De causa Dei: Book III, Chapter 14
Thomas Bradwardine, De causa Dei contra Pelagium (1344). English translation: Wroot Press, CC BY-NC 4.0; machine-learning use permitted with attribution (https://bradwardine.wrootpress.com/rights/).
Source: Henry Savile's edition, London 1618, 689C–690D; Latin from EEBO-TCP A16626 (public domain).
Canonical: https://bradwardine.wrootpress.com/3/14/
Status: draft translation, not yet reviewed.

[689C–689D]
CHAPTER XIV. He treats the third opinion, which says that many things are future in their own nature, but not with God.

[689D–690B]
The third opinion asserts that many things are future in their own proper nature, but not for God. For all things are present to him in eternity, and so he is not properly said to foreknow future things, but rather to behold them as present; and by this it means to avoid the difficulty of the argument set out above.[n1] This is the view of Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy 5, the last prose, and of Anselm, On the Fall of the Devil 21, and On Concord 7, and many Doctors follow them.[n2] But although that statement is not itself perfectly clear (for it could be argued against in many ways), yet even if it is admitted it does not avoid the difficulty. For it is certain that future things are not in God materially, nor are they existing in being as actually created in their own natures, as they will be when they are present; for by the same reasoning they would always be so, and therefore also when they would be past. Indeed, all past things would now exist materially and in being, in the way in which they would be in God and in their own natures outside God, as they ever were. Therefore it is in some mode of being (namely, existing in being and materially created in act in their own natures) that they will be future when they will be present; and these are things which are not now in God.[n3] Bede says this on the text of John 1, "What was made, in him was life": that is, whatever was made in time, whether it appeared living or lifeless, all this in the spiritual plan of the maker had, as it were, always lived, and lives. This is not because what he created is coeternal with the Creator, but because the plan of his will is coeternal with him; in that plan he had from eternity, and has, what to create and when, how he is to govern the creature so that it may endure, and to what end he is to bring each of the things he has created. And Augustine, in book 5 On Genesis according to the Letter, says that things before they were made both were and were not: they were in God's knowledge, they were not in their own nature; and this God foreknows with certainty. Let an argument, then, be made from such foreknowledge, and the difficulty returns.

However, on behalf of the authors and Doctors it must be understood that all things are eternally in God, and present with God, that is, in his knowledge, which exists eternal and wholly unchangeable. That is to say, he knew them eternally and immutably, as is clear from Bede and Augustine just cited; and this is how Lombard, Sentences 1, dist. 35, expounds such authorities, confirming the exposition by authorities. Nor is it surprising if the theologians use such a transference of language,[n4] since the philosophers use a similar one, and a greater. For Avicenna, in On the Soul 4, 2, says that all things in the world, past, present and future, have being in the wisdom of the Creator. Aristotle also says, in On the Soul 3, 37, that the soul is in a way all the things that are: for the things that are are either sensible or intelligible; and knowledge is in a way the knowables, and sensation the sensibles.[n5] On this Averroes says: "It follows necessarily that the soul is all beings in one of the modes in which it is possible to say, 'The soul is all beings.'" And so perhaps, by the same transference of language, it could be said that things made, before they were made, were God, as seems clear from 17 of the first book; hence also John 1, "what was made, in him was life," and that life is certainly not in God, except the one life which is the one God and three persons. Blessed Augustine also shows this, in the first homily on John, by the example of the craftsman: "The craftsman," he says, "makes a chest in the work, and so he has the chest in his art; but the chest in the work is not life, the chest in the art is life, because the soul of the artisan lives, where all these things are before they are brought forth. So, then, dearest brothers, because the wisdom of God, through which all things were made, contains all things according to the art before it fashions all things, the things that here come to be through that art are not thereby life; but whatever has been made, is life in him. You see the earth: in the art there is earth. You see the heaven: in the art there is heaven. You see the sun and the moon: these also are in the art, but outside they are bodies; in the art, or in the artisan, they are life. And that life which is in him is the light of men; for this follows: 'And the life was the light of men.'" It can also be said, perhaps more clearly and briefly in another way, that all things are in God not really but causally, just as, according to the Philosopher in Physics 4, 23, a thing is said to be in its cause; and according to Averroes this is in four modes, corresponding to the four causes of things.[n6]

[690C–690D]
Now God is the threefold cause of all things: efficient, formal and final. He is the cause of every thing, present, past and future; hence the thing itself is such as it is, and this through his will, which is always the same, immutable and eternal, as the first book shows. So, then, as I think, such sayings of the Fathers can be understood and expounded without impropriety. And if you object that these things do not resolve the difficulty set out above, it is true that they do not resolve it perfectly and simply for everyone, since they do not do so for just any subtle and acute minds; yet they settle the minds of most people better than the correct solution itself would. Hence it is very expedient in disputing, as also in preaching, to use at times clear and crude examples, so that one whom the subtlety of reasoning does not move may at least be moved by the crude and palpable fitness of an example. For it was not without cause that the authors placed the example among the species of argument; and so Aristotle in On the World 9, and Boethius in the place cited above, show by examples drawn from men and their cognition that God knows all things future, present and past.[n7]

NOTES

1. motiuum praemissum: the argument stated earlier, which infers necessity from divine foreknowledge of future contingents. Motivum here means a ground or argument, not a "motive" in the modern sense.
2. Savile's references: Boethius, Consolation 5, prose 6 (the last prose of the book). Anselm, De casu diaboli ch. 21, and De concordia (the question on foreknowledge and free choice). Savile's numbers are kept as printed.
3. The sentence is hard but does construe. Bradwardine argues that the "third opinion" cannot avoid the difficulty. Future things are not now in God in their own natures. If they were, they would always have that mode of being, even when past, and all past things would now so exist. So there is a mode of being (actual, material existence in their own natures) which they will have when present and do not now have in God. In that mode they are still future, and the argument from foreknowledge can be run again. Quae non sunt modo in Deo ("which are not now in God") has an unclear antecedent; I take it as the futura when they are present, not as the modes. The print has no sign of corruption, and I do not emend.
4. transumtio (transsumptio) is the rhetorical term for a figurative transfer of language, a trope. The point is that "present with God" is said by transference, not literally.
5. Aristotle, De anima III.8 (431b21), with Averroes' commentary. Savile's "3 … 37" is the Latin Averroes numbering of text and comment, not Bekker pages. Avicenna's De anima is cited as "4 … 2" in the same way.
6. Savile's "4 Phys. 23" is Averroes' numbering for his commentary on Physics IV, on the senses of "being in". Aristotle allows the sense in which a thing is in its cause. Averroes gives the four modes, corresponding to the four causes (material, formal, efficient, final).
7. De mundo is pseudo-Aristotelian; Savile's "9" is his own chapter number. Boetius vbi prius is Consolation 5, prose 6, as cited at the start of this chapter.