Prima Pars
62. Summa I, Q.14, a.13: Does God Know Future Contingents? Eternity, Boethius, and the Composed and Divided Senses
Class of 2007-01-18
https://berquistcourse.com/course/theology/10-prima-pars/062-summa-i-q-14-a-13-does-god-know-future-contingents-eternity/

[0:00] In the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. God our enlightenment. Guardian angels strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor. Amen. And help us to understand all that you've written. Name of the Father, the Son, Holy Spirit. Amen.

[0:27] So we're up to the thirteenth article, which is another article on these special difficulties of what God knows. And this is the question: whether the knowledge of God is a also a knowledge of future contingents. Okay. Now, what do we mean by future contingents? Well, first of all, what do you mean by contingent?

[0:54] Yeah. Contingent is what is able to be and not be, right? Okay. Now, when the contingent is present, it has a kind of stability, right? So I'm able to be sitting or not sitting at this time, but now that you see me sitting. You know I'm sitting, right? You know, I was sitting a minute ago or something, right? Okay. But in the future, will I be sitting or not sitting?

[1:25] You can't really know that, can you, huh? So it's a problem for us to know future contingents. You know, in Shakespeare's plays, every before a great battle, that guy is going down to take his rest. You know, where will I lie tomorrow night? You know, after the battle, maybe, you'll lie in your grave. But you don't know, huh? You don't know. So, how can God know future contingents?

[1:52] That's the problem, right? So he says, "From a necessary cause proceeds a necessary effect. " But the knowledge of God is a cause of things. What? No. Since, therefore,

[2:21] ipsa what does ipsa refer back to The knowledge of God, right? Since the knowledge of God is necessary, it follows that things known by it must be what necessary. Therefore, the knowledge of God is not a contingent thing, son. Okay. The sense is like saying, "How could you have a necessary knowledge of things that are not what necessary? " We certainly can't have that, right? Okay.

[2:53] Moreover, every conditional statement, that means every if-then statement, right? Whose antecedent is necessary absolutely, the consequent is absolutely necessary. So in a conditional statement, you're saying what if A is so, then B is so, right? So if in fact A is necessarily so, then it seems that B must necessarily be so, right?

[3:21] For thus the antecedent has itself to the consequence, just as beginnings or premises to conclusions. For from necessary beginnings or necessary premises, there does not follow a conclusion except a necessary one. as is proven in the first book of the Posterior Analytics, That's Aristotle's book on what demonstration, right? An argument where the what conclusion follows necessarily and is necessarily what true, right? For it follows necessarily from premises that are necessarily true, right?

[3:57] So the conclusion is necessarily true. But this conditional statement, this if-then statement, is true. If God knows this thing to be future, if God knows this to be in the future. We could say, this will be. That's true. Because the knowledge of God is not except about things that are true.

[4:25] But the antecedent, that's the part in the if part of the statement, the antecedent of this conditional statement is necessary absolutely, because it is eternal, right? And because it signified as being what in the past, huh?

[4:48] Therefore the consequence is necessary absolutely. Therefore whatever is known by God is necessary, and thus the knowledge of God is not of contingent things.

[5:06] Moreover, everything known, you might say, or known scientifically, right, by God necessarily must be, because also everything known scientifically by us necessarily is, huh? And the science of God is even more certain than our science.

[5:30] But nothing contingent, no future contingent, is necessary to be, huh? Therefore no contingent thing is known by God scientifically. But against all this nonsense is what is said in Psalm 32, huh? Who fixes what

[5:54] bit by bit, right, or one by one, the hearts of them, right? Who understands all their what? Doings, huh? he knows all my doings of the doings of men. Thomas says, right? Okay, but the doings of men are contingent, huh? As being subject to what we'd say free will, but they say free judgment. Therefore, God knows what future contingent things, son. So Thomas says, I answer: it should be said that has been shown above

[6:34] that God knows all things, not only those things which are in act, but also those things which are in his ability, right, or in the ability of the what creature. But of these, some are what

[6:57] future contingents for us, son. Therefore, it follows that God knows what future contingent things. That's kind of a general reason to say that he does, right? But now trying to understand this a bit, huh? How does Anselm define theology sometimes as fides quaerens intellectum, belief seeking understanding, right? Why does he say seeking understanding?

