Sect. 80God’s Knowledge of the Free Actions of His CreaturesGod’s Knowledge of the Free Actions of His Creatures

The difficulties which the Divine knowledge of free actions presents to our mind, arise from our inability to understand the peculiar process of God’s cognition, which is indeed more peculiar in this than in other matters. A complete solution of the difficulties is impossible. All that we can hope to do is to remove apparent contradictions by clearly pointing out the difference between the way in which God knows, and the way in which the created mind acquires its knowledge. It is not without a purpose that Revelation so often insists upon the knowledge of the free actions of man as the exclusive and wonderful privilege of God,—a knowledge in which the Divine Light illumines the most secret and dark recesses.

The knowledge which God possesses of the free actions of His creatures is distinguished by the three following characteristics: (1) God knows these actions in themselves, as they are in the mind and heart of their author, from within and so far à priori; (2) God has this knowledge from all eternity—that is, before the actions take place; (3) in the Divine Intellect the knowledge of free actions is logically preceded by the knowledge that, under certain conditions and circumstances dependent on the Divine decree, such actions would take place. The above three characteristics are termed respectively (1) “searching of hearts,” (καρδιογνωσία); (2) “knowledge of future free acts;” (3) “knowledge of conditional acts” (scientia conditionatorum or futuribilium). At each of these three degrees of Divine knowledge our difficulties increase; as far, however, as they are soluble, they find a solution in a correct exposition of the first point, especially of the relation of causality between God and created spirits.

I. It is of faith (1) that God knows the free actions of His creatures from within, before they are manifested without, exactly as they exist in the consciousness of the free agent, and even more adequately than the free agent himself knows them; (2) that God alone possesses this knowledge; (3) that, as God knows external free actions from within—that is, from the inner disposition of the agent,—so also does He know the inner free act from and in its principle, which is the free will of the creature; and this free will is entirely the work of God, and can have no tendency, no motive, no act independently of its Creator.

1. As Scripture proofs of 1, we select the following texts: “The eyes of the Lord are far brighter than the sun, beholding round about all the ways of men, and the bottom of the deep, and looking into the hearts of men, into the most hidden parts” (Ecclus. 23:28). “The Lord searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the thoughts of minds” (1 Paral. 28:9). “For Thou only knowest the hearts of the children of men” (2 Paral. 6:30). “The heart is perverse above all things, and unsearchable, who can know it? I, the Lord, Who search the heart and prove the reins: Who give to every one according to his way, and according to the fruit of his devices” (Jer. 17:9, 10). Cf. Acts 1:24; and 15:8). “The Lord hath looked from heaven; He hath beheld all the sons of men.… He Who has made the hearts of every one of them, Who understandeth all their works” (Ps. 32:13–15).

2. As to the exclusiveness of this knowledge, Holy Scripture indeed speaks mostly of the hearts of men as being hidden from other men. The emphatic expressions used must, however, according to the unanimous teaching of the Fathers, be also applied to the angels, to whom the thoughts of men and of other angels are also imperviable. Cf. Suarez, De Angelis, l. ii., c. 21. This doctrine involves the important consequence, that the devil can no more know whether the tempted consent to temptation than he can force them to consent.

3. Creatures and their activity, including their free activity, are intrinsically dependent on God; that is, they cannot act unless God moves and co-operates with them. Hence free actions appear to the Eye of God as the course of a motion originated and supported by Him: good actions run the course which He intended; bad actions deflect from it. Consequently, God sees the free actions of His creatures, like their other actions, not as independent external manifestations, but in their origin and root—that is, in the free will and its activity of which He is the Creator and Conservator. Thus the action of the creature does not enlighten the Divine Intellect; but, on the contrary, on account of its dependence on God, the action is itself enlightened by the Divine Mind. Now, it must be remembered that God knows all effects by His knowledge of their causes, a knowledge which penetrates to their uttermost capabilities. He therefore knows the actual determinations of free will as they are elicited by the free will dependent on, and moved by, Him. This knowledge, therefore, is not inferred from the previous state of the will, or from the motives communicated to it by God; for if such a conclusion could be drawn, there would be a necessary connection between the previous disposition of the will and the subsequent determination, and consequently no freedom. The formal objective reason (ratio formalis objectiva) why God sees the free determination is the dependence of the free will on God.

All schools of Theology agree in this explanation of the manner in which God knows the free actions of creatures. Some, however, lay too much stress on the point that God knows the free actions in and through His action on the will; while others give too much prominence to the idea that the free actions are known by God in themselves, as they proceed from the created will. But both parties agree that the first description can be applied without restriction only to the knowledge of good actions; and that the second description applies, without reserve, only to bad actions, which, in as far as they are bad, do not proceed from God at all, but from the created will.

