30. Do angels know the future?
30. DO ANGELS KNOW THE FUTURE?
Isn’t knowledge of the future a privilege of God alone? But if our guardian angels can’t know the future, how can they be wiser than us and guide us?
The future can be known in two ways. First, it can be known in its cause. And thus, future events which proceed necessarily from their causes are known with sure knowledge, as that the sun will rise tomorrow. But events which proceed from the causes in the majority of cases are not known for certain, but conjecturally; thus the doctor knows beforehand the health of the patient. This manner of knowing future events exists in the angels, and by so much the more than it does in us, as they understand the causes of things both more universally and more perfectly; thus doctors who penetrate more deeply into the causes of an ailment can pronounce a surer verdict on the future issue thereof. But events which proceed from their causes in the minority of cases are quite unknown, such as casual and chance events.
In another way future events are known in themselves. To know the future in this way belongs to God alone . . . for God sees all things in His eternity, which, being simple, is present to all time and embraces all time. And therefore God’s one glance is cast over all things which happen in all time as present before Him, and He beholds all things as they are in themselves. . . . Men cannot know future things except in their causes or by God’s revelation. The angels know the future in the same way but much more distinctly (I,57,3).
Angels live in time too, as we do—though it is purely spiritual time, kairos, not material time, kronos—and therefore they, like us, can often know the future before it happens, in a partial and fallible way, but not as it happens, in a total and infallible way, as God does. God knows all times at once.
Angels know the future in the same way that we do, only better than we do. Think of the story of creation as two novels written by the same Author. The first is about angels and the second is about us and the material universe we live in. The universe is a very big setting, but we are the characters (the only ones, as far as we know) in the second novel; and the characters are more important than the setting. The Author transcends both novels, and knows events which to the characters are past or future but which to Him are present, since everything in his novels is present to the all-knowing mind of the Author.
Sometimes He brings the characters in his first novel, the angel novel, into the second novel, the human one, somewhat as Tolkien had some of the elves from The Silmarillion interact with the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings.
Having angels interact with humans is in some ways like having humans interact with animals, for we can understand the animals in many ways better than they can understand themselves, and we can know their future better than they do (especially if we are veterinarians), to help them and tame them and make them better and happier. Think of the angels as our veterinarians. As we know animals’ future better than animals do, angels know our future better than we do—but not infallibly, as only God does.
Or, to use an alternative analogy, they are like our big brothers (we have the same Heavenly Father), and we can trust them because they are much wiser and stronger than we are.
By the way, Aquinas was scientifically wrong in classifying as “sure knowledge” our knowledge “that the sun will rise tomorrow”. One day, it will not rise because it will explode or implode, some billions of years from now.