Dist. 38, Art. 2, Q. 2
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/1/d/38/q/bon-sent-I-d38-a2-q2
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### Question II.
#### *Whether God necessarily foreknows what he foreknows.*

Secondly it is asked whether divine foreknowledge has necessity in itself, that is, whether it is [the case] that God [necessarily] foreknows what he foreknows. And that he does, is shown:

1. *First*, by the authority of Anselm in the book *On the Concord of Predestination and Free Choice*: "What God foreknows, it is impossible that he should not foreknow": therefore by equivalence, it is necessary that he foreknow [it].

2. Likewise, by reason it appears [so], because every saying about the past is necessarily true — whence if [someone] ran, it is necessary that he ran — but if he foreknows, he foreknew: therefore since this is a saying about the past, therefore [it is] necessary.

3. Likewise, although God's potency is indifferent to going forth or not going forth, nevertheless from the [moment] it has gone forth into act, it is necessary that it has gone forth. Hence although he could have created and not created, before he created, nevertheless from the [moment] he created, it is necessary that he has created: therefore from the [moment] he foreknew, it is necessary that he has foreknown.

4. Likewise, if a man willed and foreknew something, it is necessary that the man knew and willed: therefore if concerning God's knowledge there is no lesser certitude, indeed greater, than concerning man's knowledge, much more strongly is it necessary. If you say, as some say, that in this [proposition] *Deus praescivit* ["God foreknew"], the whole is from the future according to the thing, although it is understood under the formal character of the past, whence to say *Deus praescit* ["God foreknows"] is to say nothing more than *Deus est, et hoc erit* ["God is, and this will be"]; on the contrary: then, supposing that God had no cognition, while nevertheless the thing were future, this would be true: *Deus praescit*; which is manifestly false. Furthermore, supposing that to the foreknowledge there be added an act passing into the past, such as a promise or a prediction or a prophecy, there [too] something passes into the past, and there truly arises the same sophism and the same doubt: therefore this does not solve [the question].

5. Likewise, *to be* and *not to be* are further apart than *necessary* and *contingent*; but something which simply is not has being in God's foreknowledge: therefore much more strongly can something which in itself is contingent be necessary in God's foreknowledge: therefore etc.

6. Likewise, every immutable [thing] is necessary; but when one says *Deus praescit* ["God foreknows"], it is immutable: therefore it is necessary. The first [premise] is manifest, the second is clear, because when one says *Deus praescit*, if it is changed, so as to become *non praesciens* [not-foreknowing], either it is according to a change in the thing, or in God. Not in the thing, because the thing as yet is nothing, therefore it is not changed nor can it be changed. If according to a change in itself, then God is changed.

7. Likewise, every eternal [thing] is necessary, because there is only one eternal, and that is [the one] in which contingency does not fall, but the highest necessity; but *praescire Dei* [God's foreknowing] is eternal: therefore it is necessary that God foreknow what he foreknows.

**On the contrary:**

1. There is a rule: if the antecedent of a conditional is necessary, so is the consequent; and if the consequent is not necessary, neither is the antecedent. But it follows: if God foreknows that this will be future, this will be — given any contingent whatsoever — because the opposite cannot stand: therefore since the consequent is not necessary, neither, then, is the antecedent.

2. Likewise, there is a rule, that the necessary is compatible with every possible. For everything that conflicts with the necessary is impossible; but given some [person] who is foreknown to be damned, it is possible that he be saved: therefore these two can stand together, that he be foreknown to be damned, and that he be saved: but this is impossible: therefore etc.

3. Likewise, there is a rule that the opposite of the contingent is contingent, and the opposite of the necessary is impossible. And again the rule is, that if the consequent follows from the antecedent, the opposite of the antecedent follows from the opposite of the consequent. From these I argue thus: let *A* be a contingent foreknown by God; if God foreknows, *A* will be: therefore by the rule, if *A* will not be, God does not foreknow. But *A*'s not being was contingent, [yet] God's not having foreknown was impossible:

therefore from a contingent there follows an impossible. But this is contrary to the [logical] art: it is necessary therefore that this be contingent — namely, that God foreknow this.

4. Likewise, every divine action which regards an object that can not be can cease. Hence since God conserves the created thing, he can cease to conserve [it]: therefore since to foreknow is in respect of the contingent, it will be contingent.

### Conclusion.

> *In the saying* "God foreknows a future contingent," *although the act of God in itself is eternal and necessary, contingency is to be judged of the total saying, by reason of the contingent connotatum.*

**I respond:** It must be said that, as has been necessarily proven, it is established and not in doubt that *God's foreknowing some contingent* — since it precedes [as antecedent] to a contingent and connotes something which has contingent truth — is itself to be judged contingent.

But some have wished to judge it contingent because all that it says, it says about the future. — And that has been disproved, because it is false, and unintelligible. For every intellect that understands this, although it does not understand time with respect to God, understands that the act of divine pre-cognition was in God from eternity, and that [act] differs from the future thing. And furthermore, as has been said, this does not solve [the problem].

Others have wished to judge it contingent because, although it be a saying about the past, it nevertheless depends on the future. And this they say in the *credited* and the *prophetic* and what is said by Christ, and the like, which infer the necessity of a proposition about the future. — And that is improbable, as it seems, because if the act of divine pre-cognition depends on the future, then, since in the future, as far as is on the side of the contingent thing, there is no certitude, neither would there be in the divine pre-cognition. Furthermore, how does it depend, since by it [the future] is in no way caused? And again, how does that which is necessarily to have been depend — such as the act of knowing and believing and predicting — on that which is future? It does not seem either probable or intelligible.

