Chapter III: God’s Foreknowledge
CHAPTER III: ON GOD’S FOREKNOWLEDGE
How the foreknowledge of God is to be understood.
§ 16. Foreknowledge or prescience is attributed to God anthropopathically and according to condescension. For God considers all things in a permanent, fixed, and unchanging “now.” He completely transcends every measure and period of time and separates all lengths and intervals of time from His property of eternity. As He does not remember things that are past, so also He does not foresee from a distance what is to come. Therefore the foreknowledge of God is the present knowledge of His vision and His ability to see all things. (See John of Damascus, Orth. fid., bk. 2, ch. 32.)
§ 17. This ability to see all things is subject to no change, as John of Salisburydescribed beautifully (Policraticus, bk. 2, ch. 21):
There dwells everywhere the immovable integrity of the knowledge of God. If there is variability in anything, it is a variability not of the one knowing but of the things He knows. For, though the things which God’s knowledge embraces may be subject to change, His knowledge itself knows nothing of the vicissitudes of change. With only one singular and undivided glance, it encompasses and comprehends the totality of all things which one can speak of or devise with any sense, and all this without change, so that it uniformly includes things with locality though it has no place, things being born though it has no beginning, things dying though it has no end, things fluctuating though it changes not, things temporal though it has no mutability or delay. It does this in such a way that things past do not pass it by, nor do things future approach it.
§ 18. The Scholastics point out that the word “knowledge” [scientia] or “awareness” [cognitio] must be cleansed of every imperfection, and only then should it be attributed to God. Thomas ([ST,] part 1, q. 14, art. 1): “God is at the highest level of immateriality. Therefore He is also at the highest level of awareness.” Biel (Sent. 1, dist. 35, q. 1): “If we take ‘knowledge’ as knowledge that adheres to a true proposition,1 a knowledge which is of such a nature that it is caused through demonstration on the basis of certain premises, then it is not in God. If we take it generally as any knowledge, then it is in God.” God is the greatest being. Therefore He understands and knows at the highest level. Furthermore, God is the greatest and most perfect knower; therefore the highest and most perfect way of knowing suits Him.
§ 19. Also, because God looks on all things without any passage of time, Scaliger argues correctly (Exerc. 365, section 8): “Not even the word ‘foresee’ befits God’s omnipotence except to the extent that we measure infinity with our crippled understanding.” Such foresight indeed belongs to us since we have a future. God, to whom nothing is future, does not foresee but simply sees what is present, for indeed to Him all things are, present. Therefore God does not look upon things successively, through moments or intervals of time, but with an intuitive knowledge He looks at all things at the same time, suddenly, and in an instant [ἀθρόως καὶ ἐν ῥιπῇ]. For this reason the Hebrews express the foreknowledge of God with the word 
, “He knew.”
§ 20. Augustine writes very beautifully (De civ. Dei, bk. 11, ch. 21):
He (God) does not look forward to what is to come or back at what has passed in the way we do, but He does this in another way that is broadly and distantly different from our way of thinking. He does not shift His thinking from one thing to another, but sees things without any change at all, so that things which occur in time—those that are not yet, those that are at present, and those past that are no more—all these He comprehends in a fixed and eternal present time. He does not see one way with His eyes and another way with His mind, for He does not consist of mind and body, nor does He know the “now” in one way, the past in another, and the future in still another way. So also His knowledge of the three times—present, past, and future—is not changed by their variety as ours is, for “with Him there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). For His attention does not pass from thought to thought, because all things that He knows are present simultaneously in His incorporeal vision. For just as He knows all times with His nontemporal conceptions, so He moves all temporal things with His nontemporal impulses.
Those are Augustine’s words.
The word “foreknowledge” is taken in two ways.
§ 21. Although the word “foreknowledge” in the Scriptures may sometimes be taken specifically as it denotes the previous knowledge of faith in Christ (Rom. 8:29; 11:2; 1 Pet. 1:2), yet we also take it generally here as it denotes God’s general knowledge of all things which either He or others are going to do. Therefore God, Himself being truly present, with His foreknowledge knows, has learned, and looks upon all things that exist and happen—past, present, and future. Heb. 4:13: “And no creature is hidden from His sight, but all are naked and exposed to His eyes,” where there is great emphasis on the latter clause. Chrysostom says: “This expression is brought over from sacrificial victims. After they have been slaughtered and skinned naked, all their insides are visible.” With this knowledge He knows “the minds and hearts of men,” that is, whatever is hidden deeply within them (Ps. 7:[9]); He even knows “the thoughts of men” (Ps. 94:11), and He knows it “long before it happens” (Ps. 139:2). He investigates the heart not of just one man, but all hearts, and He understands every invention of their thoughts (1 Chron. 28:9). Indeed, He even discerns the thoughts of men more carefully than a man himself, because “He places our secret sins in the light of His presence” (Ps. 90:8). Jer. 17:9: “The heart of man is depraved and inscrutable; who can understand it?” However, immediately following this is: “I, the Lord, search the heart and test the reins” [v. 10].
