with conditionally future things. Add that there St. Augustine affirms divine foreknowledge to presuppose the divine decree, and consequently, even given and conceded that he dealt with absolutely future things, he would always exclude middle knowledge antecedent to the decree.

Others reply. that St. Augustine indeed rejects middle knowledge independent of the decree, not indeed as to its substance and good use, but as to the abuse and erroneous manner in which the Semi-Pelagians admitted it, inasmuch as, namely, they said that from it the motives of predestination and grace are exhibited to God.

On the contrary. First, St. Augustine rejects the foreknowledge independent of the decree in the same manner in which he had delivered it in the book De sex quaestionibus Paganorum: but he had delivered it there as to its substance; for there he had said that Christ then willed to appear to men, when and where He knew who would believe in Him: therefore he reprobates it not only as to the abuse, but also as to the substance. Secondly, he denies that foreknowledge before the decree, as it was asserted by the Semi-Pelagians: but they established that foreknowledge not only as to the motive of grace and predestination, but also for saving the freedom of free choice, as is clear from the words of St. Prosper: therefore he rejects it not only as to the abuse, but also as to the substance.

The rest reply. that although St. Augustine speaks of middle knowledge as to substance, he nevertheless does not assert that it supposes an absolute decree on the part of the subject, or of the one decreeing, but only a conditional one on the part of the act, which is consistent with middle knowledge itself, which precedes the absolute decree.

On the contrary. this reply directly militates against St. Augustine himself, already praised and saying, That God by predestination foreknew those things which He Himself was going to do: and accordingly that foreknowledge supposes an absolute decree on the part of the subject. Then, St. Augustine himself, in lib. De Bono Perseverantiae, cap. 17, speaking of the gifts which God gratuitously grants for persevering, says: These gifts of God, if there is no predestination which we defend, are not foreknown by God; but they are foreknown: this, therefore, is the predestination which we defend. With these words St. Augustine concludes foreknowledge from predestination, and accordingly from a presupposed absolute decree on the part of God decreeing. It is established, therefore, that St. Augustine explodes middle knowledge, and accordingly does not admit it.

MIDDLE KNOWLEDGE IS IMPUGNED, SECOND, BY THEOLOGICAL REASON.

Proof 2. The conclusion by theological reason. Middle knowledge is said to be a certain and evident cognition of future conditionals, antecedently to the divine decree and to the predestination of the divine will: but such cognition is repugnant to God: therefore it is not to be asserted.

The major is evident: for although the advocates of middle knowledge mutually fight among themselves in asserting the medium in which God knows future conditioned contingents antecedently to the decree, all nevertheless agree in this, that that divine cognition is certain and evident and prior to the divine decrees themselves.

The minor is therefore proved. That science is repugnant to God which implies a contradiction in terms: but the science of God about things conditionally future before the decree implies a contradiction in terms: therefore it is repugnant to God. The major is certain: for nothing contradictory and repugnant to itself ought to be attributed to God. The minor, however, is proved from those things which we have said, that the futurity of things depends on the divine decree, either absolute, if the futurity be absolute; or conditional, if it be conditional: therefore it requires an external cause, which may bring it from possible being to future being: but the principal cause of the futurity of things is the divine will itself, drawing some things out of possible being into future being; and so the futurity of things depends on the divine decree.

It is confirmed 1. The absolute decree of God is related to the future absolutely, just as the conditional decree is related to the future conditionally: but it implies a contradiction that something be future absolutely, unless the absolute decree of God decreeing that it be done precedes: therefore it equally implies a contradiction that something be future conditionally, unless the decree of God ordaining that that future thing be done, if the condition be present and fulfilled, precedes.

It is confirmed 2. A future conditional, the condition being fulfilled, passes over into a future absolute: therefore if before the decree of his will God knows certainly and infallibly that if Peter, v. g., be placed in such circumstances, he will consent to such an object proposed to him, then, that condition being fulfilled, before God decrees anything about the future act, he will know that it is future absolutely; and so in this hypothesis something could be future absolutely independently of the decree of the divine will, which no theologian will admit.

The advocates of middle knowledge reply. Indeed, things do not have futurity except from the divine decree; but this is the difference between things future absolutely and conditionally, that absolute futures depend indeed on a decree actual and exercised and actually elicited by God: conditionals, however, do not require a decree actually placed and existing in the divine will; but only a decree which would be and would be placed if the condition were placed. For the existence of the cause, they say, ought to have proportion with the existence of the effect: therefore just as it is necessary that the effect which is have a cause which is in act; and that to the effect which will be there be assigned a cause which will be; so likewise it is necessary that to the effect which would be there also be assigned a cause which would be. Since, therefore, effects future conditionally are neither in fact actually existing, nor are truly and absolutely future, but would only be if the condition were placed; for that reason they do not require any decree actually formed, but only one to be placed and formed, if such a condition were placed.

On the contrary. First, this reply militates directly against Saint Augustine, who, as we have already said many times, asserts that God foreknows conditionally future things, and that dependently on his decree: therefore just as he in fact foreknows those things as conditionally future, so also he in fact decreed and pre-defined them; otherwise he would not in fact and actually know and cognize them, but would only have cognized and known them if his divine Science or divine decree depended on a condition to be placed, nor would it have been prior to the very condition to be placed.

