Book III, Chapter 18

CHAPTER XVIII. He corrects the seventh opinion, which says that something can begin to be future.

The seventh opinion admits that something can begin to be future, wishing by this to avoid the difficulty touched on above. I heard this opinion from a certain famous Doctor, who also said that it was the common one in a certain most celebrated University where he was studying. But this opinion errs in two respects. First, because it is founded on a falsehood. Second, because it gains nothing from that falsehood. For if something can begin to be future, suppose that A begins to be future in B, a future instant 1. Then A will begin in B to be future. Therefore A will be future in B or immediately after B. Therefore A will exist after B. Therefore A will exist. Therefore A is future, which is the opposite of what was supposed.

Now suppose it is said that this future-tense proposition, "A will begin in B to be future," is not true and never will be, since it will be true neither before B, nor after B, nor in B; but that this present-tense proposition, "A begins to be future," will be true in B. This is countered in the following way. If this proposition, "A begins to be future," will be true in B, then it is itself going to be true in B. Therefore what is future is, in reality, in B just as it signifies, or will signify, in B ‖D1. Therefore it is future in B that A begins to be future. Therefore in B A will begin to be future.

Again, let B be present. Then this present-tense proposition, "A begins to be future," is true, and likewise this one: "This beginning is." So either this beginning was future or it was not. If it was future, then before B it was true that this beginning would be future, and that this beginning will be. Therefore it was also true then that A will begin in B to be future. If it was not future, then something is present that never was future, which is contrary to reason and was rejected in the preceding chapter.

For if this present beginning never was future, it was never foreknown by God. And if someone had said yesterday, "This beginning will be," he would have spoken falsely. But if someone had said, "This beginning will never be," he would have spoken truly, although what now happens in reality is not as the second predicted but as the first did. Indeed it follows that both contradictories were true at the same time. For by hypothesis this was always true, "This beginning will not be," because it never was future; and this was also true, "This beginning will be," because if someone had said it, he would have spoken truly, as the outcome of the matter proves and God's foreknowledge shows. Otherwise God had no foreknowledge of this, or a false one. And if one thing can be present without a preceding futurition, why not anything whatever? And so the opinion of the Sophists, condemned forever in the fifteenth of this, will be restored 2 3. Moreover, this reply destroys its own hypothesis, or is destroyed by it. For if this is not true, "A will begin in B to be future," then by the same reasoning no such proposition is true, nor even can be; for if it could, let it be posited in being, and the argument returns.

If, then, no such proposition can be true, nothing can begin to be future at any future instant, and hence never at all. Or if something that is not now future can begin to be future at some future instant, let it be posited in being, and the difficulty returns. For if something not now future will begin to be future at some future instant, then after some future instant it will exist; therefore it will exist; therefore it is future; therefore something not future is future.

Again, no possible cause can be assigned why something should begin to be future at one instant rather than at any other; therefore it begins at any whatever, or at none. But if some definite disposition of the cause of that future thing is assigned as the cause of the aforesaid difference, that disposition will at once be eliminated, on the supposition that a future effect is always future, and contingently so, equally, until it comes to be. So it is with the free act of the will, which can for a long time remain in an equal disposition, in equal indifference, in equal indeterminacy in every respect, between two contrary acts altogether equal, concerning two altogether equal objects. For example, whether it should eat or drink; or, of two equal foods that cannot both be taken, whether it should take this one or that one; and it can at length choose either one freely, this one or that one, as the fourth of this, with what follows, makes clear. But if it is said that nothing will begin to be future before it is determined by a definite disposition in its cause, which would be necessary with respect to it, then it will follow that every future thing will happen of necessity, which the twelfth of this condemns.

Again, if something begins to be future for some time before it comes to be, say for a year, then by the same reasoning something can begin to be future for less time before it comes to be, say for a month; and by the same reasoning for a week, and for a day; and so at length, by the same reasoning, all time can be taken away. For the reasoning is the same for the whole and for the part. Hence it will be possible for something to be present that never was future, which was rejected above. Again, if one future thing began to be future, then by the same reasoning so did another, and any whatever; therefore time is not eternal. For there is some most remote future instant,

namely that which does not yet begin to be future ‖C1. Therefore after it there is no future instant, because it does not begin, nor has it begun, to be future. Therefore after it there is no future time either; therefore after that instant there will be neither instant nor time.

Again, of any future thing whatever, whenever someone had said that it is or was future, he would have spoken truly, and one saying its opposite would have spoken falsely. Therefore every future thing was always truly future, as the preceding chapter argued. Again, if future things were not always future, they were not always foreknown by God, nor eternally predestined by Him, against 6 and 45 of the first. Indeed it will follow of necessity that He at some time begins to foreknow and predestine future things; therefore He is mutable, which 5 of the first does not allow. And at the beginning of the world He did not know what He would do at the end or in the middle time, which is unfitting. C2 Hence Isaiah 46: "Return, transgressors, to the heart, and remember the former age, for I am the Lord, declaring the last thing from the beginning, and from the start things not yet done, saying: C3 My counsel will stand, and all my will will be done." And at the opening of Psalm 118 [119]: 4 "I have known,

from your testimonies, that you founded them for ever." And Psalm 138 [139]: "You have understood my thoughts from afar." How far? "Behold, Lord, you have known all things, the last and the ancient." Therefore Augustine also, in On Free Choice 3, 3, speaks thus: "Today God foreknows what He will do after a year" 5; and it follows: He has always foreknown this. And the Philosopher says, in Peri hermeneias 1, last chapter, that it makes no difference whether someone affirmed or denied something in the ‖D1 1000th year, rather than at any time whatever 6.

Again, if something can begin to be future, then by the same reasoning something future can cease to be future without its being posited in being. For if A now begins to be future, this is because of some cause or disposition now posited in the cause, which was not posited before, or not posited thus. Therefore if that cause or disposition is removed, A not having been posited in being, A ceases to be future without its being posited in being. So let A be now future, and at B, a future instant, cease to be future without being posited in being. Then in B, as always, this consequence will be good: "A was future, and never was, nor is; therefore A is future." And the antecedent will be true in B; therefore the consequent also; therefore in B A will be future after B. Again, thus to the same point: A is future; therefore A will exist; and not before B nor in B; therefore after B; therefore in B A will be future.

Further, to the same point: let A be now future, and, without being posited in being, at B, a future instant, cease to be future, and remain not future for some definite time, let it be C. Still, after that time God can make A be present, and therefore future; for He can restore all the causes of A, with all their dispositions, on account of which A was future before B. Suppose, then, that He does so. It will follow that A will begin to be future at some instant after time C. From this it will further follow that A will be or was future at two instants or times with an interval between them, and at every instant or intermediate time

not future nor present, which is utterly irrational and absurd. Nor does this avoid the difficulty. For once anything has begun to be future, and is foreknown with certainty by God, either it is possible that it not come about, and then God does not at all foreknow it with certainty; indeed it seems to follow that God's foreknowledge can be mistaken, as was argued in the twelfth of this. Or it would come about of necessity, and then it will necessarily follow that everything that will come about will come about of altogether absolute necessity, which the same twelfth condemned.