“If you would weigh the foreknowledge by which God distinguishes all things, you will more rightly hold it to be a knowledge of a never-failing constancy in the present, than a foreknowledge of the future. Whence Providence is more rightly to be understood as a looking forth than a looking forward, because it is set far from low matters and looks forth upon all things as from a lofty mountain-top above all.
“Why then do you demand that all things occur by necessity, if Divine light rests upon them, while men do not render necessary such things as they can see? Because you can see things of the present, does your sight therefore put upon them any necessity? Surely not. If one may not unworthily compare this present time with the Divine, just as you can see things in this your temporal present, so God sees all things in His eternal present.
“Wherefore this Divine foreknowledge does not change the nature or individual qualities of things: it sees things present in its understanding just as they will result some time in the future. It makes no confusion in its distinctions, and with one view of its mind it discerns all that shall come to pass whether of necessity or not.
“For instance, when you see at the same time a man walking on the earth and the sun rising in the heavens, you see each sight simultaneously, yet you distinguish between them, and decide that one is moving voluntarily, the other of necessity. In like manner the perception of God looks down upon all things without disturbing at all their nature, though they are present to Him, but future under the conditions of time.”
—from Book 5, Prose 6
Whenever I feel confused by a problem, whether in the form of a refined abstraction or an immediate experience, I have often found it helpful to do two things.
First, I should understand that the source of my difficulty is most likely in my own limitations of perception, and not in the very structure of reality itself. The latter, of course, would become quite unbearable, but the former can be made quite bearable.
How am I failing to think of the trouble as broadly as I can, instead of despairing that there can ever be a satisfying answer?
Second, given that I most likely need to fix my own perspective, what familiar tools, close at hand and within the scope of my awareness, can I employ to make the situation clearer to me?
If the terms I am using are too slippery to grab a hold of, then let me turn to examples that are easier to manage. I can start with what is nearer to me to rise up to what is further from me.
The conundrum of foreknowledge and freedom has really arisen because Boethius, or most anyone who first approaches the question, gets tripped up by the context of time. The human mind, subject to change, sees things as moving through past, present, and future, while the Divine Mind, absolute and eternal in its being, sees all things as if they were present.
And the use of “as if” is surely important, since we can only speak of such consciousness through the scale of our familiarity. It is useful to think of God’s awareness as constantly looking “forth” at a now, not as looking “forward” to what will be.
As a child, one of my favorite trips involved climbing up a rocky hill in the middle of the town I’d been born in, and observing all the people going about their business on the streets below. Even at a young age, I innocently wondered if they could tell that someone was watching them, or if being looked down at from a height above could somehow change what they would choose to do.
Years later, I would find it very soothing to do much the same from the top floors of the Hancock or Prudential towers in Boston.
It is quite silly, of course, and more than a bit presumptuous, to suggest that my seeing of other people in any way makes them to act in a certain manner. Quite the contrary, what they are doing causes me to perceive them, not that my perceiving them causes them to do anything. Why should it be any different with Providence?
“Yes, but what if you could see what they were going to do ten minutes, or an hour, or a year ahead of time? Wouldn’t that force it all into place?”
I must once again remember, the distinction of “now” and “then” does not exist in the completeness of eternity. Just as I see some things currently, God sees all things currently.
The image Lady Philosophy uses, one of watching the sun rising and a man walking, is extremely useful, since it so common and everyday.
The motions of the heavenly bodies, including the Earth itself, follow from certain laws governing matter, and the choice of a fellow deciding to take a stroll proceeds from the movements of his own judgment.
I may observe both happening right now, and yet I am completely aware that each comes to be in its own distinct way, to different degrees of necessity, and that they are in no way brought into being by my perception.
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