Book I, Chapter 6

Chapter 6. That God has distinct knowledge of all things.

Since these things stand firm, it is certain that God has knowledge of all things present and past, and likewise of future things: a knowledge supremely actual and particular, distinct and certain. Who does not see this dawning from the ninth part of the first Corollary of this [book]? Yet it is by no means useless, with good cause, to confirm it more fully by some arguments and testimonies. God, then, preserves, effects and moves all things, as was shown above, but not without a disposing wisdom. Otherwise a prudent man would do his deeds better than the most glorious God does his own, as the third part of the first corollary also teaches. Otherwise, too, God ought not by nature to preside over wise men, as a ruler, but rather the reverse; B1 since according to the Philosopher, Metaphysics 1: "The wise man must not be ordered but must order, nor be persuaded by another, but the less wise by him";1 and Ethics 5, 11: "We do not allow a man to rule, but reason"; and Politics 1, 1: what can foresee with the mind is, as ruling by nature and mastering by nature, [fit to rule]; and book 3, 9: "He who bids the intellect rule seems to bid God and the laws rule; but he who bids a man rule adds a beast as well." The same Philosopher says in On the Secret of Secrets, part 1, 4:2 "Know that the intellect is the head of governance"; and below, part 3, 5, speaking of the King: "In this he is to be likened to God, and therefore the King must be likened to the Most High and imitate him in all his works; but God is wise and knowing, and his renown and his names are glorious in himself, and the greatness of his dominion is greater than any commendation"; therefore his wisdom too. And below: "It was found written on one stone in the Chaldean tongue: King and Intellect are brothers, each needing the other, neither without the other." But as appears from the first and second suppositions and the seventeenth part, and as is proved at the end of Metaphysics 12, he is universally the one prince of all beings; he has therefore a wisdom sweetly disposing all things.

Again, God knows some singular present things; therefore, by the same reason, he knows any whatever; for he loves and cares for only what is known. But he loves and cares for those who live rationally, as the Philosopher says, Ethics 10, 13: "The one working according to intellect, and cultivating it, and best disposed, seems also to be most beloved of God."3 "For if there is some care of human affairs on the part of the gods, as there seems and will be, it is surely quite reasonable both that they rejoice in what is best and most akin to them (and this is intellect), and that they do good in return to those who love this most and honor it, as to friends cared for by them and acting rightly and well." Whence Averroes: "If God has care of men, as is believed and as is due, he rejoices in the better, and it is more fitting that he do good to those who love him more, and honor them, and visit them, D1 as is the disposition of a friend toward a friend." Aristotle too says in Rhetoric 2, 28: D2 "If you say just things, men will hate you; if unjust, the gods; but if you say just things, the gods will love you; if unjust, men."4

Again, otherwise God would not be a just rewarder of the good, nor an avenger of the wicked. This is against many things set forth in the parts of the first corollary of this [book], and against Hermes, who says of God: "He who justifies the work of no evildoer and deprives no benefactor of rewards"; and against Aristotle, in On the World, last chapter, who says thus of God: "Vengeance and justice always accompany him." The same Aristotle says in On Good Fortune 1: "We deem God worthy, being Lord of such things, that he should distribute to the worthy both good things and evil." And in On the Consolation of Philosophy 4, prose 1, Philosophy answers Boethius thus: "It would be a cause of infinite astonishment, and more horrible than all monsters, D3 if, as you suppose, in the best-ordered house of so great a paterfamilias, as it were, the cheap vessels were cherished and the precious ones left to grow foul; but it is not so. For with him as Author, of whose reign we now speak, you will recognize that the good are always powerful, but the wicked always abject and weak, that vices are never without punishment, nor virtues without reward." E1 Seneca also attests this in many places, and all the moral Philosophers with the Poets, unanimously; indeed this is practically a common notion of the mind among all nations, living under any law whatever, or even without law.

Further, it would seem superfluous and vain to hope in God and to pray to him, unless he understood hope and prayers. But all men of any sect hope in God and pray; whence ‖E2 that pagan Aristotle too says thus in On the World 12: "All life grants the highest place to God; and we all stretch out our hands to heaven when we pray." With this his saying in his Secret of Secrets, part 1, 2, also agrees, and the saying of Avicenna in Metaphysics 10 of his work, 1, recited in the first of this, in the demonstration of the thirty-second part of the corollary.

