A. First Opinion

     As to these questions one position holds the certitude of divine knowledge - with respect to all things as to all conditions of existence - on account of the ideas that are posited in the divine intellect, and this on account of their perfection in representing, because they represent ‘the things of which they are’ not only in themselves but in every reason and relation of the extremes; and so they are in the divine intellect a sufficient reason, not only for simply apprehending the things patterned after the ideas, but also for apprehending every union of them and every mode of the patterned things pertaining to their existence.The Vatican editors were unable to find any author of this opinion. ⁸

     On the contrary:

     The reasons of knowing the terms of some proposition that combines them are only a sufficient cause of knowing the combination if the combination is of a nature to be known from the terms; a contingent combination is not of a nature to be known from the terms, because it would then not only be necessary but also first and immediate; therefore the reasons of knowing the terms, however perfectly these reasons represent them, are not sufficient causes of knowing the contingent combination.

     In addition, the ideas purely naturally represent what they represent, and under the reason under which they represent anything; the proof of the fact is that the ideas are in the divine intellect before any act of the divine will, so that in no way are they there by act of the will; but whatever precedes the act of the will is purely natural. I take then the two ideas of the extremes that are represented in those ideas, for example the ideas of man and of white; I ask whether of themselves they represent the combination of the extremes, or the division of them, or both? If only the combination, then the divine intellect naturally knows it (and so knows in a necessary way), and consequently in no way does it know the division. And I raise a question in the same manner if the ideas only represent the division. If they represent both, then God knows nothing by them, because to know contradictories to be true simultaneously is to know nothing.

     In addition, the ideas are of possible things in the same way as they are of future things, because the difference between ‘non-future possibles and future possibles’ is only by act of the divine will; therefore an idea of a future thing does not more represent that thing to be of necessity future than an idea of a possible thing does.

     Further, an idea of a future thing will not represent it more by positing it to exist in this ‘now’ than by positing it to exist in that.