This explanation enables us to see how the knowledge which God has of free actions does not interfere with their freedom. The free will of the creature indeed determines and causes an object of the Divine knowledge, but not the knowledge itself. On the contrary, God is determined by His own Essence to the knowledge of the free acts in question. His knowledge proceeds from Himself; as Creator and Conservator He contemplates in the same act the substance of the creature, its energies and faculties, the impulse by which He enables it to act, and all the actions that actually result, or may result, from this impulse. Hence the reason why God knows the free actions of His creatures is the relation of causality and dependence between Creator and creature. God, however, does not determine free actions in the same manner as He determines other actions of creatures. Just as the self-determination of the will is consequent upon the causal influence of God, so also is it known to God by reason of the same influence. God, therefore, knows the free actions of His creatures in His own Essence, the adequate knowledge of which includes the perfect knowledge of all things dependent on it.

If this be rightly understood, the following proposition will also be clear:—”God’s certain knowledge of the free determination of the will is not the cause of this determination; nor is the determination of the will the reason why God knows it.” The fact that a free determination takes place is merely a condition of God’s knowledge of it; nevertheless, it is a necessary condition—necessary in order that God, by means of His causal influence, may extend His knowledge to that particular determination of the will.

This doctrine is thus expressed by St. John Damascene, Contra Manich., c. 79: “The foreknowing power of God has not its cause in us; but it is because of us that He foresees what we are about to do: for if we were not about to do the things, God could not have foreseen them, because they were not going to be. The foreknowledge of God is true and infallible indeed; but it is not the cause why we do certain things: on the contrary, because we are about to do certain things, God foreknows them.”

II. Like all other Divine knowledge, the knowledge of the free actions of creatures is eternal. Hence God knows the free actions of His creatures before they are performed, and knows them even better than the creatures themselves do. He further contemplates them as perpetually present with the reality they acquire when accomplished in the course of time. The Vatican Council (sess. iii. c. 1) says “All things are bare and open to His eyes, even the things which will take place by the free action of creatures.” Prescience of this kind is exclusively proper to God, a touchstone of Divinity. Cf. Ps. 138:1 sqq.; Ecclus. 39:24, 25; and 23:28, 29. “Show the things that are to come hereafter, and we shall know that ye are gods” (Isai. 41:22, 23). Every one of the many prophecies contained in Holy Writ is a proof of the Divine Foreknowledge. “Every prophet is a proof of the Divine Foreknowledge”—”Præscientia Dei tot habet testes quot habet prophetas” (Tertull., C. Marcion). St. Augustine (Ad Simplicium, 1. ii., q. ii., n. 2) gives a classical description of the way in which God sees future things as present.

God’s Foreknowledge must be eternal because all that is in God is necessarily eternal. Besides, if God knew the free actions of His creatures only in time, the decrees of His Providence ought to be made in time also. The possibility of an eternal Foreknowledge is evident from the à priori nature of the knowledge, for God knows future things in their eternal cause. Further, He contemplates the future as actually present, because to Him there is no time; things temporal stand before His undivided eternity with their temporal character and are seen always as they are when they actually exist.

The Divine Foreknowledge is an eternal contemplation and therefore does not interfere with the liberty of the created will. The fact that God sees what we do, no more alters the nature of our acts than the fact that they are seen or remembered by ourselves or by others. The knowledge which God has of free actions is the same before, during, and after their performance. Besides, the Divine Knowledge, being à priori, apprehends free actions formally as such, that is, as proceeding from the will by free determination. If it only grasped the action as a material fact, the knowledge would be false or incomplete. Foreknowledge would only interfere with liberty of action if it supposed a necessary influence of God on the human will, or if it had the character of a conclusion necessarily following from given premisses.

III. The knowledge of the actions which would be performed by free agents if certain conditions were fulfilled, cannot be denied to God. It is in itself an unmixed perfection, and, moreover, it is necessary for the perfect ruling of the world by Divine Providence. In fact, without such knowledge, God could not frame His decrees concerning the government of rational creatures, or, if He did, He would deprive them of their liberty (cf. Hurter, De Deo, No. 87).

1. Holy Scripture fully supports this doctrine. God being asked by David if the men of Ceila would deliver him into the hands of Saul, answered positively, “They will deliver thee.” But David having fled, he was not delivered into the hands of his enemy (1 Kings 22:1–13). See other instances of the Divine knowledge of future actions dependent on unfulfilled conditions (Jer. 38:15 sqq.); “Woe to thee, Corozain, woe to thee, Bethsaida: for if in Tyre and Sidon had been wrought the miracles that have been wrought in you, they had long ago done penance in sackcloth and ashes” (Matt. 11:20–23). Cf. Franzelin, De Deo, p. 449 sqq.

2. The Fathers often deal expressly with the present questions in connection with Providence. In the controversies with the Manichæans and Gnostics, they all admit without hesitation that God foreknew the sins which Adam and Eve, Saul, Judas, and others would commit under given conditions. Not one of these Fathers tries to justify God for creating these men, or for conferring dignities upon them, on the plea of ignorance of what would happen under the circumstances. Cf. the commentaries on Wisd. 4:11: “He was taken away lest wickedness should alter his understanding, or deceit beguile his soul;” esp. St. Gregory of Nyssa, in the sermon on this text (Opp., torn, ii., pp. 764–770), and St. Augustine (De Corr. et Gratia, c. viii.). (See infra, p. 372, and Vol. II. p. 242.)