B. How along with the Contingency of Things there stands the Certainty of Divine Knowledge

     Having looked at the contingency of things as to existence, and this when considering it with respect to the divine will - it remains to look at the second principal point, how the certitude of knowledge stands along with it.

     This can be posited in two ways:

     In one way by the fact that the divine intellect, when seeing the determination of the divine will, sees that this thing will be at time a, because the will determines it will be at that time; for it knows the will is immutable and cannot be prevented.

     Or in a second way. Because the former way seems to posit a certain discursiveness in the divine intellect (as if it concludes from intuiting the determination of the will and its immutability that this thing will be), one can posit in a second way that the divine intellect either offers [sc. to the will] the simple terms of which the union is contingent in reality, or - if it offers the proposition uniting them - if offers it as neutral to itself; and the will, by choosing one side, namely the conjunction of these terms for some ‘now’ in reality, makes the following to be determinately true: ‘this will exist at moment a’. But when this ‘determinately true’ is in existence, the essence is the reason for the divine intellect of understanding this truth, and this naturally (as far as it is on the part of the essence), so that, just as the divine intellect naturally understands all necessary principles in advance as it were of an act of the divine will (because the truth of them does not depend on the intellect’s act and because they would be known by the divine intellect if, per impossibile, there was not something willing them), so the divine essence is the reason of knowing them in that prior stage, because they are then true; not indeed that the truths - nor even their terms - move the divine intellect to apprehend such truth (because then the divine intellect would be cheap, because then the truth would be revealed by something other than its own essence), but the divine essence is the reason of knowing the terms just as also for knowing the sort of propositions that join them; but then they are not true contingents, because there is then nothing by which they may have determinate truth; but when the determination of the divine will has been posited, they are then true in that instant, and the same thing - the same as was in the first moment - will be the reason for the divine intellect of knowing the things that are now true in the second instant and that would have been known in the first instant, if they had then been in the first instant.

     An example: it is just as if ‘a single act always in place’ in my seeing power is the reason of seeing the object, if now this color is present by another thing presenting it and now that color, - my eye will see now this, now that, and yet there will, through the same vision, be only a difference in priority and posteriority of seeing, because it is of the object that is first or later presented; and if one color were made present naturally and the other freely, there would be no difference formally in my vision so to prevent the eye, for its part, from seeing both naturally, yet it could see one contingently and the other naturally, insofar as one is made present to it contingently and the other necessarily.

     In whichever of these ways the divine intellect is posited as knowing the existence of things, it is plain that - according to each of them - there is a determination of the divine intellect to the existent thing to which the divine will is determined, and that there is a certitude of infallibility (because the will cannot be determined without the intellect determinately apprehending what the will determines), and also an immutability (because both the will and the intellect are immutable, from distinction 8 n.293), - and this in response to the first three questions [at the beginning]. And yet along with these [sc. determination, infallibility, immutability] there stands contingency of the known object, because the will, when it determinately wills this, contingently wills it - from the first article [sc. of Scotus’ own response to the questions].

     As to the fourth question [sc. whether God necessarily knows every condition of existence of everything], it seems one should perhaps distinguish this proposition ‘God necessarily knows a’ according to a composite and a divided sense - as that in the composite sense necessity of knowledge is indicated as it passes over to the object, and in the divided sense necessity of knowledge is indicated absolutely, which knowledge however does pass over to this object; in the first way it is false, in the second way true.

     However such a distinction does not seem a logical one, because, when the act passes over to the object, there seems to be no distinction as to the act absolutely or as to it as it passes over to the object, - to wit, if I say ‘I see Socrates’, because there may be a distinction either as to sight as it passes over to Socrates or as to sight absolutely, which sight is however of Socrates; and just as there is in the former case [sc. in the proposition ‘God necessarily knows a’] no distinction in a proposition about mere assertion [sc. ‘God knows a’], so neither does there seem to be a distinction when the modal term is appended [sc. ‘(God) necessarily (knows a)’], but a distinction only seems necessary if the act passes over to the object necessarily; and so this proposition ‘God necessarily knows a’ should, it seems, simply be denied, because of the fact that the predicate as so determined [sc. ‘necessarily knows’] does not necessarily belong to the subject, although the non-determined predicate [sc. ‘knows’, without the ‘necessarily’] does belong to it.

     An objection against this is that a rational act is not canceled by the matter it passes over to; for a ‘to say’ which passes over to ‘[I say] that I am saying nothing’ is as simply a ‘to say’ as when it passes over to ‘[I say] that I am saying something’; and therefore the inference ‘I say that I am saying nothing, therefore I say [something]’ follows just as does the inference ‘I say that I am sitting, therefore I say [something]’. Therefore, in the case of God, ‘to know’ is not so canceled by the matter it passes over to that it prevents an equal necessity [sc. that it prevents adding ‘necessarily’ to ‘God knows’].

     In response to this objection. Although the proposition [about God’s knowledge] is not so canceled that it stands only in a certain respect, yet it can fail to have necessity as it is signified to pass over to the matter (although it has necessity in itself), and this if an act that is most powerful in itself has respect to diverse objects; it is just as if I had an act of speaking that was the same as a motive power, and if the act could pass over to diverse objects contingently - although I would have the act necessarily (just as I would also have the power necessarily), yet I would not necessarily have the act as it is a passing over to such an object; nor does the inference hold ‘I am speaking necessarily, therefore I am necessarily saying this’, nay there could be a necessity of the speaking in itself along with a contingency in respect of the object; yet saying this object would be a saying simply, such that it would not be a saying in a certain respect.