— Then, that decree which is to be placed if the condition be placed is either actually known by God, or not: they cannot assert that it is not actually known; for they affirm that conditionally future things are known dependently on that decree to be placed conditionally. But if it is known, either it is known as actually existing, or as future. If the first, I have what I intended: if the second, it follows that some decrees of God are future, which we earlier proved to be false against Suarez.

— Then, if some decree conditionally future were given, it would follow that the divine will must be changed, and depend on something extrinsic: since the decree will be formed, if such a condition of a thing conditionally future be present; but it will not be formed, if such a condition be absent: but it implies a contradiction that the divine will be mutable, and depend on something extrinsic: therefore it equally implies a contradiction that the divine decree about conditionals be future.

— Finally, if what the adversaries reply were true, namely that the cause is to be proportioned to the effect, in the way that has been said, it would follow that the decrees about absolutely future things are not even in act in God; and so not only conditionally, but also absolutely future things would not presuppose an exercised decree actually formed, but only one to be formed. But the consequent is false: therefore also the antecedent. The consequence of the major is evident: for absolute futures are not in act from eternity, but will only truly exist in some difference of time: therefore if it be true that to the effect which will be, only the cause which will be should be assigned, not the cause which in fact is; it clearly follows that even that which is absolutely future should not presuppose a decree actually formed, but only a decree to be formed in the future; and since the advocates of middle knowledge do not deem this true, neither ought they to think that to the effect, which would be if such a condition were placed, a decree should also be assigned, not one which is in act, but one which would be if such a condition were placed.

Proof 2. Middle knowledge is useless for those ends for which it is affirmed to be necessary by its advocates: therefore it is not to be admitted. The antecedent is proved: the necessity and utility of middle knowledge, if there were any, is chiefly for reconciling human liberty with predestination and efficacious grace, and also for directing God in his absolute decrees, or for founding a certain and infallible knowledge of absolute futures: but it is useless for both: therefore, etc. The major is evident from the opinion of the adversaries, who judge that unless God through middle knowledge explored all the affections of the created will, and saw what man, placed in these or those occasions and circumstances, would will from innate liberty, he could not certainly and infallibly determine anything concerning the salvation and conversion of men, and would expose himself to the danger of not fulfilling what he efficaciously intends. They judge likewise that the certainty of predestination cannot be reconciled with our liberty otherwise than through that science by which God foresees the future consent antecedently to the decree; so that if the divine decree and the grace proceeding from it preceded the consent and determination of our will by priority of nature, it would infer an antecedent necessity, and so would violate liberty.

The minor is therefore proved. First indeed, because God in forming his absolute decrees concerning the salvation of men is sufficiently directed through the knowledge of simple intelligence: therefore he does not need middle knowledge as director and explorer of the human will. The antecedent is evident: for God through the knowledge of simple intelligence comprehends his essence and omnipotence, and sees in the treasures of his mercy those infinite means and most efficacious helps, by which he can strongly and sweetly prevent and allure the human will, so that it consents, and when and where he wills: For who would so impiously rave, says Saint Augustine in the Enchiridio, cap. 98, as to say that God cannot convert to good the evil wills of men, which he wills, when he wills, where he wills?

This Augustine himself explains more fully, and no less elegantly, in Homily 23 of the fifty,

You were not an adulterer, he says, in that past life of yours full of ignorance, not yet illumined, not yet discerning good and evil, not yet believing in him who ruled you in your ignorance: this your God says to you: I was ruling you for myself, I was keeping you for myself: that you would not commit adultery, a tempter was wanting; that the tempter should be wanting, I brought it about. Place and time were wanting, and that this should be wanting, I brought it about. A tempter was present, place was not wanting, time was not wanting: that you would not consent, I brought it about. Acknowledge, therefore, his grace, to whom you owe that you did not commit it, etc.

With which words Saint Augustine openly teaches that time, place, and other circumstances are decreed by God through his infinite providence: therefore there is no need for him to explore through middle knowledge the opportune circumstances of time and place, and likewise the affections of the human will.

Especially since, as Saint Prosper sang in the poem De ingratis, cap. 5,

But truly the Omnipotent saves man with grace, Grace itself completes its own work, to which the time of acting Is always present, whatever it wills to be done; no delay is made to it By morals, nor is it held in suspense by any causes: Nor does it execute, by the care and office of a minister, what it alone can do, And commit to servants the role of acting.

It is confirmed. God through the knowledge of simple intelligence knows all possible things: therefore likewise through it he knows the fitting mode of alluring the human will, and of reconciling it with his decrees: therefore middle knowledge is not necessary for this. The consequence is evident: for if this mode is made known through the knowledge of simple intelligence, no other science is necessary for detecting it. The antecedent is also certain: for that mode, whatever is conceivable, is first possible before it is future; and accordingly it would first be seen through the knowledge of simple intelligence, which is concerned with all possible things.