The objects of the foresight of God.
§ 22. The Scholastics argue in various ways about the manner and the objects of God’s foresight. They ask: Does God know all other things outside Himself distinctly? Here they correctly respond in the affirmative and attack Averroes, who had denied this (Metaph., bk. 12). Thomas ([ST,] part 1, q. 14, art. 5): “God understands Himself perfectly. For if something is known perfectly, He must know His own power perfectly. His power is not known perfectly unless those things be known to which the power applies itself. The power of God applies itself to all things. God sees Himself in Himself, because He sees Himself through His own essence. He sees other things than Himself not in themselves but in Himself insofar as His essence contains the likeness of things other than Himself.” Biel (Sent. 1, dist. 35, q. 2): “An efficient2 and total cause is representative of its effect, which it contains according to its power [virtualiter]. God knows Himself perfectly; therefore He knows all things in Himself.”
§ 23. We can get rid of the petty argument of Averroes with little trouble if we observe that God employs a far different manner of knowing from that which our intellect uses. Scaliger (Exerc. 365, section 8): “He does not dispute. He does not reason. He does not imagine. He does not draw conclusions. He does not compare one thing with another. He does not receive from someone else.” Gods knows all things with one single act of knowing, which is Himself. He does not understand with one thought giving rise to the next and thereby progress in perfection as a result of such knowledge. Because God has no potentiality mixed with Himself but is pure actuality,3 it is necessary in His case that understanding and understandable representation4 be the same in all ways and one with His essence. Consequently, they also conclude that “God comprehends by knowing Himself.” That is, He knows so perfectly that nothing more remains to be known. God has such great power in knowing as He has actuality in being. Thomas ([ST,] part 1, q. 14, art. 3): “God is finite to Himself. That is, God is such that He does not surpass His own understanding, just as something finite is such that it does not surpass its finite understanding.”
Ideas.
§ 24. They ask in addition: Does God understand all other things outside Himself through ideas of them? Augustine treats ideas in detail in his 83 QQ. (q. 46), where he says that they have such great might that, unless these are understood, no one can be a wise person. Moreover, he defines them in this way: “Ideas are principal forms or notions [rationes] of things, are fixed and unchangeable, and have not themselves been formed. They are thereby eternal and always stay the same and are contained in God’s understanding. Although they neither arise nor pass away, everything which can arise and pass away and everything which does arise and pass away is said to be formed according to them.” Gerson (De vita spirit., lect. 1. Cor. 12) defines them in this way: “An idea is a known pattern [exemplar] from an active intellectual principle. When looking to that active principle, it can produce rationally something in real existence.” Seneca (Letter 66): “Ideas are fixed and eternal in the divine mind and are notions or patterns with reference to which all things are produced.”
§ 25. What, then, must we decide about ideas? Augustine responds (op. cit.):
Who, having been imbued with true religion, would dare deny—nay, would not openly confess—that all things that exist (that is, all things that are held together in their own kind by a nature of their own so that they exist) were produced by God’s authorship, and that by His authorship all things that live do live, and that the laws of the most high God hold together and govern the well-being of the universe and even the order in which changing things follow their temporal courses with certain direction? Once this has been established and conceded, who would dare to say that God created all things irrationally? However, since one cannot believe or say this correctly, the only alternative is that all things were made rationally and that man was not made by the same pattern [ratio] as a horse, for it is absurd to think this. Therefore each thing was created with its own pattern [ratio]. But where should we think these patterns reside, except in the very mind of the Creator? For He was not looking at any [pattern] outside of Himself to set things up according to that. Now if these patterns for creating all these things and creatures are contained in the mind of God, and if nothing can be in the mind of God except what is eternal and unchangeable, and if Plato calls these patterns for things “principal ideas,” then not only do ideas exist, but they are actually true because they are eternal and remain the same and unchanging. By participation in these patterns, it comes to pass that whatever exists, exists the way it does.
