SIXTEENTH LECTURE
In order to answer in a truly philosophical manner the question of relation between divine foreknowledge and human freedom, we must examine some problems concerning the metaphysics of the divine Being: First, divine eternity; Second, divine intelligence; Third, divine will.
Duration is perseverance in being. The sort of duration of which we have experience is time. Time is a successive duration, the continuation of the impermanent existence of change or of movement; time is present only through the instant, which does not endure.
Eternity, or divine duration, excludes absolutely any change or any succession. Eternity is the perfect and all at once possession of endless life, we could say: an instant which endures endlessly. It would be a great mistake to confuse eternity with a time without beginning and without end.
Whole of time is embraced by divine eternity and is present to it. While a moment of time can be related to any instant either as passed, or as future, or as present with regard to this instant, on the contrary every moment of time can be related to eternity only as present to it, since no one moment of time can be before or after eternity. Every part of time, which is passed or future with regard to the instant when we are, is ontologically present to eternity, that is to say, is attained and possessed in its actual being by the creative action of God, which is eternal in God, and the effects of which are produced in time. Thus a thing which will really exist, but does not yet exist at the very moment when I exist, exists only in some part of time, but the existence of this thing in some part of time is the terminus of the eternal action of God, and therefodre is eternally present to God, eternally related to divine duration as present to it.
Therefore God knows the existing things, at the time when they exist, not in their causes, but in this actual existence which is theirs, and which is eternally present to God. The eternal presence of things to divine knowledge is grounded on the eternal presence of their temporal existence to divine being and duration.