The second part of the minor is also proved. namely that middle knowledge is useless for reconciling human liberty with predestination and efficacious grace: both because, first, the holy Fathers expressly affirm that this reconciliation is most difficult: whence Saint Augustine, Epist. 105. ad Sixtum: Why this one believes and that one does not believe, and when both hear the same, if a miracle is wrought in their sight, both see the same; it is the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, whose judgments are unsearchable. And below: Why he would deliver this one rather than that one, or not deliver him, let him search who can, into so great a depth of his judgments: but let him beware of the precipice. And in lib. De Praedestinatione Sanctorum, cap. 9: Why he would deliver this one rather than that one, his judgments are unsearchable and his ways past finding out: for better it is that here too we hear and say: O man, who are you, that you answer back to God! than that we dare to say as though we knew what he willed to be hidden. And in lib. 4 Contra Iulianum, cap. 8: This question, where the free choice of the will and the grace of God are disputed, (and the same concerning predestination), is so difficult to discern, that when free choice is defended, the grace of God seems to be denied: but when the grace of God is asserted, free choice is thought to be taken away.

From which it is evident that Saint Augustine differs greatly from the more recent theologians, who judge that the reconciliation of efficacious grace with created liberty is easy.

Secondly: so far is that mode of reconciliation through middle knowledge from seeming easy, that it is not without reason rejected by many theologians as impossible. For that on which this reconciliation through middle knowledge is founded is that the created choice is seen by God to determine itself to the free act before God concurs to that act; so much so that the will of concurring on the part of God presupposes the conditional prescience of the concurrence of the created choice itself; and yet between the concurrence of the divine and human will there is no distinction, no order of priority except by priority of reason.

But who can understand that a distinction of reason, which is simpliciter nothing, is the foundation of reconciling efficacious grace with created liberty? How will God, who after the manner of men does not conceive as distinct those things which ex natura rei are indistinct, unveil the mystery of such concord? Or perhaps we search out the true reason of such concord, which God cannot grasp?

IT IS IMPUGNED, THIRD, FROM THE INCONVENIENCES AND ABSURDITIES ARISING FROM IT.

First indeed, because it seems to detract from divine omnipotence: for, middle knowledge being supposed about some conditional, v. g., about the conversion of Peter as future if he be placed in these or those circumstances and conditions, either the divine will can, those circumstances standing, will that Peter not be converted, or it cannot will that. If the first, that science will not be infallible, because the objective truth of this future conditional will be evacuated by the repugnant divine volition. If the second, then divine omnipotence is judged weak, and the liberty of the divine will will be weaker than the liberty of the created will; for the created will under those occasions and circumstances is foreseen to determine itself to one part with the possibility and liberty of determining itself to the other, which would not belong to the divine liberty and will itself:

Is it really so, then, says Saint Fulgentius in lib. De Incarnatione et Gratia, cap. 29, that the order of things is permitted to be believed and thought, that God, who is the Creator of man, is able to make man, but not to change him? And that he who needs no one's help to make man operate, nevertheless cannot in man's will what he wills, until he has found in man the willing itself? May God drive this madness away from his faithful, and take it away from the unbelievers.

Secondly, from middle knowledge follows the error of the Semipelagians, who asserted that predestination to grace is made from the prevision of merits: for that predestination is made from foreseen natural merits, if in a sign of reason antecedent to the divine decree, by which men are chosen and predestined to grace, God foresees their future merits: but, middle knowledge being admitted, God foresees those future merits in a sign antecedent to the decree of predestination to grace: therefore from middle knowledge it follows that predestination to grace is made from foreseen natural merits. The major is evident: for God in that prior sign of reason, if before he determines to confer grace on a man he sees his future merits, cannot but be moved by the sight of them to confer grace on the man. The minor, however, is proved: for in whatever sign of reason something is true, it is foreseen by God; and consequently if in that prior sign the natural merits of Peter are objectively true, they are foreseen by God: and so from those foreseen merits God will be moved to confer grace on the man, which involves the manifest error of the Semipelagians.

Thirdly, from that middle knowledge it would follow that man discerns himself by purely natural powers: for on the hypothesis that God foresees Peter and Paul, the former indeed about to consent to grace, if it be given to him in such a circumstance; the latter, however, not about to consent: either Peter will determine himself to consent from the sole powers of free choice, or such determination is to be caused by exciting grace, or by co-acting and co-efficient grace: but this determination cannot, in the opinion of the adversaries, be said to be made by grace, whether exciting or co-efficient: therefore they must admit that that determination is made by the sole powers of free choice.

The minor is proved. For in the first place such a determination of the will cannot be foreseen by God as to be caused by morally exciting grace, because the advocates of middle knowledge judge that such grace is subject to free choice and is determined by it and applied to acting; and consequently they cannot think that that determination is made by exciting grace, but by free choice. The same minor is evident as to the second part: for operating and co-efficient grace, or the simultaneous concurrence of the supernatural order, is in itself, they say, indifferent, and is offered to the will in an indifferent mode, and is determined by it to the species of the act: but an indifferent concurrence determinable by the human will cannot cause its determination; rather it is determined by it: therefore the determination of the will to consent to grace cannot be foreseen by God through middle knowledge as caused by co-efficient grace.