[7:42] You never fully understand it, right, huh? Now he says to the evidence of this, it should be considered that something contingent can be considered in two ways, huh?

[8:02] In one way, in itself, right? According as it is now already in act, and thus it is not considered as future, but as present, right? So my sitting right now, right, or you're sitting right now. That's something contingent. You could be standing now, or laying down, or something, but now it's present, right? Okay.

[8:36] And therefore, it's not what contingent to either one sitting or not sitting in my example, but it's determined to one. Okay. So even though it's contingent that I'd be sitting now, you can know that I'm sitting, right? Okay. And an account of this, it can be infallibly subject or under some certain knowledge, huh? Sure knowledge. Knowledge in the sixth sense, as example to the sense of what sight.

[9:08] Just as when I see Socrates to be sitting, right. In another way, one can consider the contingent as it is in its cause, and thus it is considered as something in the future. Future And as something contingent, not yet determined to one or the other, right?

[9:33] Because the contingent cause has itself to what opposites, right? Should I have this for dinner or not have this for dinner? Okay. And in this way, the contingent is not subject by certitude to some what knowledge. Okay.

[10:05] Whence whoever knows a contingent effect only in its cause. Whence whoever knows a contingent effect only in its cause Does not have of it anything except a what? Conjectural knowledge, right? Now you got to realize that the word

[10:25] cognitio in Latin is a little broader than our word knowledge, right? Or we're a little more limited for our words in some ways. You know, when somebody says something, you know, you say, "Now, do you know that, or you just think that so?" And it's just asking whether you're sure or not, right? And that is, you know, knowing as opposed to thinking means something certain, right? But the Latin word cognitio is a little a little looser than that, a little broader than that, right?

[11:00] And so he says conjecturalis, that means really a what? Guess, right? So I could translate it one word English. You might say, "Huh? It's not really knowledge in the strict sense, as opposed to a guess. It's a guess. Now, guess can be what? Reasonable guess, right?

[11:27] A guess can be an educated guess. Can be an uneducated guess, wild guess. But in any case, it's still a guess, right? I used to tell the students, you know, there are people who are paid to guess. The weatherman is paid to guess. The stock market man is paid to guess, right? The economists are paid by government and industry, you know, to guess. Huh? Even the doctor guesses what's wrong with you, right?

[11:59] He's going around this test because he's guessed that this may be your problem, right? But Einstein says a scientific theory is a system of guesses, huh? And it never passes over from being a guess. And even when it's confirmed, it's it's a confirmed guess, but still guess.

[12:21] So Thomas is saying here very differently, that whoever knows a contingent effect only in its cause, right, does not have of it except a what? Yeah. So what am I going to order when I go to the restaurant tonight? Well, not go to the restaurant tonight, but take that example, right?

[12:47] What I could have steak or not have steak, right? Now knowing my will, could you know? I used to go to a little restaurant in Quebec, you know, and I would get a little petite steak, you know, and the waitress see me coming in, she'd say petit steak But uh that's a pretty good guess. But sometimes they

[13:16] just get fed up with it, you know, the same thing, you know. So even though I like the like the food, huh? Okay. So you really can't know what Bergquist is going to order tonight, but you can what guess he's going to order a steak, right? But you don't really know.

[13:45] Now, God, however, this is the interesting thing. Now, God, however, knows all contingent things, not only insofar as they are in their causes, but also insofar as each one of them is an act in itself. That's hard to understand, right? But you have to remember that God's knowledge is not in time.

[14:13] God's knowledge, as we learned already in this question, is the same thing as his substance, right? And we learned in the treatise on the substance of God that it's eternal. And do you remember the definition of eternity? It comes from what great thinker? Boethius. Boethius, yeah. I mean, the elements of it are of course already found even in Plato, because Plato realized that in eternity there's no before and no after, and that's kind of you know very good for him.

[14:50] But the definition of eternity has to be understood through the definition and knowledge of time and of the now of time, right? So just recall the definition of eternity, huh? Tota simul et perfecta possessio vitae interminabilis, right? The all at once, huh? Perfect possession, right? Of unending life, huh? So there's a negation of before and after in what eternity, huh? As a negation of any beginning and any end, huh?

