III. To the Principal Arguments

     To the principal arguments, in order.

     To the first one for the first question, I say that there is not a like truth in propositions about the future as about those of the present and the past. In present and past ones, indeed, there is determinate truth, such that one extreme has been posited, - and, as understood to be posited, it is not in the power of the cause that it be posited or not posited, because although it is in the power of the cause ‘as it is naturally prior to the effect’ to posit or not to posit the effect, yet not as the effect is understood to have already been posited in existence. But there is no such determination on the part of the future, because even if one side is determinately true for some intellect (and even if one side is true in itself, determinately, although no intellect should apprehend it), yet not in such a way that it is not in the power of the cause at that instant to posit the opposite. And this lack of determination suffices for deliberating and bothering about things; if neither side were future, there would be no need to bother or deliberate - therefore, the fact that one side is future, while yet the other side could happen, does not impede deliberation and bothering about things.

     To the second argument I say that for knowledge to be of one part such that it could not be of the other does posit imperfection in it - and similarly in the case of will, if one posit that it is of one will-able object such that it could not be of another will-able object; yet for knowledge to be of one side such that it is not in fact of the other (and likewise in the case of the will) posits no imperfection, the way a power in act is determinately of one opposite - which it produces - and not of the other. But a power is dissimilar to knowledge and will in this respect, that a power seems to be asserted of one opposite only because it only has power for it, and knowledge and will [are asserted of one opposite] such that they only know it or will it; but if things are taken in like manner on each side, there is equal determination on each side, because each of them in act is of one opposite and not both. Any of them can also be of each, but that the power is of one, this seems to signify a potential disposition of the power to it, - that knowledge or will are of it, seems to signify an actual disposition of them to it; but nothing bad seems to follow if things are taken in like way both here and there, because then, just as ‘to know’ is to knowledge and ‘to will’ is to will, so is ‘to produce’ to power (but not ‘able to produce’), and just as ‘able to produce’ is to power so is ‘able to know’ to knowledge and ‘able to will’ to will.

     To the second argument for the second question I say that although on the two propositions about presence of the predicate in the subject the conclusion about the presence of the predicate follows (not indeed syllogistically, because the discussion is not syllogistic, reducible to many syllogisms), yet from the one proposition about presence and from the other about possibility a conclusion about presence follows neither syllogistically nor necessarily; the reason is that ‘to be deceived’ is to think a thing other than it is, at the time when it is believed to be. Now this is included in the two premises about presence, one of which signifies that he believes this and the other denies that this is the case, and this at the same instant, - and therefore the conclusion about being deceived follows. But it is not so on the other side, because the premise about presence affirms one opposite for that instant, and the other about possibility affirms a potential for the other opposite, not at the same instant conjointly but divisively, - and so it does not follow that at any instant there can be a conjunction in reality of the opposite of what is believed; and therefore a possibility of deception, which includes this conclusion, does not follow. The same reasoning holds of a mixed argument of a premise about a contingent and one about presence, that it does not hold unless the major is about presence simply.

     This response is also plain, because if an argument is made from the opposite of the conclusion and from the premise about possibility, the opposite is not inferred save of something of necessity, and so the major should be really the same as that about the necessary in order for the conclusion to be inferred; for this inference does not hold ‘God cannot be deceived, and it is possible that a will be, therefore God does not know that a will be’, but what follows is ‘therefore he does not know necessarily that a will be’; the point is clear, because if my intellect always followed change in the thing, such that when you are sitting I believe you are sitting and when you rise up I believe you rise up, I could not be deceived, and yet from these premises ‘you are sitting at moment a’ and ‘I cannot be deceived’ all that follows is ‘therefore I do not know necessarily you are sitting at moment a’. So it is in the issue at hand: although the divine intellect does not follow the thing as an effect the cause, yet there is concomitance there, because just as it is possible for the thing not to be, so it is possible for the divine intellect not to know it - and so the conclusion never follows that the divine intellect knows the thing other than it is; and therefore the things required for deception can never stand together at the same time, but just as the known thing is able not to be, so God is able not to know it, - and if it will not be, he will not know it.