And consequently, if God sees Peter, antecedently to the decree, about to determine himself, he sees that determination as future from the sole powers of free choice, which savors of the heresy of the Semipelagians, indeed even of the Pelagians.

The impugners of middle knowledge bring forward several other contradictions: namely. 1. That it takes away from God the notion of First Cause, because it supposes the creature to determine itself first, and independently of the decree. 2. That it takes away from God the notion of the first free being, because the first free being must be the first determining and the first choosing; for to choose and to determine is the proper act of liberty; and middle knowledge takes away from God the notion of the first chooser and first determiner, because it supposes the election and determination of the human will to be conditionally future before every election, or before every actual and exercised decree. 3. That middle knowledge obstructs the supreme dominion of God over the wills of men, since the advocates of middle knowledge affirm that the wills of men determine themselves and apply themselves to acting antecedently to the divine decree, by which God is deemed to determine them. 4. That it attributes to God a mode of concurring with free causes that is blind and ignorant, vague and indeterminate, because it supposes a concurrence indifferent and without intention and volition of any particular act and effect, with only the general intention of doing what the creature wills, whether good or evil: but this is to concur in a blind and ignorant mode, and to act confusedly and at uncertainty; in nearly the way in which someone would wish to shoot and discharge an arrow in darkness, doubtful where it tends or what it strikes, unless by subsequent light: for just as the vision that follows does not prevent that discharge of the arrow from having been made in a certain blind and ignorant mode, so the cognition and exploration of middle knowledge does not prevent that the mode of acting and concurring with free causes, blind and ignorant, vague and indeterminate, be attributed to God.

OBJECTIONS FROM SACRED SCRIPTURE ARE PROPOSED AND SOLVED.

They object 1. The advocates of middle knowledge bring forward various texts of Sacred Scripture by which they strive to confirm their opinion. In the first place, indeed, they bring forward that reproach of Christ, Matthaei 11.: Woe to you, Bethsaida, woe to you, Corozaim, etc., from which they argue thus: God knows certainly and infallibly the conversion of the Tyrians and Sidonians as future, on the condition that Christ the Lord had preached among them: but he did not know it in some decree: therefore he knew it antecedently to such a decree, and consequently through middle knowledge. The major is evident from the first Question of the present Section, in which we determined that God has certain and infallible cognition of future conditionals. They prove the minor: Christ not only foretold, but also reproaches the unbelief of the Jews in comparison with the Gentiles, who, if they had seen the miracles which the Jews had seen, would have done penance: but that reproach, at least as comparative, would not be just, if the penance of the Gentiles had been known as future conditionally in the divine decree: therefore it was not so known. The minor is proved: in order that a comparative reproach seem just, there must be equality between the extremes of that comparison; for the servant to whom the master of the family had given two talents would not have been justly reproached for not having gained ten, as he who had received five: but, a conditional decree about the penance of the Gentiles being supposed, and the same decree being denied to the Jews, the equality between them would not be preserved, and the Jews could justly answer: Therefore, having seen the miracles of Christ, we did not do penance, as the Tyrians and Sidonians would have done; because you did not have that decree toward us about future penance, as you had it toward the Gentiles: therefore if such prevision of future penance is made in the decree, it follows that the reproach of Christ is not just; and since that consequent is false, that also from which it follows is false.

I answer 1. That Saint Augustine overthrows middle knowledge by this very principle of the Tyrians and Sidonians: for when in Capitul. 9. of the book Bono Perseverantiae he had related the response which he had made to one of the six questions of the Pagans, namely that Christ came at such a time because he foreknew that men would not believe in him if he had come earlier, which is the opinion of the advocates of middle knowledge, he adds:

These things, certainly, we cannot say about Tyre and Sidon: and in them we recognize that these divine judgments belong to those causes of predestination, without prejudging which hidden causes I said that I then answered these things. For it is easy for us to accuse the unbelief of the Jews, coming from free will, who, when such great miracles were done among them, refused to believe, which the Lord also, reproaching, argued and said: woe to you, Corozaim;

with which words Saint Augustine says two things: first indeed, that that penance of the Tyrians, future conditionally, is not to be refunded into the congruity of their calling, and accordingly that it is foreseen only from a conditional decree. Second, that the Jews are deservedly accused because they had sufficient help for doing penance, which nevertheless they were unwilling to do from their will: therefore the opinion of Saint Augustine stands far apart from the advocates of middle knowledge.

I answer 2. That the same argument can be turned back against the defenders of middle knowledge themselves: for although they admit with us that the Jews and Tyrians were equal in grace considered according to physical entity; they do not, however, deny that they were unequal in grace viewed according to its moral being and inasmuch as it is alluring of the will in this or that mode. For either they judge that that moral allurement is made conformably to the temperament and disposition, as Vasquez teaches; or in that congruity of time and in those occasions, in which the Gentiles were foreseen through middle knowledge about to consent: but to the Jews, indeed, the same grace was exhibited, but not according to the same moral efficacy, or not having regard to that inclination and those circumstances. Since, therefore, the Jews did not have that equal grace according to moral being, they could complain just as justly, as they would complain about a conditional decree of future penance not being placed toward them.