§ 26. Regarding ideas, the Scholastics point this out: “According to His essence, God is the likeness of all things. Therefore an idea is nothing other than the essence of God” (Thomas, [ST,] part 1, q. 15, art. 1). Yet there are many ideas in the mind of God, for if God directed His attention to the order of the universe, it is necessary that He have the idea of the order of the universe. Moreover, one cannot have a pattern [ratio] for a whole without having the patterns for the parts of which the whole is constructed. This is not opposed to the simplicity of God’s intellect, because “an idea is in the mind of the doer as something that is understood, not as the species by which it is understood” (Thomas, op. cit., art. 2). Biel expresses it in this way (Sent. 1, dist. 35, q. 5): “In the case of God, ideas exist not subjectively and in reality but objectively, because the creatures that God understands are not in Him in reality and subjectively.” He adds this axiom in q. 6: “All things are in God objectively, according to power, eminently.”
The manner of God’s foreknowledge.
§ 27. The following questions pertain also to the manner of God’s foreknowledge: Is the knowledge of God discursive? This we must surely deny. Discursive thinking in our knowledge is twofold: first, merely according to succession, when we turn ourselves to understand something after we understand something in actuality. Then there is a second discursive thinking according to causality, when we come through beginnings [principia] to a knowledge of conclusions. Neither of these kinds of discursive thinking befits God: not the first, because He sees all things in one, which is Himself, just as we see many things at one time in a mirror; nor the second, because this presupposes the first and because such a process is from the known to the unknown. “But God sees His effects in Himself as in a cause” (Thomas, [ST,] part 1, q. 14, art. 7).
Whether God foreknows nonbeings.
§ 28. The following questions pertain to the objects of God’s foreknowledge: (I) Does God foreknow nonbeings? To this we very simply respond that there are two types of nonbeings: some are such simply and absolutely. They never have been nor are nor ever will be, and are beings neither in actuality nor in potential. However, some are such in a certain respect. In other words, though they do not exist in actuality, nevertheless they once did exist or are going to exist or can be made. Divine foreknowledge certainly extends to the second type of nonbeings. Thomas ([ST,] part 1, q. 14, art. 9) discusses this question in the following way:
God knows all things regardless of what they are and in what manner they exist. Moreover, nothing prevents those things which do not exist simply from existing in some manner, for those things which do not exist in actuality do exist in the power of God or the potential of creation, either in active or in passive potential, in the power of thinking or imagining or signifying in some way. There are some things which, though they do not exist in actuality, nevertheless did exist. In regard to those there is the knowledge of vision. Some things are in the power of God or the potential of creation but do not or shall not exist and have not existed. With respect to these there is the knowledge of simple understanding.
Scaliger (Exerc. 365, sect. 9) quotes the words of Proclus: “Indeed, providence knows all things by its own unity, insofar as it adorns all sentient things and the things not living and the things which do not exist, giving its attention to all.” He also quotes Hermes: “God is both the things that are and the things that are not, for He brought to light the things that are, and the things that are not He keeps in Himself.”
Does God know singular things?
§ 29. (II) The question arises: Does God know singular things? It would be a disgrace to deny this, for if not even a hair of our head drops to the ground apart from the will of God [cf. Matt. 10:30], how would He not pay attention to singular things? If He looks out for not just the most important things but also the humblest ones (as we shall prove later [§§ 58–60]), how could we exempt singular things from the list of objects of the providence of God? Thomas uses two arguments ([ST,] part 1, q. 4, art. 11): “All perfections preexist in God. But knowing singular things pertains to our own perfection; also, the active power of God extends to singular things. Therefore, certainly, so also does His knowledge.”
Does God know infinite things?
§ 30. (III) The question arises: Does God know infinite things? We respond. God knows Himself, and He is an infinite being. Therefore He surely knows the infinite. Second, things which to us are infinite are finite to God and indeed are closed in and limited by the knowledge of God. Augustine says it beautifully in De civ. Dei, bk. 12, ch. 18:
For those who say that the knowledge of God cannot comprehend what is infinite, it remains for them to sink themselves into this deep pit of ungodliness by daring to say that God does not know all the numbers since they are surely infinite, because at whatever number you think an end is made, this number can always be increased. I do not mean just by adding one, but, however large it is and however vast the multitude of numbers and expressions that gave rise to it, it can not only be doubled, etc. Far be it from us to doubt that He knows every number, He whose understanding is, according to the psalmist, no finite number [Ps. 147:5]. And so, though there is no way to number infinite numbers, the infinity of a number is not incomprehensible to Him whose understanding is infinite. Thus if whatever is comprehended by knowledge is made finite by the comprehension of the one who knows it, then certainly every infinity is in some ineffable way finite to God, because it is not incomprehensible as far as His knowledge is concerned. Therefore if the infinity of numbers cannot be infinite to the knowledge of God which comprehends it, who, then, are we little people that we presume to affix a limit to the knowledge of God? […] His wisdom is simply manifold and uniformly multiform. With His incomprehensible comprehension He comprehends all things incomprehensible.
