NINETEENTH LECTURE
Concerning divine knowledge of things, we must distinguish the science of simple intelligence, in which divine intelligence alone is involved, and the science of vision, in which divine will is joined to intelligence.
The science of simple intelligence knows possible essences, and knows them necessarily, because divine intelligence, knowing divine essence, knows in it all possible manners according to which this essence can be participated in. Thus the possibility of an ant and the truths concerning such a possible essence cannot be annihilated, no more than the divine essence itself, which is their principle.
The science of vision knows the existent things, the creation of which depends on divine will and liberty. This science is a creative science. Thus the existence of this man or of this ant is merely contingent and depending only on the mere will of the Pure Act. Because created objects exercise no action at all on divine intellect nor on divine will, this intellect and this will are absolutely independent of them. The Pure Act is not modified by the objects it knows and loves.
Concerning divine will, in connection with intelligent creatures, we must distinguish the primary or antecedent will, in which the original intention of divine will is alone considered, and the secondary or consequent will, in which particular and concrete circumstances regarding creatures are considered. The antecedent will wills that all creatures endowed with freedom do freely what is good, and is a conditional or not infallibly efficacious will. The consequent will wills that, if a creature does not escape by its own initiative from the divine influence toward good, the movement of this creature toward actioin be realized, in an act which thus will be a good act. And it wills that if a creature escapes by its own initiative from the divine influence toward good, all there is of being, or of ontological good, in the movement of this creature toward action be realized, although this action will be a bad one through the fault of the deficient initiative of the creature. And the consequent will wills that good and bad actions produce their happy or unhappy fruits. The consequent will is infallibly efficacious.
Let us now consider the line of what is good. As regards the infallible divine knowledge of human free acts, the three main points to be considered are as follows:
1. At the very moment when it exists and acts, every creature is eternally present to divine eternity.
2. Therefore divine intelligence (science of vision) sees the actions of every intelligent creature at the very moment when they are produced, and in their actual existence. Thus contingent events, however contingent they may be, can be known infallibly.
3. To the extent that a thing possesses being and good, it has them from the prime cause of being. Therefore free acts of men, to the extent that they include being and good -- as well as the very exercise of freedom itself -- are caused by the Pure Act as first cause. And it must be said that, with regard to all there is of good in creatures, God knows only that which He wills and causes.
Divine will is above the whole order of beings and is not comprehended itself either in the order of necessary causes (the action of which cannot be hindered) or in the order of contingent causes (the action of which can be hindered). Thus divine will causes infallibly the necessary accomplishment of necessary events, and the contingent or the free accomplishment of contingent or of free events. Divine will acts on beings through the very roots of being, in the most intimate fashion, and causes the freedom itself of my free acting, the very exercise of the active and dominating indetermination of my will on my practical judgment.
The primary, uncreated, cause and the secondary, created, cause, work together not as simply coordinated causes, each one exerting a partial action upon the effect, but as hierarchically acting causes, in such a way that the whole effect is produced both by the primary cause and by the secondary one, and the causal or acting power of the secondary cause itself proceeds from the primary cause.