[15:32] Now sometimes people think of eternity as a kind of endless time, and in so doing, they have a part of what eternity is. It is endless. That is to say, it has no beginning and it has no end, right?

[15:51] But that's not a complete knowledge of eternity. It's not only endless, as he says, vitae interminabilis but it's what tota simul. Simul is the opposite of before and after in the categories. You may recall. Aristotle takes up the chapter twelve there in the meanings of before and after, right? And then he follows that in chapter thirteen by "simul together, "hama" in Greek, right?

[16:22] So you know, even if I'm seventy-one today, but even if I was alive last year, and I'm alive next year, and every subsequent year I'm still alive, and every year before last year I was alive, right? I would still not be eternal, because one of my years would be before and another one after. Okay, so you need both of these negations to understand eternity. There's no what beginning and no end to eternity, but there's no before and after.

[17:06] It's all at once. It's completely actual. So God is not in time, and that's very hard for us to what understand. As we mentioned before, and we saw a little bit when we studied the the third book about the soul. Our reason doesn't think without what images, huh?

[17:32] And that's because the proper object of our reason is that what it is is something we can imagine, and the images involve what the continuous, and they involve time.

[17:48] And so it's very hard for our mind to understand something that isn't continuous and in time. And so all of our statements involve the verb, which is Aristotle points out in the Peri Hermeneias and logic. The verb signifies with time, so we can't speak without doing that, huh? And so when it comes to talk about something that is without time, we seem to what know it only negatively by saying it's without time.

[18:23] What does that mean? Well, it means that contrary or opposite to the things that are in time, the things that are measured by time have a beginning and an end in time,

[18:36] and they have a before and after in time. And eternity has neither one of those, right? Okay, so God is not in time. And Boethius, as I mentioned before, when he gives that great definition of eternity in the fifth book of the Consolation of Philosophy, he begins the book by having the leader of the conversation, who is Lady Wisdom, come down to console him. Call Aristotle her true what follower, right?

[19:10] And Boethius has to understand how God's knowledge, even of temporal things, is what eternal, right? And he has to go back and realize that Aristotle was the first man to really think out, and that is the truth does not require it. that the way we know be the way what things are. Things are, right? And you see a little, you know, shadow of that in us, where we can talk about the past now.

[19:46] And are we false in thinking about the past now? But the past is not now. So how can we truly think of the past now?

[20:00] Doesn't exist, right? Yeah, the past. Yeah, but our knowledge is now, and and the known is not now; it's past. See? So we can truly know

[20:14] when the way we know is not the same as the way the thing is. The thing we're knowing. Is past, and we're knowing it now. But that's the way God knows the future. The future is present to God in His eternal now. And when the future contingent is present,

[20:37] like now I'm sitting here, right? But before I came in here, you know, I could have stood up here and given you a stand-up lecture or something like that. Gone to the blackboard here, I'd be standing or something like that. You couldn't know for sure whether I was going to be what sitting or not, right? You might guess that he's a lazy old son of a gun and he'd be sitting down again, but you wouldn't know for sure, right?

[21:02] He gets carried away sometimes and jumps up and goes to the board or something, right? So, but now that it's present, you can know it, right? You can be sure I'm sitting, right? Even though it's a contingent thing. So God knows the future as what present to Him in His eternal now. The great Boethius, you know, sometimes in contrasting the the now of time with the now of what eternity, he says the the now that flows along it's always different.

[21:38] The now that flows makes time, and the now that stands still makes eternity. Okay. So he says, although contingent things come to be and act successively one after another, nevertheless God does not what successively know contingent things one after another.

[22:10] Insofar as they are in their own being, as we know them, right? As they come up, because our knowledge is derived from things. So I got to sit down before you know that I'm going to sit down, and then I'm not on the future anymore. But he knows these things what semel right?

[22:31] I think it's kind of marvelous that Aristotle in the Categories, as I mentioned. In chapter twelve, he takes up what before and after, and then semel in what the next chapter. And he does the same thing again in the fifth book of wisdom. He takes up before prior and posterior, and then he takes up what semel right? Because you know semel as what by the negation of before and after.