Does not Plato too say in the prologue to the Timaeus: "It is the custom with all, and as it were a kind of religion, for those who are about to undertake anything, whether of the greatest or the least matters, to call upon Divinity for help, or otherwise to pray for the help of Divinity"; and he himself immediately does this there, devoutly, adding at once: "How much more fitting it is for us, who are about to set forth the account of the nature and substance of the universe, to invoke divine aid, unless we are plainly carried off by some savage fury and inexplicable madness. Let it be especially included in my prayers, then, that what is said by us be what pleases God, and that we bring forth what is consistent with ourselves and fitting to the work proposed." And below, 2, 17,5 intending to treat of prime matter, he says: "Then now too we shall invoke a helper before the beginning of our speaking, a deliverer from the turbid and stormy tossing of the discourse already begun." A1 Hermes also agrees with him, in On the Eternal Word 9: "We ask God," he says, "to grant us the capacity of giving account of this." And below, at the end: "Speaking this," he says, "we beseech God that he be willing to keep us persevering in the love of the knowledge of you, A2 and never separated from this kind of life."

Sixtus the Pythagorean also says in his Sentences:6 "Take your beginning from God in doing what you do"; and again, "Ask of God what it befits God to grant"; and again, "Seek from God what you cannot receive from man"; and below, "Unless you ask of God that which you have come to have, you will not keep it forever." Wherefore Boethius also, On the Consolation of Philosophy 5, last prose, says thus: "There remains above a watcher, God, foreknowing all things, dispensing rewards to the good and punishments to the wicked; nor are hopes and prayers placed in God in vain, for being right they cannot be ineffectual." Further, God's knowledge is plainly shown by the glorious miracles often wrought for his worshippers, who cried to him in their necessities; the thirty-second part of the first corollary of this [book] treated these more fully. Again, if God did not know whatever things are present, a foolish man would know them, and a beast would recognize many things that the most perfect God would not know. Again, if God knows some present things and not all, it is possible that the most blessed God is deceived and errs, B1 and is exceedingly wretched.

Wherefore Aristotle too, Metaphysics 3, 15, leads Empedocles, who posits that anything is known by its like and that God has no hatred, to this impossibility: that it follows that the most blessed God is less prudent than others. For he does not know all the elements, since he has no hatred; for knowledge of the like comes from the like. And in On the World 11 he likens King Xerxes, who understood all things through ministers, to God, who sees and hears all things. C1 The very name of God in the Greek language bears witness to the same: for God is called in Greek Theos, from theoro,7 which is "to see," because he sees all things. Wherefore Avicenna too says, Metaphysics 8, 6: "The Necessary Being understands whatever exists only universally, and yet, with this, nothing singular is lacking to him, C2 and so nothing is lacking to him of whatever there is in excess in heaven and on earth;8 and this is among the marvels, which cannot be imagined except by one of subtle intellect." Wherefore Sixtus also warns in his Sentences: "Never think God's wisdom unaware"; and again, "The thought of a man does not escape God, and therefore let your thought be pure of all evil." And below: "One who acts unjustly will in no way escape God, C3 nor even one who merely thinks it." Ptolemy agrees with this, as is recited in the first prologue of the Almagest: "It is fitting," he says, "for one who understands to feel shame before God, when he thinks things that are not pleasing to him."

Further, there is some agent intellect that produces all our intellectual cognition and the knowledge we have, as the Philosopher proves in On the Soul 3, 17, and Averroes there, and Avicenna, On the Soul 5, 5, and Algazel, his Physics 5, 1. If this agent intellect is God, the intended conclusion is obtained. But if, with Avicenna, Metaphysics 9, 3, and with Algazel, his Physics 5, 1, it is said to be the lowest of the celestial intelligences, namely that of the sphere of the Moon, it knows all things; and if it knows all things, how does the highest Intelligence, God, not know any of these? Further, since every Intelligence short of God is of itself potential to understanding, as to being, as appears from the second of this, who leads its potentiality to act? Who perfects it and maintains it in act? Who makes it understanding in act, if not the highest Intelligence, God, who of himself and through himself remains always most actually understanding? This highest intelligence, God, therefore, effects and conserves all understanding in every lower intellective nature, as the third, fourth and second of this plainly show.

This opinion about the agent intellect, namely that it is God, is confirmed by the Philosopher in On Good Fortune 2, who says: "Clearly, as God is in the whole, for in some way he moves all the things in us; but the divine principle of reason is not reason, but something better. What, then, will be better than both knowledge and intellect, if not God? For virtue, namely, is God, the organ of intellect";9 and below, in the Secret of Secrets, part 1, 1: "God," he says, "pours his riches abundantly into the souls of the wise, and grants to those who study the grace of knowing, to which nothing is difficult, without which nothing is possible to possess." The same below, in the same work, part 2, 1, says that God, exalted and glorious, revealed many ‖E1 meditable things and very many others to the holy Prophets and to certain others whom he chose beforehand, and illumined them with the spirit of divine wisdom, and adorned them with the endowments of knowledge, or endowed them. Averroes holds this same view on On the Soul 3, comment 25, 36, and on On Sleep and Waking, where he assigns the cause of true dreams, and on Metaphysics 12, comments 18 and 38. The Platonists also, A1 as Augustine recounts in City of God 8, 7, said that God himself is the light of minds, for learning all things, and that all things were made by him. The prayers of Plato and Hermes recited above bear witness to the same. For how would they ask God that the sciences be given to them, unless he himself were the Lord and teacher of the sciences? A2 Wherefore Plato too says, Timaeus 2, 15, that nothing greater than the good of Philosophy has ever come to the human race from divine munificence; and Hermes, On the Eternal Word 35: "To you," he says, "highest God, A3 I give thanks, who have lit for me the light of the divinity that was to be seen." And below, at the end: "Thanks to you," he says, "highest, most surpassing. For by your grace alone have we attained the light of your knowledge,10 since to all you deign to offer paternal affection, and religion, love, and whatever sweeter efficacy there is."

