because they are not determinately present in their cause. Thomas argues that nothing can be predicted from free choice considered in itself. Someone can predict future, free actions only by considering free choice in conjunction with predictable events such as passions, customs, and habits. Moreover, these predictions often fail because humans need not follow their passions, since their free choices are not determined. Consequently, although Thomas disagrees with Augustine over the empirical issue of whether astrologers can accurately predict the future, the conceptual framework is the same. Future contingents cannot be known with certitude because there is no fixed order of causes. We could know all that there is to know about the world at present and yet not be able to predict future contingents.

Thomas's account of prophecy underscores the difference between knowledge about future necessary events and knowledge about future contingents.37 Most strictly speaking, prophecy is God's revelation to humans of what is far removed from their knowledge.38 How can God reveal future contingents to prophets if future contingents are unknowable? As Augustine had done, Thomas distinguishes between our ordinary knowledge, which comes from created causes, and the knowledge that comes from God. Future contingents do not exist in the present, but rather only in the mind of God. Consequently, knowledge of them is not natural but depends upon a special revelation. Ordinarily, our knowledge of the future comes from the order of secondary causes that is, at least imperfectly, knowable to us. In contrast, knowledge of future contingents through prophecy can only have God as its source. Usually our knowledge about the future depends on the presently existing causes that we know. In contrast, although prophetic knowledge is about what a created cause does, it only signifies the event and does not depend upon it.

Nevertheless, even prophetic knowledge concerning the future is knowledge of a cause, but the distinctive mark of prophetic knowledge is that it is based on God's knowledge, which is causal. God knows future contingents because he causes them to act contingently.39 When discussing

37 For the contrast of the natural and supernatural knowledge of the future, see especially Alexander Altmann, "Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas: Natural or Divine Prophecy," AJS Review 3 (1978): 1-19. For Thomas's understanding of prophecy, see Pierre Benoit and Paul Synave, Prophecy and Inspiration: A Commentary on the Summa Theologiae II-II, Questions 171-178 (New York: Desclee, 1961).38 Thomas, De veritate, q. 12, a. 1 (Leonine, vol. 22, 365-70); ST II-II, q. 171, a. 2.39 See especially Thomas, De veritate, q. 12, a. 10, resp. (Leonine, vol. 22, 399-400); ST I, q. 14, 8; II-II, q. 174, a. 1. Goris, Free Creatures of an Eternal God, 276-304, mentions the connection between contingency and proximate causes, but it seems to me that he wrongly isolates this discussion from the way in which future events can be known only insofar as they are present in their causes.

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Augustine and Aquinas on Foreknowledge Through Causes

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