[23:03] When two events are together, one is what neither before nor after the other. This guy's kind of a subtle thing. Actually, Aristotle when he talks about more or less and equal, he says that really we know equal by the negation of more and less.

[23:22] You have two lines, and if one is neither longer or shorter than the other, than they're equal. And so this says very much in our knowing God's eternity, right? We know His being semel all at once or together by the negation of before and after.

[23:45] Of course, when you get down to the to the treatise on the Trinity, you know you're going to be kind of amazed by that, because Thomas will explain why Athanasius says in the creed, or the Athanasian Creed says, "There's no before and after in God, even though the Son proceeds from the Father, right? And the Holy Spirit is breathed by the Father and the Son. The Father is in no way before the Son, and the Father and the Son are in no way before the Holy Spirit.

[24:18] And he'll eliminate all the senses of before that Aristotle distinguishes. And that's kind of the what did Shakespeare say? You know, looking before and after. And the reason does. But when you look at God, we have to what negate before and after. Yeah, but you still got to understand before and after to negate them.

[24:45] That's amazing. The categories are going to be very important for the Trinity, huh? Very important. You just ask yourself the simple question: Are the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit one thing or three things? One thing. And three. You got both. Both, yeah, but not in the same meaning of of what thing. Thing. But in the in the in the categories, you have distinction between an absolute thing like substance or quantity and quality, and then a what relative thing, right?

[25:25] And so there are three, actually, four relations, but there's three persons, right? So if by thing you mean relation, yeah, there are three things there. If you mean the substance of God, the nature of God is one thing. Yeah, but unless you see the how the word thing is equivocal by reason which aristotle saw there, you can't what understand K. Van's question, right? It's it's incredibly important that book of Aristotle is.

[25:58] It's not by chance that Thomas calls him the philosopher, venturum esse, which is a figure of speech, right? By the way, are we reading Thomas now? What would you say?

[26:14] Yeah. That's figurative speech, though. Thomas, see? Yeah, yeah, you're you're reading the words of Thomas, right? But we say you're reading Thomas, and it wasn't, you know, the words.

[26:34] That's a very common figurative speech. So we say, you know, read Aristotle, read Kant, read whatever the the author is. But in a figurative speech, the meaning of the speaker, the meaning of the words of speaker, is not his meaning. So when I say we're reading, we're going to read Thomas this semester or something like that, that's not what I mean. That's that's what I say. I mean, we're going to read the words of Thomas.

[27:02] You see? And I think I think that figurative speech there is the metonym. Metonymy where where it contains the container and the signify this you know, I that is kind of catch off those ones the name metonymy right. Okay. Okay. It's

[27:28] very common, very common. So let's go back to this paragraph, friend. And although contingent things come to be enacted successively, one succeeding another, one after another, right? Nevertheless, God does not know contingent things successively, one after another, as they are in their own being, right? Which is the way we know them, right?

[27:59] So we know the the the news, so to speak, right? Day after day, right? Huh? And that's why we're always thinking, what's new, you know? But these are all present to God. And this is because his knowledge is measured by what eternity, just as his being. We found out that his knowing and his being were the same thing. So his being is eternal. And then he kind of quotes part of the definition of eternity.

[28:31] But eternity tota simul existence, right? All at once, takes in the whole time as has been said above. Whence all things which are in time are to God by eternity present, right?

[28:57] Not only, huh? By that reason by which he has the reasons of things present before him, as some say, but because his what insight bears from eternity upon all things in so far as they are in his what potential in his present presentiality, yeah. Okay. Now sometimes you know Thomas you know compares that to what the circle he says that

[29:31] the now of time are like the points on the circumference of a circle and one is what comes after the one and before circle and one is what comes after the one and before another one right okay but the now of eternity is outside of time and it's towards each one of these things or they're towards it in exactly the same way they're across from it you might say right so all these things which are not present to each other right but are before and after each other are all present to God in His eternal knowledge so that's really Incredible things that God, the knowledge of that, huh?

[30:11] And that's why the great Boethius, brings out the definition of eternity, to show how God can know these things in the fifth book of the consolation of philosophy.