     As to the second, about the positing of the possible in actual presence, I say that from this positing in itself nothing impossible ever follows; yet the proposition about presence, insofar as the one about the possible is posited, can be repugnant to something to which the one about the possible, when posited in existence, is not repugnant, because the antecedent can be repugnant to something to which the consequent is not repugnant - and then from the antecedent and from what is repugnant to it something impossible can follow that does not follow from the consequent and from that same repugnant one, because this is not incompossible with it. Nor is it surprising that the impossible may follow from incompossibles, because according to the Philosopher Prior Analytics 2.15.64b7-10, 15-16, in the case of a syllogism ‘from opposites’ an impossible conclusion does follow.

     I say then that when the proposition ‘it is possible for me not to be sitting’ is posited, nothing impossible follows from it alone; but from it and another one - namely ‘God knows that I will be sitting’ - the impossible does follow, namely that God is deceived; and this impossible does not follow from the impossibility of what is posited in being, nor even from any incompossibility that is absolute in it, but from itself and from something else at the same time, which is impossible. Nor is it unacceptable for what is impossible to follow from a proposition about presence, insofar as one about possibility and one about presence are posited - because along with ‘I am sitting’ there stands ‘it is possible for me to be standing’; but the former one about presence, to the extent the latter [about possibility] is posited, is repugnant to the one about presence [sc. ‘I am standing’] - and from two propositions about presence something incompossible does follow, namely ‘someone standing is sitting’. Nor yet does the inference follow ‘therefore the one that was posited about possibility in being was false’, but either it was false or the other (along with which the first’s about presence [sc. ‘I am standing’] is taken) is incompossible with the first’s about presence.

     As to the first argument for the third question, I concede the major, because there is no transition without change - but in the minor I say that here there is no transition (nor can there be), because transition is impossible without succession, such that opposite succeed to opposite; but such succession is impossible in the issue at hand; for just as it is impossible to know and not know at the same time, so too that [God] sometimes knows and sometimes does not know cannot stand together, - without which transition successively from opposite to opposite there is no change.

     And if you ask ‘if it is at any rate possible for him not to know b, which he does know, he would be differently disposed, - what is that?’, I say that it is b in known being; yet he is not differently disposed than he was before, but differently than he now is disposed, such that the ‘differently’ would not be of some opposite succeeding to opposite, but it would be of the other of the opposites which can be present in the same instant in which its opposite is present, - and this does not suffice for change.

     To the second: the inference ‘he does not know a, he can know a, therefore he can begin to know a’ is not valid, and this when there is power precisely for something naturally prior to the opposite of the posterior, at the same instant at which and in which this ‘posterior’ has contingent being, as in the issue at hand; only it holds because of matter in creatures, where there is potentiality for opposites successively - but although it is not the case, yet there is still a possibility for each of them in the same instant.

     To the third, one can concede, as concerns this argument, that this power for opposites is an active power, - namely that the divine intellect, insofar as it is in act by its essence and by actual infinite intellection, is an active power with respect to any objects that it produces in understood being.

     And when it says ‘therefore it cannot act about anything about which it did not act before unless it changes’, I say that the consequence is not valid when it requires an object about which to act; just as in the case of created agents, it is not necessary that the agent - which acts de novo - be changed if the passive thing on which it acts comes to be de novo next to it. So it is in the issue at hand. The divine will, determining a ‘will be’ for something shown by the intellect, makes a proposition stating it to be true and so intelligible; from this it is present to the intellect in idea of object. And just as the will can make and not make the willed object, so can it be true and not true, and so can it be known and not known by the natural intellect; not indeed because of some contingency that is prior in the natural agent, but because of contingency on the part of the object, which is contingently true by act of the will that verifies it.