Those are Augustine’s words. Thomas ([ST,] part 1, q. 14, art. 2): God knows the things which are in the power of God or the potential of His creation, and yet these things are infinite. Therefore God knows infinite things. The divine essence through which the divine intellect understands is the sufficient likeness of all things which exist or can exist, not only as far as common principles are concerned but also as concerns the proper principles of each.
§ 31. We conclude with the distinction which William of Auxerre provides ([Summa Aurea], bk. 1, ch. 48): “The knowledge of God with respect to all possible things is called ‘intuitive’ or the knowledge of simple understanding. With respect to those things which are, have been, or will be, it is called ‘the knowledge of vision’; with respect to things to come, it is called ‘foreknowledge.’ However, because the knowledge of vision also extends to things to come (since indeed God looks upon future things not from a distance but as truly present), the two latter types, so to speak, are more correctly numbered as one.”
The foreknowledge of God is unchangeable.
§ 32. Indeed, the foreknowledge of God is sure and immutable. Augustine says (De civ. Dei, bk. 5, ch. 9): “God immutably knows all things that are going to happen.” Nevertheless some things of which He has foreknowledge are changeable and contingent (Augustine, De lib. arbit., bk. 3, ch. 3). Consequently, it does not remove every contingency from things, nor does it bring about an absolute necessity.
§ 33. Therefore observe that there are two kinds of necessity: the one is of the consequent [consequentis] (which some call absolute; others, preceding; and still others, simple), which arises out of the necessary link of cause with effect. The other is of the consequence [consequentiae] (which they also call of hypothesis, following, and conditional), which stems from the act of existence and pertains by nature to contingent things that are still called necessary either because they follow from causes which do not change, though they could have changed by their own nature, or because, when they exist, they cannot at the same time not exist. You see, everything that exists must exist because of the very fact that it does exist. According to the latter type of necessity, whatever things happen from causes which act contingently and freely are necessary with respect to the foreknowledge of God. Nevertheless the metaphysical philosophers warn that this is not called a necessity properly speaking inasmuch as it must be evaluated from its proximate cause,5 but not from the act of existence.
§ 34. The Scholastics exert themselves greatly in explaining the question: How does God have the determinate and necessary knowledge of future contingent things? Thomas ([ST,] part 1, q. 14, art. 13): “An effect can be contingent because of an immediate contingent cause, though the first cause may be necessary. Contingent things that are known by God are necessary with regard to the knowledge of God.” Biel (Sent. 1, dist. 38, q. 1): “The freedom of a second cause6 is sufficient to preserve contingency, because it is enough that one required cause be free.” But how does one preserve the contingency of future things while allowing the infallible and determinate foreknowledge of God to stand? Scotus (Sent. 1, dist. 39) recites various opinions: “Some say that God knows future contingent things with certainty through ideas because of the perfection of representation. Some say that God knows perfectly through the fact that the entire movement of time is present to eternity, as are also all things which exist in time; for as immensity is present to every place, so eternity is present to every time.” But he himself claims: “The divine will, which is the first rule of contingent things, first determines contingent things before the divine understanding understands them.” (How he can claim this, only Scotus knows, for the understanding is prior to the will in rational beings, but in God they are both quite simply one and the same thing.) Occam confesses: “The manner cannot be expressed sufficiently by the created understanding.” Nevertheless he claims: “God, or the divine essence, is the intuitive knowledge both of Himself and of future things and possible things. [This knowledge] is just as perfect and clear as is the evident knowledge of things past, present, and future. Therefore just as the intuitive knowledge in us—by which we clearly know a true, contingent, present thing—does not add a necessity to the contingency, though it is manifest and infallible, so also God’s knowledge does not impose necessity on future contingent things.” (This opinion of Occam is quite true and very simple.) Thomas ([ST,] part 1, q. 14, art. 13) goes on as follows: “A contingent thing is considered first in itself, insofar as it already exists in actuality, and thus is not considered as something future but as something present and as determined to one thing. Because of this, it is thus infallibly subject to God’s knowledge. Second, a thing can be considered contingent as it exists in its own cause, and thus is considered as something future and not yet determined. In this way, a contingent thing is not subject to any knowledge for certain. God knows contingent things not only as they exist in their own causes but also according to the way each of them actually exists in itself.” Biel (Sent. 1, dist. 38, q. 1, art. 2, prop. 5): “That knowledge by which God knows future contingent things is necessary because it is His essence, but not with respect to future contingent things. That is, He does not have the knowledge by which one would know this future contingent thing necessarily, for, as that future contingent thing will exist contingently, so God knows it contingently.” (However, these ideas are in need of careful interpretation, for God knows contingent effects necessarily and not contingently.)
