第38章

But God, looking upon all out of the infinite, perceives the views of Providence, and disposes each as its destiny has already fated for it according to its merits: "He looketh over all and heareth all." 1'Homer with his honeyed lips sang of the bright sun's clear light; yet the sun cannot burst with his feeble rays the bowels of the earth or the depths of the sea.Not so with the Creator of this great sphere.

No masses of earth can block His vision as He looks over all.Night's cloudy darkness cannot resist Him.With one glance of His intelligence He sees all that has been, that is, and that is to come.

144:1 -- A phrase from Homer ( Iliad , iii.277, and Odyssey , xi.1O9), where it is said of the sun.Page 145He alone can see all things, so truly He may be called the Sun.' 1Then said I,' Again am I plunged in yet more doubt and difficulty.'

'What are they,' she asked,' though I have already my idea of what your trouble consists?

'There seems to me,' I said,' to be such incompatibility between the existence of God's universal foreknowledge and that of any freedom of judgment.For if God foresees all things and cannot in anything be mistaken, that, which His Providence sees will happen, must result.

Wherefore if it knows beforehand not only men's deeds but even their designs and wishes, there will be no freedom of judgment For there can neither be any deed done, nor wish formed, except such as the infallible Providence of God has foreseen.For if matters could ever so be turned that they resulted otherwise than was foreseen of Providence, this foreknowledge would cease to be sure.But, rather than knowledge, it is opinion which is uncertain;and that, I deem, is not applicable to God.And, further, I cannot approve of an argument by which some men think that they can cut this knot; for they say that a result does not come 145:1 -- This sentence, besides referring to the application of Homer's words used above, contains also a play on words in the Latin, which can only be clumsily reproduced in English by some such words as ' The sole power which can see all is justly to be called the solar.' Page 146to pass for the reason that Providence has foreseen it, but the opposite rather, namely, that because it is about to come to pass, therefore it cannot be hidden from God's Providence.In that way it seems to me that the argument must resolve itself into an argument on the other side.For in that case it is not necessary that that should happen which is foreseen, but that that which is about to happen should be foreseen; as though, indeed, our doubt was whether God's foreknowledge is the certain cause of future events, or the certainty of future events is the cause of Providence.But let our aim be to prove that, whatever be the shape which this series of causes takes, the fulfilment of God's foreknowledge is necessary, even if this knowledge may not seem to induce the necessity for the occurrence of future events.For instance, if a man sits down, it must be that the opinion, which conjectures that he is sitting, is true; but conversely, if the opinion concerning the man is true because he is sitting, he must be sitting down.There is therefore necessity in both cases: the man must be sitting, and the opinion must be true.But he does not sit because the opinion is true, but rather the opinion is true because his sitting down has preceded it.Thus, though the cause of the truth of the opinion proceeds from the other fact, yet there is a common necessity on both parts.In like manner we must reason of Providence and future events.For even though they are foreseen because they are about Page 147to happen, yet they do not happen because they are foreseen.None the less it is necessary that either what is about to happen should be foreseen of God, or that what has been foreseen should happen; and this alone is enough to destroy all free will.

'Yet how absurd it is that we should say that the result of temporal affairs is the cause of eternal foreknowledge! And to think that God foresees future events because they are about to happen, is nothing else than to hold events of past time to be the cause of that highest Providence.

Besides, just as, when I know a present fact, that fact must be so; so also when I know of something that will happen, that must come to pass.

Thus it follows that the fulfilment of a foreknown event must be inevitable.

'Lastly, if any one believes that any matter is otherwise than the fact is, he not only has not knowledge, but his opinion is false also, and that is very far from the truth of knowledge Wherefore, if any future event is such that its fulfilment is not sure or necessary, how can it possibly be known beforehand that it will occur? For just as absolute knowledge has no taint of falsity, so also that which is conceived by knowledge cannot be otherwise than as it is conceived.That is the reason why knowledge cannot lie, because each matter must be just as knowledge knows that it is.What then How can God know beforehand these uncertain future events?

For if He thinks inevitable the Page 148fulfilment of such things as may possibly not result, He is wrong; and that we may not believe, nor even utter, rightly.But if He perceives that they will result as they are in such a manner that He only knows that they may or may not occur, equally, how is this foreknowledge, this which knows nothing for sure, nothing absolutely? How is such a fore-knowledge different from the absurd prophecy which Horace puts in the mouth of Tiresias: "Whatever I shall say, will either come to pass, or it will not "? 1 How, too, would God's Providence be better than man's opinion, if, as men do, He only sees to be uncertain such things as have an uncertain result?

But if there can be no uncertainty with God, the most sure source of all things, then the fulfilment of all that He has surely foreknown, is certain.