     And if you object that still it cannot be without change, at least in the understood object (just as neither can a passive natural object come near to a natural agent without change in the passive object, and perhaps in the agent that brings it near) - I reply that this object is not changed in this being, because it cannot be under opposites successively; yet it is contingently in this being, and this contingency is on the part of the will producing it in such being, as was made clear in the first article of the solution.

     To the arguments for the fourth question.

     As to the first, I deny the consequence.

     As to the first proof, I say that if there is in God no necessity but that of immutability (that is, no other mode of necessity among those posited by the Philosopher, Metaphysics 5.5.1015a33-35, than the fourth one, according to which it is a ‘not happening to be otherwise disposed’, - because the other modes of necessity require imperfection, as the necessity of coercion etc.), yet there is not there only a necessity of immutability such that the immutability is of itself necessary, because immutability only takes away a possible succession of opposite to opposite; but necessity simply takes away absolutely the possibility of this opposite and the nonsuccession of the opposite to it, - and the inference does not hold ‘the opposite cannot succeed to the opposite, therefore the opposite cannot be present’.

     To the second proof, I say that although every being of existence ‘able to come to be’ is changeable, when positing that creation according to the understanding of Avicenna - even from eternity - is change, yet in understood being or willed being (which is to be in a certain respect) there is no need for every possibility that is repugnant to ‘necessity of itself’ formally to entail mutability, because this being is not real being but is reduced to the real being of something in itself necessary, because of which other’s necessity there cannot here be mutability, although the ‘necessity of itself’ of this other does not formally belong to the former; and so it is not of itself necessary formally, because it does not have the being of the extreme which it has regard to really - nor yet is it changeable, because it has, according to that ‘diminished being’, regard to the immutable extreme, and change in something according to which it has regard to another cannot exist without change in it.

     As to the second argument, I say that something can be present in God in two ways: either formally, - or present subjectively, the way logically any predicate is said to be present in its subject. I concede the major in the first way, because everything such is God and is necessarily the same as God; in the second way I do not concede it, because a relative appellation can be in God according as God is said to be ‘Lord’ from time, and yet this appellation does not signify anything the same as God (such that it is necessarily the same as God or is God himself), because then it would not be from time. Now I say that for God to know b, by reason of the fact that it is a ‘to know absolutely’, is to know formally - but, by reason of ‘to know’ as it is of this term, it is only in God in the second way; for it is of this term because this known thing has a regard to divine knowledge, and hereby some relative appellation is in God as a predicate in a subject.

     To the third I say that no ‘perfection simply’ in God depends on a creature, nor does it even necessarily simply co-require a creature, in any being whatever; and so for God to know b, as he is understood not only ‘to know’ absolutely but also insofar as he passes over to the b, is not a perfection simply. Then I say that the major of the argument is true of the perfection of that knowledge when the perfection is taken absolutely; but in this way the minor is false and its proof only proves that on a perfection simply follows necessarily that it is of such an object, because it follows necessarily that it have such a respect to such a perfection simply - although however neither from such respect of something else to it, nor from a relative appellation of it, is there a perfection simply in it.

     To the arguments for the fifth question.

     As to the first, I say that the antecedent is not necessary simply. And when the proof is given that ‘a rational act is not canceled by the matter’, the response to that proof is in the argument made against the solution to this question.

     As to the second. The mixed argument is not valid unless the minor is about presence simply, and this not only in that it is true for all time, but in that it is necessarily true; and perhaps it must be that it signify that what is taken ‘under’ is per se contained under the middle term (it is enough for the issue at hand that it should be necessarily true). And that this is required is plain in this instance ‘everything at rest is of necessity not in motion - a stone at the center of the earth is at rest, therefore of necessity it is not in motion’; the conclusion does not follow, and yet the minor is always true, - not however necessarily true. So it is in the issue at hand: for although the minor about presence is always true, it is not however necessarily true; for God can know a as he cannot will a, because of the contingency that is first in the will to secondary objects and is, from this, concomitantly in the intellect, as was expounded above.