§ 35. We are satisfied with the distinction of necessity as has just been set forth and explained. With respect to the foreknowledge of God also, whatever things are done from causes which act freely and contingently are necessary—not with necessity of the consequent but with necessity of the consequence; not absolute necessity but hypothetical necessity; not preceding necessity but following necessity; not simple necessity but conditional necessity. To God who sees all things past, present, and future in the absolute “now” of eternity, it is not and cannot be unknown where the power to act shall turn in causes that act contingently and freely. Meanwhile, with His foresight—or, rather, sight—He does not impose absolute necessity on them, since He has established this distinction: that in His creation some things were endowed with the ability to act freely.
Contingent things.
§ 36. Moreover, Holy Writ gives testimony to this opinion7—that some things occur freely and contingently—as often as the freedom of the human will is expressed (the nature of which will be explained in its own place [§ 42]); as often as rewards are established for those who do well and punishments are established for the reprobate; as often as the fall is attributed to the fault of Adam and Eve; as often as good deeds are praised and wicked ones inflicted with reproach; etc. Yet note here that we do not depict God as a disinterested spectator of what happens in the world, for we shall teach later [§§ 55–60] that God not only foreknows and foresees all things but also controls them. We shall also explain how this “control” functions with respect to different objects, but for now we shall remain within the limits of the question, namely, that out of divine foreknowledge (insofar as it is such) the absolute necessity of all things that take place by no means follows, nor is every contingency or freedom thereby abolished.
The foreknowledge of God by no means brings about the necessity of sinning.
§ 37. All the less should we say that divine foreknowledge inflicts on people a fated and necessary need to sin. Jerome (on Ezekiel, bk. 3): “It is not the case that we must do what God has foreknown just because God knows what is going to happen. Because He is God, He knows what we are going to do of our own will.” Augustine (De civ. Dei, bk. 5, ch. 10): “Man does not therefore sin because God foreknew that He would sin. On the contrary, in fact, we do not doubt that he himself sins when he sins, because He whose foreknowledge cannot fail foreknew that neither fate nor fortune nor anything else but the man was going to sin. If the man is unwilling to sin, he does not sin; but if he was unwilling to sin, God foreknew this too.” Ambrose (De voc. gent., bk. 2, ch. 4): “It is not from the fact that divine knowledge cannot fail that the wickedness of the will is urged by the necessity of sinning.”
§ 38. Indeed, God foreknows not only the “what” but also the “through what” and the “how,” the cause and the manner of acting. He foreknew not only the betrayal of Judas but also foresaw that it was a voluntary betrayal without necessity. Augustine writes beautifully (on John, tractate 53): “God does not force anyone to sin because of the fact that He knows the future sins of men, for He did indeed foreknow their sins—not His, not those of someone else, but theirs. Therefore if those sins of theirs which He foreknew are not theirs, then He did not truly foreknow them; but because His foreknowledge cannot fail, undoubtedly it is not others who sin but those very ones whom God foreknew would sin.”
§ 39. If you do not perceive this fully, consider this: the foreknowledge of God does not impose an immutability on things from the standpoint of before [a priori] but only from the standpoint of after [a posteriori]. That is, when God knows that a thing exists, it has to exist. Nevertheless the thing by its own nature and with respect to its own causes could exist otherwise, and then God would have foreknown it otherwise. Things—whether present, past, or future—do not depend on His foreknowledge, but His knowledge depends on the thing and its outcome. Whatever is foreknown is foreknown as it really is so that, if it were not going to happen, that also would be foreknown by God. (See Augustine, De lib. arbitr., bk. 3, ch. 3.)
§ 40. The ancient fathers show this, first, with examples: of the past drawn from one’s memory, whether they be approved or not; of a physician foreseeing an illness; of an astronomer predicting an eclipse. They show it, second, with examples of the prophets’ prophecies about the sins of men; these sins were not committed because they were divinely prophesied, but were prophesied because God saw the incurable wickedness of man. (See Justin, Apolog. 2; Epiphanius, Contra Cajan., q. 58; Chrysostom, on Matthew, homily 60, and on 1 Corinthians 11; Cyril and Augustine, commentaries on John 12.)
The antithesis of our adversaries.