From these things, then, it is clear that God knows all things now present; and by the same arguments it will likewise be shown that he always knew, and will know, all things that were then or will be present. And since by the fifth of this he learns nothing anew and loses nothing known, he always knows all things present, past and future. Whence also Aristotle, On Good Fortune 2: "God," he says, "sees well the future and the present, and those things whose account has perished, that is, the past." Ammonius agrees with him, on On Interpretation 1, at the end, writing thus: "It is to be said that the gods know all things that have come to be, that are, and that will be, in a manner suited to gods; and this is a single, determinate and infallible cognition; for which reason it must be said that they comprehend also the knowledge of contingents. B1 And below: "For them to know contingents," he says, "belongs to their own nature; wherefore, for these things, having an indeterminate nature, it is possible both to happen and not to happen; but they [the gods], in a manner as it were nobler than the nature of those things, anticipating the knowledge of them, know these too determinately. For it is necessary that they know divisible things indivisibly and without distance, things multiplied in unity, temporal things eternally, and generable things ingenerably."

Wherefore Avicenna too, On the Soul 4, 2, says: C1 "All things in the world, past, present and future, have being in the wisdom of the creator." Hermes moreover, On the Eternal Word 9: "Nor is it credible," he says, "that what pleased God will displease him, since he knew long beforehand both the future and that the same would please." And below, 30, he says that divinity is the foreknowledge of all things. Clear Prophecies also, clear visions and truthful dreams, true presages of future things, specially prove God's foreknowledge; the thirty-second part of the first Corollary of this [book] treated all of these more fully. In this opinion too all the Philosophers of whom I have heard agree, except one, who in this matter is no Philosopher, but rather a babbler and sophist; indeed he does not even deserve the name of sophist, since he has no semblance.11 For this Cicero wrote a rather large book on divination, in which, by recounting the very true dreams of many, or rather very clear visions, he demonstrated divination through dreams plainly.

But, slipping to the contrary side, he answers all of it, resolving none, denying all divination and any foreknowledge whatever. With sacrilegious daring setting his mouth against Heaven, he burst out into a blasphemy so blind as even to deny that God foreknows the future, saying perhaps with the fool, "In his heart there is no God." But if not, he thought, more foolishly than the fool and more insipidly, that God exists, and that he himself is foolish and ignorant of the future.12 Moreover, Astrologers and Physicians often foretell and predict many future things through natural signs; how then does God not know any of the future? How also did Geomancers, Necromancers, Augurs and other diviners, indeed even the gods of the Gentiles, quite often predict many true things (as your many histories attest, Marcus the Roman)13 without any knowledge, or at least probable conjecture, about the future? And if they themselves had some knowledge of this kind, at least a small one, or some very slender conjecture, yet a true one, who, ignorant, or rather raving, will dare to assert that God is ignorant of the future? For by the first Supposition, the third part, and the fourth of the first Corollary of this [book], it necessarily follows that he knows these things infinitely more perfectly. Further, if God, according to what has been set forth, has knowledge of all things present, past, and likewise future, then since to know actually and particularly, distinctly and with certainty is more perfect than to know only habitually, potentially and universally, confusedly and uncertainly, God knows all things in those ways. Indeed he knows all things supremely, and according to the summit of those ways, as the first Supposition, the third part and the fourth plainly show.

Corollary

The Corollary is that God has distinct knowledge of all things, not only present, past and future, but also of all things possible and impossible, imaginable and cognizable in any way whatever; whence he can truly be called omniscient, as he is also omnipotent.

Whence it also follows evidently that our most wise God has not only knowledge of all such things, present, past and future, but also of all things possible and impossible, imaginable and cognizable in any way whatever; whence he can truly be called omniscient, as he is also omnipotent. This Corollary or porism is easily demonstrated through what precedes, as was the prior conclusion. I would say these things against those who have not approved of having God in their knowledge,14 "The Lord will not see, nor will the God of Jacob understand," and who believe that all worldly things, bereft of all governance, are tossed about by chance motions. But since no Catholic hesitates even slightly in this, I have not thought it necessary to adduce any Catholic Authority, though the whole series of both Testaments bears most full witness to it.