Earth's conflict won, the stars your meed!

BOOK V.

FREE WILL AND GOD'S FOREKNOWLEDGE.

SUMMARY.

CH. I. Boethius asks if there is really any such thing as chance.
Philosophy answers, in conformity with Aristotle's definition
(Phys., II. iv.), that chance is merely relative to human purpose,
and that what seems fortuitous really depends on a more subtle form
of causation.--CH. II. Has man, then, any freedom, if the reign of
law is thus absolute? Freedom of choice, replies Philosophy, is a
necessary attribute of reason. Man has a measure of freedom, though
a less perfect freedom than divine natures.--CH. III. But how can
man's freedom be reconciled with God's absolute foreknowledge? If
God's foreknowledge be certain, it seems to exclude the possibility
of man's free will. But if man has no freedom of choice, it
follows that rewards and punishments are unjust as well as useless;
that merit and demerit are mere names; that God is the cause of
men's wickednesses; that prayer is meaningless.--CH. IV. The
explanation is that man's reasoning faculties are not adequate to
the apprehension of the ways of God's foreknowledge. If we could
know, as He knows, all that is most perplexing in this problem
would be made plain. For knowledge depends not on the nature of the
thing known, but on the faculty of the knower.--CH. V. Now, where
our senses conflict with our reason, we defer the judgment of the
lower faculty to the judgment of the higher. Our present perplexity
arises from our viewing God's foreknowledge from the standpoint of
human reason. We must try and rise to the higher standpoint of
God's immediate intuition.--CH. VI. To understand this higher form
of cognition, we must consider God's nature. God is eternal.
Eternity is more than mere everlasting duration. Accordingly, His
knowledge surveys past and future in the timelessness of an eternal
present. His foreseeing is seeing. Yet this foreseeing does not in
itself impose necessity, any more than our seeing things happen
makes their happening necessary. We may, however, if we please,
distinguish two necessities--one absolute, the other conditional on
knowledge. In this conditional sense alone do the things which God
foresees necessarily come to pass. But this kind of necessity
affects not