Divine Foreknowledge: Augustine, Boethius and Thomas Aquinas

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The issue of the foreknowledge of God is a mystery that St. Thomas Aquinas, Augustine and Boethius all struggled with. Divine foreknowledge involves the idea that the will of God articulated itself most comprehensively in divine predestination, of which the plan of salvation is an integral part. Thus, Christ himself was, obviously, predestined. This, of course, means that God knew that evil would come into the world and that Jesus would have to redeem mankind. Nonetheless, while God knew that evil would come into the world, he also willed an end, and in this his action can be seen as perfect. To protect his own freedom, God caused events contingently and without necessity; therefore his own causation and will was free. God, therefore, predestined contingently. In this way, we can understand that God was not the captive of his own action, but remained free.

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