I answer 3. By denying the minor; and to all its proofs I say that for that just reproach of the Jews it suffices that they were bound to be converted, and that for this they had sufficient help. For that someone be justly reproached before another, it suffices that the obligation of both be the same, which nevertheless one transgresses and the other fulfills: but this obligation is founded on being able to accomplish something, not on the act itself and the application of the potency. Whence, since a conditional decree does not confer the ability, but presupposes it, and applies the potency conditionally to the act, hence it is that it does not take away the equality of obligation, nor obstruct a just reproach, even a comparative one. Whence, although a conditional decree may have been placed about the penance of the Tyrians, future conditionally upon seeing the miracles of Christ, which was not placed toward the Jews: nevertheless the Jews are justly reproached, because they had sufficient help for their conversion.

The adversaries press. Saint Augustine, in lib. De Bono Pers., cap. 10, treating the question why God did not will those signs to be done among the Tyrians and Sidonians, by the sight of which they would believe in God, says:

A certain not ignoble Catholic Disputator explained this passage of the Gospel in this way, as to say that the Lord had foreknown that the Tyrians and Sidonians would afterwards depart from the faith, when they had believed through the miracles done among them, and that it was rather out of mercy that he did not do those things to them: because they would become liable to a graver punishment, if they had left the faith which they had held, than if they had never held it at any time.

Since in fact St. Augustine approved that opinion, it follows that he approved middle knowledge of conditionally future things before any decree. For it is not likely that God decreed to predetermine them to the act of faith, and to the apostasy which He foresaw would follow, on the hypothesis that, having seen those signs, they would believe in Him.

It is confirmed 1. These two things openly conflict: that God absolutely decreed that those signs should not be performed before them, lest believing and afterwards falling away from the faith they should be punished more severely; and that God decreed to determine them to the act of faith.

It is confirmed 2. Since that supposition, namely of performing those signs before them, depended on the will of God alone, it would be said foolishly that God decreed to determine the Tyrians and Sidonians to the act of faith, if those signs were performed before them: for this would be to say nothing other than that God had decreed to give them faith, if He had decreed to work miracles before them.

I answer 1. That St. Augustine did not simpliciter approve the opinion of that Doctor, for he adds: But if that opinion is true: from which he draws an argument to confirm what he had taught against the Semipelagians, namely that man is not saved, nor damned, on account of the good or evil works which God foresaw he would do, if he had lived longer; but only on account of those works which he will truly do in his life.

I answer 2. That God, in the conditional decree by which He had determined to move the Tyrians and Sidonians to faith and to the doing of penance, on the hypothesis that those signs had been performed among them, certainly knew their future conversion: for just as the knowledge of things absolutely future presupposes in God an absolute decree, by which He decrees His concurrence with the created will for its acts; so likewise the knowledge of things conditionally future presupposes in Him a conditional decree, by which He determined that they would be future if the condition were fulfilled, for nothing can be future unless God willing and determining it.

To the first confirmation. I answer that there is no conflict between these two: namely, that God by an absolute decree determined that those signs should not be performed before them, lest believing and afterwards falling away from the faith they should be punished more severely; and that by a conditional decree He determined to move and determine them to the act of faith if those signs had been performed among them: for those two decrees are not opposed to one another, because one is absolute, but the other conditional.

To the second confirmation. I say that nothing against us is gathered from this, for just as it is rightly inferred that God would have decreed to rule and administer another world if He had truly determined to create it; so likewise it is rightly said that God decreed to give faith to the Tyrians and Sidonians, if He had decreed that those signs should be performed before them.

They press again. from the same St. Augustine in the same place cap. 14, where, weighing the same text of Sacred Scripture, he affirms that the Tyrians and Sidonians would have done a great penance of humility, if those signs of divine powers had been performed among them. But this certainty of doing penance he does not trace back to the divine decree, but to the inclination and disposition of the will of the Tyrians and Sidonians, about whom he had spoken in c. 9, for thus he says: from which it appears that some have naturally, in their very talent, the divine gift of understanding, by which they are moved to faith, if they either hear words fitting to their minds, or behold signs. He was speaking, however, of the Tyrians and Sidonians of whom he infers: therefore the eyes of the Tyrians were not so blinded, nor was the heart of the Tyrians so hardened, because they would have believed if they (the Tyrians) had seen signs such as they themselves (the Jews) saw.

I deny. That St. Augustine traces this certain knowledge about doing penance back to anything other than the divine decree; for straightway opening his meaning, he indicates that that foreknowledge presupposes some decree of the divine will; for he adds: For they hear and do, to whom it is given: but they do not do, whether they hear or do not hear, those to whom it is not given. And again: but because it was not given to them to believe, even that by which they might believe was denied them. With which words St. Augustine traces the penance of the Tyrians back to the decree of the will of God, by which He distributes His grace to whom He wills, and when He wills. Nor indeed could he reduce that certainty of doing penance to the natural disposition itself and the gift of understanding, by which they would be moved to faith, if signs had been performed before them. For St. Augustine speaks only of external signs, which do not suffice for faith, but besides these an interiorly moving grace is required: otherwise St. Augustine would have agreed with the Pelagians, who asserted that no other grace is necessary for faith than the preaching of the Gospel.