And therefore it must be said in another way, that one [kind] of saying is about the past and for the past, as if one says *Petrum legisse* ["that Peter has read"]; another about the past, but for the future, as *antichristus fuit nasciturus* ["antichrist was about to be born"]; another about the past and for the past, yet [it] depends on the future, as this saying: *Petrum verum dixisse, navale bellum fore* ["that Peter spoke truly that there will be a naval battle"]; for the saying, in order to have truth, requires the outcome of the battle; and on that depends the truth of our assertion and cognition, which is caused by the thing; another is a saying about the past which does not depend [on the future] but [merely] connotes [it], as if one says: *Deus praescivit hoc futurum* ["God foreknew this [as] future"].

For since God's knowledge is only in respect of the true, therefore it connotes truth concerning that future saying; but since divine cognition does not have its certitude from the thing, since it is neither caused nor arises from it, therefore it does not depend on it; and accordingly it cannot be deceived, although it connotes the future. Hence in foreknowledge two things are said, namely the act of divine cognition — and this is necessary to be or to have been; and the ordering of the future to that act, and this ordering of the future to that act is not necessary. And contingency is to be judged of the total saying — not by reason of the totality or the principal *significatum*, but of the *connotatum*. And if it be supposed *that God does not foreknow something which he foreknows*, this can and ought to be understood not as the removal of the principal *significatum* but of the *connotatum* itself, that is, of that order of the temporal itself to the eternal, which is indeed contingent by reason of the other, namely the temporal. Therefore contingency is in the total saying, because it connotes something to be true about the future, which indeed is contingent.

And this is clear thus. For when it is said *Deus praescit te salvandum* ["God foreknows that you are to be saved"], two acts and a composition are here included, namely this: *tu salvaberis* ["you will be saved"], and this: *Deus habet cognitionem de salute tua* ["God has cognition of your salvation"] — and he had cognition from eternity. To have cognition is indeed an eternal and necessary act, because it does not depend on the thing; but *to be saved* is a future and contingent act. Since therefore the act of divine cognition does not depend on the [thing] cognized, therefore there can be certitude in it, [even] when the contingent thing exists. But since, as it is signified through the mode of *foreknowledge*, it connotes a future contingent, and every saying which encloses a contingent in itself is to be judged contingent; therefore the total [saying] is judged contingent. — And this solution is true and general. For the act of believing, the act of prophesying, and of divine assertion — because they run according to the illumination of divine foreknowledge — therefore connote, and do not depend; therefore they are certain and infallible about things in themselves not certain.

**To the arguments:**

*To 1.* To that which is objected from Anselm, that it is necessary to foreknow what he foreknows; it must be said that this is to be understood as regards the act of pre-cognition, which it is necessary to have been, but not as regards the connotation of futurition.

*To 2, 3.* To that which is objected, that it is a saying about the past: it must be said that, as far as the formal character of past-ness is concerned, it is necessary; but since the future is connoted, therefore it is contingent. And from this the following [argument] is clear, because as regards that future, the potency is not yet in act, indeed it can still go forth — therefore etc.

*To 4, 5.* To that which is objected, that there is cognition without the existence of the thing, therefore [there is the existence] of necessity without the necessity of the thing; it must be said that it is true that in the act of cognition there is necessity, but not in the whole. Nor is the case parallel, because pre-cognition does not connote the actual existence of the thing, but connotes the *futuritio* [futurition, future-ness] of the thing; and for the saying to be necessary, it is necessary that there be necessity in the *connotatum*.

*To 6.* To that which is objected, that every immutable [thing] is necessary; it must be said that for the being of the mutable, two [conditions] concur: that it have itself in one mode prior, and in another mode afterwards; and conversely the immutable can be called [so] in two ways: either because nothing is in act, or because it is in act and cannot have itself otherwise. That immutable, then, which is and cannot have itself otherwise, is convertible with the *necessary*; but that which is called immutable [merely] because it is not something in act, is not convertible. And so a future contingent is true, before the thing is. This saying, *antichristum fore* ["that antichrist will be"], is now an immutable truth, because if it be supposed to be true, it is supposed that it always was [true]; and likewise if false; and this, because it puts nothing in act. Since therefore *Deum praescisse* ["that God foreknew"] connotes a future contingent, therefore the saying is immutable; nor from this does it follow that it is necessary, as has been seen.

Yet some wish to say otherwise, that *that God foreknows this future contingent* is immutable on the side of the foreknower, but on the side of the thing foreknown is mutable, and therefore on that side contingent. But nevertheless this is difficult to say; for what is foreknown once was always foreknown, and God can not-foreknow a future contingent — in such a way that nothing happen concerning the future, and so [there be] no change. And on this account the other manner of speaking is more reasonable.

*To 7.* To that which is objected last — that no eternal being is contingent; it must be said that an eternal being is so in two ways: either purely eternal, or [eternal in such a way] that it connotes a temporal [thing] of the future; and the purely eternal is necessary, but [that which is] connoting a temporal [thing] of the future, by reason of the *connotatum*, can be judged contingent — just as also by reason of that [*connotatum*] it can cease.

*The summary* of what has been said is this: that *that God foreknows a future contingent* is a certain saying which encloses in itself the eternal act of divine cognition, and bespeaks an ordering toward a future contingent. And although the act of divine cognition posits something existing as necessary and eternal; nevertheless that ordering posits a future, which is contingent. And again, although it speaks an ordering, yet it does not speak a dependence, but only a connotation; and therefore it does not posit uncertainty. And hence it is that *that God foreknows the future* is *contingent* by reason of the connotation to the contingent; is *immutable* by reason of the ordering to the future, which can not-be, with no change made; is *certain* by reason of the independence from the same. And this will appear more plainly below in the distinction on predestination.