The Catholic doctrine distinctly proclaims both the divine foreknowledge and decrees, and also the liberty of choice in the created intelligent nature. A Catholic theologian, therefore, cannot dispose of the difficulty in the case, by summarily denying either side of the dogmatic truth. St. Thomas Aquinas, with those who follow his school strictly, endeavors to resolve the difficulty by the hypothesis of a physical premotion of the will, or an efficacious grace, which has an infallible connection with a right choice, but yet leaves the will to make this choice freely and with power to the contrary. God has therefore predestined, by an infallible decree, all those to whom he gives this efficacious grace, to the attainment of beatitude. His foreknowledge is also explained as the knowledge of his own determination through which all events, even contingent, are made certain.
This system has a certain hypothetical finish and completeness about it, and it appears to vindicate the supreme dominion of God over all contingent existences, second causes, and events taking place in time, more effectually than any other. It fails, however, to reconcile with the attributes of God the freedom of the created will and the state of probation. For, according to this system, the will, although in equilibrium, and intrinsically capable of motion to either side, cannot put itself out of equilibrium by its own self-determining power, but needs a previous, efficacious concurrence of the divine will, in order to pass from the potentiality of choice to the act of choice. All acts of the created will are, therefore, determined by the will of God as efficient cause. If this is consistent with the liberty which is necessary to the created will, that it may be second and con-creative cause in concurrence with the first cause to the effect of its own beatitude, God could infallibly determine all rational creatures to beatitude without infringing on their liberty. The creature could evolve into act all its causative activity, free-will could receive its fullest scope, the principle of merit and reward could be fully exemplified in the universe, without risking the eternal destiny of a single individual, or permitting even the smallest sin to be committed. It become very difficult, then, on this hypothesis, to explain the permission of sin, and the eternal loss of so many millions of rational creatures. The reason usually given, that sin is an evil incidentally necessary to a system of probation, [{295}] permitted on account of the greater good attained through the probation of free-will, falls to the ground, and we have never yet seen any other satisfactory reason substituted for it.
It may be true that, without this hypothesis, the foreknowledge of God and his supreme dominion over his creation are more incomprehensible. This is no decisive argument, however, provided that these divine attributes can be shown to be intelligible without thus said hypothesis.
First, in regard to the divine foreknowledge, it is argued that God cannot foresee that which is purely dependent on the created will, unless there is some cause or ground of certainty that there will shall actually place the effect which is foreseen. This cause or ground of certainty can only be the divine determination to concur efficaciously with the will, that it may infallibly place the foreseen act.
To this it is replied, that God foresees all contingent, future events, by a kind of knowledge called the super-comprehension of cause. Knowing completely all causes, he knows all there effects in them. This does not explain, however, his knowledge of the self-determining acts of the will, since in these the same cause is in equilibrium to opposite effects. It is better explained, we think, by the theory of Suarez, that God sees all things in their objective verity. He knows with certainty all that depends on the self-determining action of free-will, because he directly beholds the free-will determining itself. There is no succession in God. He coexists from eternity and in eternity to all the successive periods of created duration. What we call future is equally visible to God in eternity with the past. There is no more difficulty, therefore, in his knowing from all eternity all future contingent events, than there is in our knowing anyone of these events in the time of its taking place, or after it has happened.
But, it is further argued, if God knows the acts of his creatures by an immediate vision of them in their objective verity, he is perfected by the creature, which is incompatible with his essence. God is the adequate object of his own intelligence; therefore he knows all things in himself.
God is the adequate and sole object of his own intelligence in the act of simple intelligence in which his essential being in the Three Persons is constituted. Created existences are not included in this act, and the knowledge of them is not perfective of the being of God. God knows them in himself by the knowledge of vision, scientia visionis, and sees them in himself as in a mirror. This perfection of vision, by which God sees and knows all things which exist, is a perfection proceeding from his infinite intelligence, not given to him by the creature. The creature is its terminus, but the changes of the terminus affect itself alone, and do not make the essential attribute of God less immutable or infinite. The same objection might be made to the statement, that created existences are the terminus of the divine volition or love. The essential act of volition or love is completed in the act of God ad intra, or his infinite love of himself. Yet God loves the creature, delights in the love of the creature, wills the beatitude of the creature. That he may do this, the existence of the creature as the terminus of his volition is necessary as the conditio sine quâ non. It might be said, then, that the existence of the creature, and his act in loving God, is perfective of God. It is not. For it is altogether distinct from that which is the terminus of the divine act of love, in which the perfection of the being of God is constituted, viz.: from the essence of God itself. God has the plenitude of love in himself, and it remains the same whether more or fewer created existences are its recipients. So the infinite power of vision in God is the same, whether more or fewer created existences or acts of existing agents come within its scope. There is no objection, therefore, to the theory [{296}] respecting the science of God, which maintains that he knows all future contingents which depend entirely on his divine decree in that decree, all that depend on second causes determined of necessity to produce certain effects in his supercomprehension of cause, and all that depend on free-will in his foresight of the self-determination of free-will. The whole incomprehensibility of this foreknowledge is reduced to an identity with the essential incomprehensibility of God, as eternal and as coexisting to all the successive periods of time.
Secondly, as regards the divine supremacy over creation, and the ability of the Sovereign Creative Spirit to bring the universe to an end predetermined by himself.
It is argued, that if we reject the Thomist hypothesis, we reduce everything to the hap-hazard of capricious, eccentric, lawless free-will, which makes it impossible to suppose any plan regularly and infallibly carried out through the medium of second causes, in the universe.
This is not so. Free-will is not mere lawless caprice, directed by mere accident. It is directed by intelligence, and acts according to the law of motives. It must choose the good, and can never choose that which is evil, ratione mali. Since, by a law of its probation, the real chief good and the apparent chief good are presented before it in such a way as to leave it in equilibrium toward both, without any dominant or necessitating motive toward either, it makes the motive on one side preponderant by its exercise of self-dominion. This is not by chance or caprice. It is by the exercise of intellect, and through the impulse of powerful motives. Its circle of variability is restricted, and its determination is capable of being influenced by intellectual and moral considerations. It is perfectly evident that a man, even without the slightest power of exercising any determining influence on the wills of other men, can nevertheless, without infringing on their perfect liberty, reason them into a co-operation with himself in carrying out a plan, or persuade them into it by proving its advantages before them. Much more, then, is God able to bring a sufficient number of angels and men to a voluntary co-operation with himself to secure the success of his great design. It is in this way that God manifests his infinite wisdom and divine art, by arranging all things with such consummate and complex skill and harmony, and directing all things from end to end by such a wise far-reaching Providence, that he is able to bring out in the end the desired result, through the concurrence of free, con-creative second causes. It may be said that, since all angels were free to reject the beatitude proffered to them, God, in creating them and giving them this freedom, exposed his plan to the risk of being completely thwarted by their unanimous refusal to comply with the terms of their probation. The same might also be said of mankind.