They object again. several other texts of Sacred Scripture, by which they strive to prove that God knows many conditionally future things through middle knowledge and antecedently to any decree. They bring forward the first testimony from that passage of Genesis 11 concerning those first men who said: Come, let us make for ourselves a city and a tower whose top may reach to heaven, and let us make a name for ourselves: concerning whom God says in the same place: They have begun to do this, nor will they desist from their designs, until they complete them in deed. By which words God predicts that that building would be completed, unless those men had been called away from it by the confusion of tongues. They bring forward the second from cap. 34 of Exodus and 3. Regum cap. 11, where the Jews are forbidden to take as wives the daughters of the Gentiles, For most certainly, he says, they will turn away your hearts, that you may follow their gods; where that word, most certainly, signifies a prediction of the event proceeding from a certain and infallible knowledge. They bring forward the third from 4. Regum cap. 2, where when Elias had said to Eliseus that he should ask whatever he wished, before he was taken away from him: and Eliseus had said: I beseech thee that thy double spirit be made in me, Elias answered: thou hast asked a hard thing: nevertheless if thou shalt see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be unto thee as thou hast asked: but if thou shalt not see me, it shall not be. In which place a double conditional event is revealed, namely the infusion of a double spirit with the condition appended, if he should see Elias, and the denial of the infusion if he should not see him. They bring forward the fourth from John 5, where Christ says:

I have come in the name of my Father, and you have not received me: if another shall come in his own name, him you will receive, and there is one who accuses you, Moses, in whom you trust: for if you believed Moses, you would perhaps believe me also; for he wrote of me.

With which words a double conditionally future event is predicted. The fifth is taken from the first Epistle to the Corinthians cap. 2: For if they had known (says St. Paul of the crucifiers of Christ) they would never have crucified the Lord of glory; where a conditional future is manifestly enunciated, on the hypothesis that Pilate and the princes of the Jews had known Christ to be the Lord of glory. I pass over other similar texts of Sacred Scripture, which the supporters of middle knowledge heap up in abundance: for those will easily be resolved from the explanation of the foregoing.

Therefore I answer to the first. That God truly foresaw that the wills of those men were in fact determined to completing the city and the tower, unless they had been hindered from it by the division of tongues: but He knew this in the conditional decree, by which He had determined to permit the consummation of that city according to the disposition of the will of those men, unless for a reasonable cause He had called them away from that work. For many times in Sacred Scripture effects are revealed as future according to the disposition and determination of causes, which nevertheless in reality were not fulfilled, because God hindered them from coming to pass. Thus the subversion of Ninive was to follow within forty days, as Jonas had predicted in cap. 3, namely according to the demerits of that city, unless God on account of their penance had revoked the sentence of punishing them.

To the second. I say that that word most certainly signifies not infallible certainty, but only moral certainty, which sometimes fails: whence, with the danger of idolatry set aside, God permitted the Jews to take foreign wives, as is clear in the case of Ruth, whom Booz took as wife.

To the third. I answer that in the decree, by which God determined that a double spirit should be made in Eliseus, on the hypothesis that he would see Elias when he was to be taken away from him, God certainly knew that double conditional event: whence not through middle knowledge antecedently to the decree, but in the decree itself He knew both of those conditionals.

To the fourth. I say that that proposition: If another shall come in his own name, him you will receive, is not about a purely conditional future, which was never to have being: but about an absolute future, for that prediction concerns the coming of Antichrist, who will come in his own name and will seduce many.

To the other conditional proposition of the same text. namely if you believed Moses, etc., I say that that conditional future was known to Christ, not through middle knowledge, but through the knowledge of simple intelligence, on account of the necessary connection which those two propositions have: if they did not believe Christ, neither did they believe Moses; for Moses bore testimony concerning Christ. As by way of comparison, this conditional: if Peter runs, he will be moved, is known through the knowledge of simple intelligence, on account of its necessary connection with the condition, even if that condition is never in fact to be posited anywhere.

To the last. I say that God willed for just causes to hide the mystery of the Incarnation from the Devil and his ministers, namely lest the redemption of men should be impeded through the death of Christ. Whence they crucified Christ through ignorance, as St. Peter testifies, Acts 3: And now, brethren, I know that you did it through ignorance. But all these things happened only from a decree of the divine will, at least permitting, and so that conditional was known in that decree.

OBJECTIONS FROM THE HOLY FATHERS ARE BROUGHT FORWARD AND RESOLVED.

They object 1. various passages of St. Augustine, by which they contend that he acknowledged and approved middle knowledge of conditionally future things existing in God before every free decree of His will. But since several testimonies of that holy Doctor have already been resolved by us, I bring forward only that which is found in De Bono Perseverantiae c. 9, where St. Augustine says: Certainly God, foreknowing that they would fall, could take them out of this life before that happened. And in lib. De corrept. et grat. cap. 8.