§ 41. Therefore we cannot and should not approve of what is written by: Calvin (Instit., bk. 3, ch. 23, sect. 9): “By the ordinance of God (whose equity is unknown to us but is quite sure to Him), a necessity of sinning is imposed upon the reprobate.” And sect. 6: “God foresees future things in no other way except that He has decreed that they occur in that way.” Beza (Colloq. Mompelg., p. 519): “God knows no future event that He has not decreed will happen.” Rennecher (Cat. sal. aurea, ch. 6, p. 28): “Although falling and not falling may have been contingent and indifferent to him” (Adam), “and though either the former or the latter could have occurred equally, nevertheless out of otherwise purely contingent things, that alone happened and occurred which God had foreseen and decreed from eternity would happen.” [Johannes] Piscator (Disp. de praedest., p. 11): “By virtue of divine counsel, it could only have happened that our first parents sinned.” Hyperius (Methodi, bk. 1, p. 258): “As far as God is concerned, all things occur by absolute necessity.” Bucanus (Locus 14, p. 136): “What men and angels do, they do out of necessity, because God has decreed it to happen by His providence.”
The decisions of the ancients on this question.
§ 42. The devout ancients write far more correctly. Augustine (De civ. Dei, bk. 5, ch. 9):
We are not afraid that we are not doing willingly what we do willingly just because He whose providence is infallible foreknew that we were going to do it. Cicero feared this so much that he attacked foreknowledge. The Stoics also were afraid and would not say that all things were done out of necessity, even though they did agree that all things happened by fate. In order to confirm the freedom of the will, Cicero denied foreknowledge of the future, and thus while he wanted to make people free, he made them sacrilegious. However, the religious mind chooses both, confesses both, and confirms both with the faith of piety, etc. Against those sacrilegious and daring ideas we say both that God knows all things before they occur and that we do by our own will whatever we know and feel to be done by us precisely as willing it, etc. It does not follow that if God has the sure order of all causes that therefore there is no choice in our will. In fact, our very wills are in the order of causes which is certain to God and which is contained within His foreknowledge, because human wills, too, are causes of human works. Thus He who foreknew all the causes of things surely could not have been ignorant of our wills, which are among the causes that He foreknew as the causes of our deeds, etc. How, then, does the order of causes, which is certain to our foreknowing God, cause nothing to be in our will, when our wills have a great place in the very order of causes?
Chapter 10:
It is not that, because God foreknew what was going to be in our will, there is nothing in our will, for He who foreknew this did not foreknow nothing. Furthermore, if He foreknew what was going to be in our will, He surely did not foreknow nothing but something, and surely there is something in our will if He foreknows it. By no means, then, are we forced to remove the choice8 of the will as we retain the foreknowledge of God or to deny the foreknowledge of God about the future, which is impious, as we keep the freedom of the will. Rather, we embrace both, confess both faithfully and truly—the former that we may believe well and the latter that we may live well. Indeed, he lives badly if he does not believe well about God, etc.
Chrysostom (on 1 Corinthians 11, homily 27):
Christ says that it is necessary for scandals to come. However, He does not remove the freedom of the will, nor does He impose a violent necessity upon life with these words. Rather, He foretold what undoubtedly would happen because of the corrupt intent of people; it was going to happen not because of His prophecy but because of those who could not control their will. For the things that happened did not happen because He foretold them; rather, because they certainly were going to happen, He foretold them. You see, if scandals existed by necessity and not by the will of those who caused them, it would be superfluous to say, “Woe to you, O man, through whom scandals come!” [cf. Matt. 18:7].
Chrysostom again (on Matthew, homily 60): “We should not think that His” (Christ’s) “prediction caused scandal, for they do not happen because He foretold the future; but rather He foretold them because they were going to happen.” Finally, Philipp [Melanchthon] himself in his letter to Archbishop Thomas of Canterbury [Letter ad Thom. Archiepisc. Cantuar.] judges that “it is most worthy of censure to claim that the prediction of God imposed upon Judas and others the fated and inevitable necessity of sinning and dying.”
The arguments in favor of the fated necessity of all things.
§ 43. Let us see the arguments by which they try to prove the fated necessity of all things. They say: “We must not distinguish the foreknowledge of God from His decree, will, and predestination. God does not foresee the future in any other way except that things happen according to His decree. God knows no future event that He has not decreed will happen,” etc.
We respond. (I) If the foreknowledge of God is in all ways one and the same thing as His predestination, decree, and will, it will follow that God foreknows men’s sins and thus that He predestines, decrees, and wills them, which is contrary to the psalmist (Ps. 5:4): “For You are not a God who wills iniquity.”