[30:31] When it is manifest that the contingent things are known infallibly by God, huh? And that's why, insofar as they are subject to the divine sight, in their presentness. And nevertheless, they are future contingents compared to their what, Causes. And so,

[31:01] this is why one of the motives of credibility is the fulfillment of prophecies, right, huh? That God can be sure, right, and reveal something that's going to take place in the future. That is what contingent compared to its causes, but God, in fact, he can reveal those things with certitude, is a sign that he's speaking to us, huh? We saw that a little bit in that first Vatican Council, right?

[31:28] The motives of credibility, their proportion to all, the miracles, and then the fulfillment of prophecies, huh? So it says in the Bible, you know, declare it to us the future, and we'll call you gods.

[31:45] Now, going back to the first objection, huh? From a necessary cause proceeds a necessary effect, but the knowledge of God is the cause of what, the things known, right? Therefore, it seems that if God's knowledge is necessary, or infallible, as we said, right? It would follow that the things known by him are necessary, and therefore they're not what, contingent, right? Okay.

[32:14] So it says the first, therefore, it should be said that although the highest cause is necessary, nevertheless the effect is able to be contingent on account of the contingent cause that is proximate to it, huh? Just as, and this is kind of an example in the old science, just as the germination of the plant is something contingent on account of the what, contingency of the proximate cause, although the motion of the sun, which is the first cause here, is something what, necessary, right?

[32:52] Okay. And likewise, the things known by God are contingent on account of their proximate causes, although the knowledge of God, which is the first cause, is what.

[33:09] And sometimes Thomas compares that to just reverse in us, because sometimes the thing that in itself is necessary is known by us only with probability, and that's because things are a cause of our what knowledge, right? But due to our defect, we don't know necessary things as necessary. Well, God is reverse. God is necessary thing, and the effect though can be what contingent, huh? Because it's proximate.

[33:42] Now the second objection is talking about an if-then statement where if the the antecedent is necessary, it seems the consequent is necessary, and Thomas's reply is quite long, as you can see. Yeah. And there's a there's a a sophism that is easily made here.

[34:06] To the second, it should be said that some say that this antecedent, God knows this future contingent. Some say it's not necessary, but contingent, right?

[34:23] Because although it is in the past, God's knowledge nevertheless it implies a respect to the future. Okay. But that this does not take away necessity, they say, because it has respect to the future, right?

[35:00] Is necessary that for it to have been, although the future does not follow sometimes. Others say that this antecedent is contingent because it is composed of the necessary and the contingent, just as this saying is contingent that Socrates is a white man. But this also is nothing, because when it is said God knows this future thing to be contingent, the contingent is not placed there except as the matter of the what verb, and not as a principal part of proposition.

[35:41] Whence the contingency or necessity has nothing to do with the proposition being necessary, contingent, true or false. Thus, it is able to be true for me to have said that man is an ass, just as it should be to have what said that Socrates ran, or God is, and the same reason is there about the necessary and the contingent, huh?

[36:11] Whence it should be said that this antecedent is necessary absolutely right. It does not over follow, as some say, that the consequence is necessary absolutely, because the antecedent is a remote cause the consequence, which an account of the approximate cause is contingent. But this is nothing, he says, for the conditional would be false, whose antecedent was a what? Necessary remote cause, and the consequent a contingent effect.

[36:52] Is if I should say that the sun moves, the plant will what? Germinate, huh? Doesn't follow. Isn't true. Because in if then statement, the then part has to follow necessarily. Then part.

[37:09] And therefore it ought to be said otherwise, huh? That when in the antecedent there is placed something pertaining to the act of the soul,

[37:22] the consequent ought to be taken not according as it is in itself, but according as it is in the soul. For other is the being of a thing in itself and the being of a thing in the soul. As if I say, if the soul understands something, that is immaterial. It ought to be understood that that is immaterial according as it is in the understanding, not according as it is in itself.

[37:57] And likewise, if I say, if God has known something, it will be the consequent ought to be understood in so far as it is under the divine knowledge, in so far as it is in its what? Presentness, huh? And thus it is necessary, just as the antecedent, because everything that is, when it is, necessarily is, as is said in the first book of the Peri Hermeneias is.