Let them answer, he says, if they can, why God, when they lived faithfully and piously, did not then snatch them from the perils of this life, lest malice should change their understanding, or lest guile should deceive their soul? Did He not have this in His power, or did He not know their future evils? Surely none of these things is said except most perversely and most insanely.

I answer to the first. There St. Augustine is not dealing with conditionals, which are not future; but with the foreknowledge of sins, which in reality were future and which God by a just judgment did not will to impede, namely by snatching the man away at an immature age, before they were committed.

To the other passage. I answer that the truth of those conditionally future contingents is founded in the conditional decree of God, by which God determined to permit them, on the hypothesis that that condition should be present; whence through free knowledge, which follows the decree of the divine will, God knows conditionally future things of this kind, not however through middle knowledge, which precedes the decree.

They object 2. Other holy Fathers: first indeed St. Gregory of Nyssa, in the Oratione de iis qui praemature arripiuntur, where he says thus: It is likely that God, who knew what is future just as what is past, should hinder the progress of the life of the infant toward perfection; lest that which by prescient power must be punished as evil in him who would have so lived be brought to completion. Likewise St. Cyril, praised above, quaest. 1. n. 5, where, proving a certain saying of Porphyry, he says that God, knowing the future, often prevents it, snatching some adolescents from life beforehand, but leaving others. Moreover St. Chrysostom, Homil. 65 on Matthew, where, treating of the vocation of the holy Paul and Matthew, he teaches that God called them then when He knew they would consent. And St. Bernard, Sermon 54 on the Canticles, where he says: God sometimes withdraws grace, not on account of the pride which already is, but of that which would be future unless grace were withdrawn: therefore God sees future pride unless grace were withdrawn: but He does not see that in the decree, because God does not decree the futurition of pride: therefore He sees it before any decree, and so sees it through middle knowledge.

I answer to Sts. Gregory and Cyril. That they are to be explained in that way in which St. Augustine, in lib. De Praedestinatione Sanctorum cap. 14, explains that passage of Wisdom 4: He was taken away lest malice, etc. where he says:

That was said according to the perils of this life, not according to the foreknowledge of God, who foreknew this which was to be, not that which was not to be: that is, that He was about to bestow on him an immature death, that he might be withdrawn from temptation: not that he would sin, who was not going to remain in temptation.

Or it must be said that God foreknew the sins of those young men as future on the hypothesis, in the conditional decree, by which He determined to permit them if they lived longer, and to concur to the entity of the sin; but since by an absolute will He decreed to impede sins of this kind, He snatched them away at an immature age. For the actual decree of God to impede the sin which is foreknown as future on the hypothesis does not conflict, but rather greatly accords, with the conditional decree by which He determined to permit those sins, unless they had been impeded by an immature death.

To St. Chrysostom. I say that he is to be understood in this way, that God called those Apostles when He foreknew that He would operate in them through grace and bring it about that they would obey willingly and from the heart: which response is conformable to the doctrine of St. Augustine, cap. 18 of De Bono Perseverantiae, where he hands down this rule: when among some preachers of the word of God the name of foreknowledge is found and the vocation of the Elect is being treated, by the name of Foreknowledge predestination must be understood, that is, foreknowledge founded in the decree and in predestination.

To St. Bernard. I say that God, by withdrawing grace, foreknows the pride through the knowledge of simple intelligence, by which He sees all possible things; and also through the knowledge of vision, insofar as a decree about providing concurrence to the physical and material act of that pride has preceded.

OBJECTIONS TAKEN FROM REASON ARE PROPOSED AND RESOLVED.

They object 1. God knows the truth of this conditional future: If I give Peter efficacious grace, he will be converted: but He cannot know that truth except through middle knowledge: therefore it must be admitted in God. The major is clear from what has been said. They prove the minor thus: this truth, since it is free and contingent, cannot be known by God through the knowledge of simple intelligence, which is concerned only with natural and necessary things: and since it is about a conditional future, it is not attained through the knowledge of vision, which is borne only toward things absolutely future: therefore that truth is known only through middle knowledge.

I deny the minor. For that truth is known through the knowledge of simple intelligence, because although the extremes are free and contingent, nevertheless the signification, which is expressed in it, is infallible and necessary, and accordingly belongs to the natural knowledge of God. For it can happen that a conditional proposition is necessary by force of the consequence and inference, although it is inferred from something free and contingent, indeed from something false and impossible. For this is necessary: If Peter speaks, he moves his tongue, and yet each extreme taken in itself, that is, the speech of Peter and the movement of the tongue, is free and contingent: similarly this is necessary: If a man is a horse, he is capable of neighing, and yet both are false and impossible, namely that a man is a horse and capable of neighing. Whence since in this conditional, If I give Peter efficacious grace, he will be converted, the goodness of the inference and consequence is expressed, which is necessary, as being deduced from this altogether necessary principle, whatever God efficaciously wills will infallibly come to pass, therefore the truth of that consequence is known through the knowledge of simple intelligence.