(II) Augustine is correct in writing (De praedest. sanct., ch. 10): “Predestination cannot exist without foreknowledge, but foreknowledge can exist without predestination. Indeed, by predestination God foreknew that which He Himself intended to do. For this reason it is said, ‘He did the things which were going to happen’ [cf. Eccles. 3:15]. Moreover, He also has the power to foreknow those things which He did not do, such as any sins.” Augustine again (Hypogn., bk. 6, ch. 2): “God certainly did foreknow the wickedness of Judas, but He did not predestine it.” Prosper (Respons. ad Gall.): “His foreknowledge knows both good and evil, but the predestination of God is always in the area of good.” Fulgentius (Ad Mon., bk. 1): “If God were to predestine man to some sin, He would not punish man for his sins.” Lombard (Sent. 1, dist. 6, sect. 2):
The foreknowledge or knowledge of God, by which He foreknows or knows good and evil, is His divine nature or essence, and His predestination or will is the same divine essence, for knowing and willing to God are nothing else but being. Also, though the knowledge and will of God are one and the same thing, nevertheless not everything that is said about His knowledge is said about His will, and conversely. Neither does God will by His will all that He knows with His knowledge, because with His knowledge He knows both good and evil, but with His will He wills nothing but good. In fact, the wisdom and foreknowledge of God involve both good and evil, but His will and predestination involve only good. Yet knowledge and will and foreknowledge and predestination in God are one and the same.
(III) Biel (Sent. 1, dist. 2, q. 1) makes this clear in a way, for he asks why this proposition is conceded: “God understands evil”; but this is denied: “God wills evil”—though there is a sameness [identitas] between the understanding and the will of God. He responds: “This happens because of the different connotations of the terms but not because of a non-sameness in God.” If those words “understand” and “will” were not connotatives,9 but rather either of them were to say absolutely and simply without connotation the thing which God is, then we would have to concede both propositions. Therefore this is what we must hold: That through which God knows and understands is also that through which He wills, because He understands and wills through His own essence. But what God knows and understands is not the same as what He wills, because He knows the sins of man but yet does not will them.
(IV) However, here we must repeat from previous paragraphs [§§ 16–20] that we are speaking of the foreknowledge of God in a human way, since it is rather a present seeing and knowing. Our reasoning and those who have abandoned the light of the Word and follow the darkness of reason imagine for themselves the foreknowledge of God in this way: that far ahead of time He sees things that are going to happen, and thus, so that God, foreknowing future things, might not be deceived in His foresight but retain the praise of being truthful, therefore they invent that there is a simple and absolute necessity for all things. Ludovicus Vives (commentary on De civ. Dei, bk. 5, ch. 10): “The thing that makes this debate more difficult is that some people imagine that the future is to God the way it is to us. Instead, they should think that those things which are called ‘past’ do not pass in the mind of God, nor does He await the coming of those things which are called ‘future’ as if they do not now exist, but both the past and the future with the present are all present. Neither does He think single thoughts and pass from one idea to the next, but in one single glance all things are present at the same time.”
(V) Therefore the foreknowledge of God, as it is such, does not introduce an absolute necessity of acting, because it leaves free the capability of acting once given to rational creatures. The foreknowledge of God does not remove this freedom, because it, too, is in the order of causes which God foreknew.
(VI) If you were to urge that the foreknowledge of God is not merely leisurely contemplation but is joined together with constant activity, we respond that here a distinction must be made between the good and evil actions of creatures, in regard to which actions the providence of God exhibits itself in different ways, as we shall explain in greater detail a little later [§§ 82–99].
Second.
§ 44. They go on: “The terms of distinction between the necessity of the consequent and of the consequence are philosophical and thus should not be brought up here.”
We respond. The matter itself is explained quite clearly in the Scriptures, which clearly teach that God foreknows all future things and yet deny that He is the cause of sin. If we explain this in clear philosophical terminology, no “shift into another category” [μετάβασις εἰς ἄλλο γένος] occurs, because those terms are being used not so much to prove as to explain, and not to build the structure of some new article [of faith] outside of and beyond Scripture but to clarify the ancient faith set forth in the Scriptures. Why do they reject the service of philosophy in this area when elsewhere they follow its rule and direction in the divine mysteries, and why do they concern themselves here with reintroducing into the church from the schools of the Stoics the fated necessity of all things?
Third.
§ 45. They say: “God has established [the future] by an eternal and immutable decree, according to which things must happen immutably and necessarily. Just as God is necessarily good by absolute necessity, so all the things He does happen the way they do by absolute necessity.”
