The force of this reasoning turns upon the connexion between foreknowledge and the events foreknown. This connexion is affirmed to be “indissoluble;” that is, the foreknowledge is certainly connected with the event. But this only amounts to the certainty of divine foreknowledge, and proves nothing as to the nature of the existence foreknown. We may certainly know a past or present event, but our knowledge of its existence defines nothing as to the manner in which it came to exist. I look out of my window, and I see a man walking in a certain direction: I have a positive knowledge of this event, and it cannot but be that the man is walking; but then my knowledge of his walking has no influence upon his walking, as cause or necessary antecedent; and the question whether his walking be contingent or necessary is entirely distinct, and relates to the cause of walking. I looked out of my window yesterday, and saw a man walking; and the knowledge of that event I now retain, so that it cannot but be that the man walked yesterday: but this again leaves the question respecting the mode of existence untouched:—Did the man walk of necessity, or was it a contingent event? Now let me suppose myself endowed with the faculty of prescience, sufficiently to know the events of to-morrow; then by this faculty I may see a man walking in the time called to-morrow, just as by the faculty of memory I see a man walking in the time called yesterday. The knowledge, whether it relate to past, present, or future, as a knowledge in relation to myself, is always a present knowledge; but the object known may stand in various relations of time, place, &c. Now in relation to the future, no more than in relation to the past and present, does the act of knowledge on my part, explain anything in relation to the mode of the existence of the object of knowledge. Edwards remarks, (p. 121.) “All certain knowledge, whether it be foreknowledge, or after-knowledge, or concomitant knowledge, proves the thing known now to be necessary, by some means or other; or proves that it is impossible that it should now be otherwise than true.”
Edwards does not distinguish between the certainty of the mere fact of existence, and the necessity by which anything comes to exist. Foreknowledge, after-knowledge, and concomitant knowledge,—that is, the present knowledge of events, future, past, or present,—proves of course the reality of the events; that they will be, have been, or are: or, more strictly speaking, the knowledge of an event, in any relation of time, is the affirmation of its existence in that relation; but the knowledge of the event neither proves nor affirms the necessity of its existence. If the knowledge of the event were the cause of the event, or if it generically comprehended it in its own existence, then, upon strict logical principles, the necessity affirmed of the knowledge would be affirmed of the event likewise.
That God foreknows all volitions is granted; that as he foreknows them, they will be, is also granted; his foreknowledge of them is the positive affirmation of their reality in time future; but by supposition, God’s foreknowledge is not their cause, and does not generically comprehend them; they are caused by wills acting in the future. Hence God’s foreseeing how the wills acting in the time future, will put forth or determine their volitions, does not take away from these wills the contingency and freedom belonging to them, any more than our witnessing how wills act in the time present, takes away from them their contingency and freedom. God in his prescience, is the spectator of the future, as really as we are the spectators of the present.
Edwards’s reasoning is a sort of puzzle, like that employed sometimes for exercising the student of logic in the detection of fallacies: for example, a man in a given place, must necessarily either stay in that place, or go away from that place; therefore, whether he stays or goes away, he acts necessarily. Now it is necessary, in the nature of things, that a man as well as any other body should be in some place, but then it does not follow from this, that his determination, whether to stay or go, is a necessary determination. His necessary condition as a body, is entirely distinct from the question respecting the necessity or contingency of his volitions. And so also in respect of the divine foreknowledge: all human volitions as events occurring in time, are subject to the necessary condition of being foreknown by that Being, “who inhabiteth eternity:” but this necessary condition of their existence neither proves nor disproves the necessity or the contingency of their particular causation.
