An Anonymous Treatise on the Subject of Future Contingents

Abstract

Some men trained in sophistical reasonings, presuming too much upon their industry and native ingenuity, have supposed that knowable matters both divine and human can be measured by their own intellect, and have tried to maintain that things that are not true in the faith still hold. For they avow that such propositions contained in divine doctrine and most holy theology as have to do with a future contingent are not true, namely, that there will be a universal resurrection of the dead and a universal Judgment, and that those who have lived good lives will go to eternal life, but those who have lived wicked lives will go to perpetual torment; and similarly when Christ prophesied to Peter saying, ‘Before the cock crows thou wilt deny me thrice’. They have assertively stated and declared that all things predicted and any similar ones about a future contingent, contained in theology and the catholic faith, are not true. And the reasoning leading them to say this is that all things would come about of necessity, and the reasonings the Philosopher sets forth in his book De interpretatione, if there were determinate truth about a future contingent, would come to demonstrative conclusions; and thus deliberation, election, freedom of choice, punishment and reward would perish and all things would come about of necessity. All this is absurd and alien to Christian and orthodox faith, inconsonant with piety and the Christian religion, and contrary in every way to the custom of the universal church for the instruction of the Christian people.