We respond. As God does some things in time and permits other things to happen, so also He has decreed from eternity to do some things but to permit others to happen. However, we shall explain in its own place what is meant by the permission of God and the decree of permission [§§ 103–4]. God foreknows the future infallibly; yet He does not impose absolute necessity on all things by the infallibility of His foreknowledge, since the evil actions of men do not arise from God’s foreknowledge. Rather, these must be evaluated on the basis of their proximate cause.10
Scotus (Sent. 1, dist. 45, q. 5) responds with very great subtlety to the latter objection: “God is simply being and of Himself necessary, and this idea of God is innate in people. Yet remove this idea and (all others) that exist and God loses nothing, because He is simple and necessary being [ens]. However, if He were to will necessarily, He would be unable not to will the things which do not exist outside of Himself, because being and willing are necessarily the same thing in God. Therefore remove the will of creatures to do this or that thing, and you would also remove the essence of God.” Those are Scotus’s words.
We respond more simply as follows. Although God is good by absolute necessity, that does not mean that the things He does well in creatures are good by absolute necessity, since He acts not only well but freely. All the less is it due to the absolute necessity of divine goodness that the things done badly by creatures, who are endowed with the freedom to act, are bad, since they depart from the order of divine goodness in doing them. To clarify this, we can quote here what Scaliger (Exerc. 249, sect. 3) argues in regard to the question: Can God do what He has done better than He did? To this he responds: “God can do otherwise, because in supreme power is also included lesser power. Therefore He can act out of the immensity of His power. However, out of His supreme goodness—which is the rule of His power and is not different in essence from His power (for God and all the things of God are one, and the one God is both His own beginning and end, though He is without any beginning and end, for He cannot go outside of Himself)—He does not want to be able to do less than to be able to do good. For from the supreme good, simply [nothing] can proceed except that which is the supreme good in every category or order of beings,” etc.
§ 46. These are the stronger arguments by which they try to succeed in proving the fated necessity of all things. On the basis of these we can respond easily to the rest. We shall explain in its own place the testimonies from the Scriptures which are applied to this question when we discuss the cause of sin and explain how divine providence and the evil acts of men can coexist [§§ 86–102, 107–8, 117–35]. Since we have now discussed in sufficient detail the first act, so to speak, of divine providence—namely, divine foreknowledge (πρόγνωσις)—it remains for us to go on to explain the remaining two actions: end purpose [πρόθεσις] and control [διοίκησις].
1 notitia adhaesiva veri complexi. Biel speaks here of a kind of knowledge that reacts to outside objects and makes judgments about truth. He denies that this applies to God, since it implies that God knows things reactively or perhaps temporally.
2 See above, p. 11 n. 1.
3 That is, God does not depend on anything else for His existence and “actuality,” and He has no “passive potential,” the capability of being acted upon as a passive object. Rather, according to Himself He is actual, absolute, and infinitely perfect, such that there is no room for Him to improve. (See Micraelius, Lexicon philosophicum, s.v. “Actus”).
4 intelligibilis species. “Representations” are conceptual images that represent real objects to one’s intellect (see Deferrari, Lexicon of St. Thomas Aquinas, s.v. “species” 5). They are distinguished by Scholastics into “sensible representations” (species sensibiles), which are perceived by external senses, such as color; “phantastic representations” (species phantasticae), which refer the object to the internal senses while preserving its specificity; and “intelligible representations” (species intelligibiles), which represent the quiddity or essence of the object, stripped of all specification, to one’s intellect. (See Micraelius, Lexicon philosophicum, s.v. “species.”) Here Gerhard is saying that since God lacks nothing (“has no potentiality”) and is omniscient, He does not need to learn about the created world and the essences of things by perception or reasoning. His faculty of understanding and the concepts in His divine mind are not separate. See Gerhard, On the Nature of God (1625 Exegesis, Commonplace II), §§ 243–44, 255.
5 A proximate cause is the nearest and immediate cause of something; it moves the effect primarily and is linked with it most closely (Micraelius, Lexicon philosophicum, s.v. “Causa”). A proximate cause attains an effect through itself and immediately. For example, fire is the proximate cause of heat (Scherzer, “Definitiones,” s.v. “Causa”). Here, the metaphysical philosophers are saying that contingent things should not be considered “necessary” just because they exist or happened to come about. Instead, one should look to their “proximate cause” to see if those causes are contingent, and if so, then they, too, should be considered contingent, not “necessary.”
6 First and second causes are kinds of efficient cause. The “first (principal) cause” is God, on whom everything depends and who Himself depends on nothing. A second (instrumen tal) cause is anything that borrows its power to work from the first cause; thus all created causes are second causes. See Micraelius, Lexicon philosophicum, cols. 248–49; Scherzer, “Definitiones,” 31; Signoriello, Lexicon, 61.
7 Read huic sententiae with Cotta instead of hinc sententiae.
8 Read arbitrium with Cotta instead of arbitrarium.
9 A “connotative” is a word that, by being known, makes known another word (Micraelius, Lexicon philosophicum, s.v. “connotativum”).
10 See above, p. 58 n. 5.