They object 2. Conditionally future things, with the divine decree set aside, have truth or falsity: therefore before the decree they are known by God: but they are not known through the knowledge of simple intelligence, because they are contingent and conditional, and accordingly cannot be attained by that knowledge, which is concerned only with necessary things: nor through the knowledge of vision, because this follows only upon the decree: therefore they are known through middle knowledge. Proof of the antecedent. The congruity of a vocation does not depend on the decree of God; for a vocation is congruous for this reason, not because it is chosen by God, but on the contrary it is therefore chosen by God because it is congruous: therefore before the free election God knows the congruity of the vocation, and consequently He also knows the future conversion which will arise from such a vocation.

Some answer with Didacus Alvarez. by denying the major: then because, as Aristotle teaches, lib. 1. De Interpret. c. 8., propositions about a future contingent, in themselves, do not have determinate truth or falsity, because the contingent, insofar as it is contingent, is altogether indifferently disposed to either alternative: therefore before the decree of the divine will determining to one or the other part of the contradiction, nothing is determinately future in created things; and so it can be said that before that decree things do not have determinate truth or falsity. Then because it can be said that when propositions are in contingent matter, it is not always necessary that one be determinately true and the other determinately false: but it suffices that if one is true, the other is false; so that it is contradictory that both be false at once, or both true at once. Then finally, because although for any instant of time it is necessary that of two propositions about a future contingent one be determinately true and the other false: nevertheless it is not required that for any sign of reason one be conceived as determinately true and the other false. Whence before the decree neither of those propositions is to be called determinately true or false, but indifferent to either. For if God in the second sign of reason decrees that, the antecedent being posited in being, the consequent should likewise be posited, the affirmative conditional proposition about a future contingent will be true, and the opposite will be false: but if He decrees that, the antecedent being posited in being, the consequent should not follow, the negative conditional proposition about a future contingent will be true and the affirmative will be false.

But since these solutions suffer difficulty, therefore I deny the minor: for God knows that congruity of the vocation through the knowledge of simple intelligence and sees it through the knowledge of vision, where He has formed the efficacious decree of converting the man through that congruous vocation, which He employs for that end for which God chooses it.

They object 3. It is heretical to assert that God knows conditionally future things in His decree: therefore He knows them antecedently to His decree, and so through middle knowledge. Proof of the antecedent. From the doctrine of Calvin, lib. 3. Institutionum cap. 23. § 7: I confess, indeed, a horrible decree: nevertheless no one can deny that God foreknew what end man would have, before He created him: and that He foreknew it because He had ordained it by His decree. Calvin therefore judges that God foreknows future things in His decree, and so that the divine decree precedes His foreknowledge.

I answer. by denying the antecedent: and to its proof, I say that Calvin was not condemned for this, that he asserted the divine decree to precede the divine knowledge of things absolutely or conditionally future: but only because from the antecedent decree he inferred that all things happen necessarily, and that nothing comes to pass contingently: and consequently that there is no freedom of men; for Calvin says, lib. 2. instit. c. 3. § 5: The will is drawn by necessity into evil, although liberty, being renounced, offends those who do not know how to distinguish between necessity and coercion, etc. From which it is clear that Calvin thought the divine decree overthrows our liberty, and leaves in our will no indifference to opposite acts, but only spontaneity and immunity from coercion.

They object 4. God certainly knows future sins under a condition: but He does not know them in the decree: therefore He knows them antecedently to it, and accordingly through middle knowledge. Proof of the minor. If God had a decree about future sins absolutely or conditionally, He would be their cause, and the malice of the sin itself would be attributed to Him; for malice is attributed to the sinning man for no other reason than because he freely determines himself and of himself decrees the sinful act. Then, if sin were decreed by God, it would already not be sin; for sin is sin insofar as it is contrary to the divine will; but if it were decreed by Him, it would not be contrary, but indeed conformable to the divine will: therefore it would not be sin.

I deny the minor. and to the first proof I say: God would be the cause of sin as to the physical entity of the act, I concede: as to the deformity and lack of moral rectitude, I deny: for the malice of sin is not therefore properly attributed to the sinning man, because he decrees and concurs to the sinful act considered entitatively, but because he operates as a moral agent, and disformly to the rules of morals, and withdraws himself from the rectitude of the divine concurrence and of the divine motion. But God does not so concur, nor decree, because He does not operate as a moral agent and with dependence on the rules of morals, but as the First cause and as the universal Provider, furnishing to all second causes the means necessary for acting.

To the second proof. I say: If sin were conformable to the divine will it would already not be sin, under that aspect under which it would be conformable to it, I concede: under another, I deny: but it would be conformable to the divine will according to the physical entity of the act, by which it is decreed by God, and as such it would not be sin: but it would not be conformable according to the morality and deformity of the act itself, which is neither decreed by God, nor produced, indeed is prohibited: but only by the created will freely deflecting from the rectitude which ought to be in such an act. But how the morality, or lack of rectitude, of the sinful act is distinguished from the entity of the same act, will be resolved in the following Disputation.