II. The second proposition in Edwards’s argument is, “No future event can be certainly foreknown, whose existence is contingent, and without all necessity.” His reasoning in support of this is as follows: 1. “It is impossible for a thing to be certainly known to any intellect without evidence.” 2. A contingent future event is without evidence. 3. Therefore, a contingent future event is not a possible object of knowledge. I dispute both premises: That which is known by evidence or proof is mediate knowledge,—that is, we know it through something which is immediate, standing between the faculty of knowledge and the object of knowledge in question. That which is known intuitively is known without proof, and this is immediate knowledge. In this way all axioms or first truths and all facts of the senses are known. Indeed evidence itself implies immediate knowledge, for the evidence by which anything is known is itself immediate knowledge. To a Being, therefore, whose knowledge fills duration, future and past events may be as immediately known as present events. Indeed, can we conceive of God otherwise than immediately knowing all things? An Infinite and Eternal Intelligence cannot be thought of under relations of time and space, or as arriving at knowledge through media of proof or demonstration. So much for the first premise. The second is equally untenable: “A contingent future event is without evidence.” We grant with Edwards that it is not self-evident; implying by that the evidence arising from “the necessity of its nature,” as for example, 2 x 2 = 4. What is self-evident, as we have already shown, does not require any evidence or proof, but is known immediately; and a future contingent event may be self-evident as a fact lying before the divine mind, reaching into futurity, although it cannot be self-evident from “the necessity of its nature.”
But Edwards affirms, that “neither is there any proof or evidence in anything else, or evidence of connexion with something else that is evident; for this is also contrary to the supposition. It is supposed that there is now nothing existent with which the future existence of the contingent event is connected. For such a connexion destroys its contingency and supposes necessity.” (p. 116.) He illustrates his meaning by the following example: “Suppose that five thousand seven hundred and sixty years ago, there was no other being but the Divine Being,—and then this world, or some particular body or spirit, all at once starts out of nothing into being, and takes on itself a particular nature and form—all in absolute contingence,—without any concern of God, or any other cause in the matter,—without any manner of ground or reason of its existence, or any dependence upon, or connexion at all with anything foregoing;—I say that if this be supposed, there was no evidence of that event beforehand. There was no evidence of it to be seen in the thing itself; for the thing itself as yet was not; and there was no evidence of it to be seen in any thing else; for evidence in something else; is connexion with something else; but such connexion is contrary to the supposition.” (p. 116.)
The amount of this reasoning is this: That inasmuch as a contingent event exists “without any concern of God, or any other cause in the matter,—without any manner of ground or reason of its existence,—or any dependence upon or connexion with anything foregoing,”—there is really nothing by which it can be proved beforehand. If Edwards be right in this definition of a contingent event, viz.: that it is an event without any cause or ground of its existence, and “that there is nothing now existent with which the future existence of the contingent event is connected,” then this reasoning must be allowed to be conclusive. But I do not accede to the definition: Contingence I repeat again, is not opposed to cause but to necessity. The world may have sprung into being by absolute contingence more than five thousand years ago, and yet have sprung into being at the command of God himself, and its existence have been foreseen by him from all eternity. The contingence expresses only the freedom of the divine will, creating the world by sovereign choice, and at the moment of creation, conscious of power to withhold the creative nibus,—creating in the light of his infinite wisdom, but from no compulsion or necessity of motive therein found. Under this view to foresee creation was nothing different from foreseeing his own volitions.
The ground on which human volitions can be foreseen, is no less plain and reasonable. In the first place, future contingent volitions are never without a cause and sufficient ground of their existence, the individual will being always taken as the cause and sufficient ground of the individual volitions. God has therefore provided for the possible existence of volitions other than his own, in the creation and constitution of finite free will. Now, in relation to him, it is not required to conceive of media by which all the particular volitions may be made known or proved to his mind, previous to their actual existence. Whatever he knows, he knows by direct and infinite intuition; he cannot be dependent upon any media for his knowledge. It is enough, as I have already shown, to assign him prescience, in order to bring within his positive knowledge all future contingent volitions. He knows all the variety and the full extent of the possible, and amid the possible he foresees the actual; and he foresees not only that class of the actual which, as decreed and determined by himself, is relatively necessary, but also that class of the actual which is to spring up under the characteristic of contingency.
And herein, I would remark, lies the superiority of the divine prescience over human forecast,—in that the former penetrates the contingent as accurately as the necessary. With the latter it is far otherwise. Human forecast or calculation can foresee the motions of the planets, eclipses of the sun and moon, and even the flight of the comets, because they are governed by necessary laws; but the volitions of the human will form the subject of only probable calculations.
But if human volitions, as contingent, form the subject of probable calculations, there must be in opposition to Edwards something “that is evident” and “now existent, with which the future existence of the contingent event is connected.”