[38:25] That's very subtle, huh? You got to think about that for a while, huh? So I'll let you think about that for a while. Okay.

[38:49] Okay. Everything known by God, go back to the third objection here. Everything known by God necessarily is necessary to be, because also everything known by us must be. Knowing in the strict sense, there. Notice he uses the word "cognitum there rather than "cognitio right? Because that's a stricter word there. You get the word "science." Since this knowledge of God or the science of God is more certain than our science, but no what future contingent is necessary to be.

[39:28] Therefore, no future contingent is known by God. To the third, he said it should be said that those things which are reduced in act in time are known by us successively in time, but by God in eternity, in the eternal now, which is above time.

[39:53] Whence to us, because we know future contingents as they are such, we cannot be what certain, right? But only to God, whose understanding is in eternity above time. Okay. Now he's going to give another likeness here. This is another likeness because besides the one in the circle, just as the one who goes through the road along the road does not see those who come what after him, but the one who's up in the top of the mountain, let's say, the one who from some altitude sees the whole road, he sees at once all those passing through the road.

[40:37] They're all present to him. And therefore, that which is known by us, it is necessary that it be necessary, even according as it is in itself, because those things which in themselves are future contingents are not able to be known by us. But those things which are known by God must be necessary according to that way in which they are under the divine knowledge, as has been said.

[41:11] Not, however, absolutely according as they are considered in their what proper causes, right? Whence this statement: everything known by God is necessary to be. We are accustomed to distinguish, because if it is said about the what thing, or it can be said about the said. If it is understood about the thing, it is divided and what false. And the sense is that everything which God knows necessary, or it is able to be understood about what is being said, and thus it is composed and true.

[41:59] And thus the sense is this thing said known by God to be is what necessary, huh? Okay. Now that maybe touches upon what kind of mistake.

[42:21] One of the fallacies in speech, the fallacy of composition and division, right? Okay. Let me take a sort of example of that fallacy of composition and division.

[42:38] Can a man sit when he's standing? I'm sitting now, right? Could I be standing now when I'm sitting? Now. Well, if you're taking this in a composed sense, huh? Can I be standing when I'm sitting? No, no. But if you divide the saying and say that time when I'm sitting, I could be standing. Then in that sense, it's true, right? Okay, that's kind of a subtle thing, right?

[43:18] In one sense, it is, since it isn't, right? I'm not sure what I'm saying So, if something is is foreknown by God, must it be?

[43:47] Yeah. If you take it as a whole, right? Yeah. But you take it in itself or by itself, right? It need not be, right? Okay.

[44:03] If God knows I'm going to sin, must I sin? Say, it might seem like if I must sin, then I must do it. I'm not really free and can't be held responsible for what I've done.

[44:18] Other difficulties too is that God is the author of sin Yeah, yeah, yeah. But so, in one sense, if you say if God foresees that I'm going to sin, then I must sin, right? In this composed sense, it's what true, right? But in divided sense, by itself, it isn't what true, right? Okay. That's a very very difficult thing to not get caught up on. that.

[44:58] Okay. Now, some object saying that that distinction has place in forms separable from a subject, as if I say that what white is able to be what black,

[45:17] which of the thing said is false, and about the thing is what true, okay? For the thing which is what white is able to be what black, right? But this thing that we have said that the white is black can never be true, right? In forms over inseparable from a subject, they say that the fore said distinction does not have place, as if I say that a what.

[46:01] Yeah, this is necessary as being what black, right? Because in both senses, false. But to be known by God is inseparable from the thing, because what is known by God is not able to be what not known.

[46:20] I says this instance or objection would have place if this that I say known implied some disposition inhering in the subject. But since it implies the act of the one knowing. Ah, to the thing known, although it is always known, right?

[46:46] It can be attributed to it what. By itself, what is not attributed to it except in so far as it stands under the what act of being known. Just as to be material is attributed to the stone. By itself, which is not attributed to it, according as it is what understandable, huh? Okay, so.

[47:15] Before you can really fully understand those objections and apply them, you got to go to the book on sophistic refutations, and understand the kind of what mistakes, huh? That people make, huh? So maybe take a little break here, huh? Okay.