Divine Nescience of Future Contingencies a Necessity

By L. D. McCabe, D.D., LL.D.

Chapter III

Divine Nescience of Future Contingencies is a Necessity, in Order to Escape the Dreaded System of Necessity.

If all God's thoughts, purposes and plans existed froth eternity, then they were as eternal and as uncreated as himself. If they were eternal and uncreated, they existed of necessity. If they were necessary, God did not originate them, and had no control over them. Admit this, and the system of necessity is immovably established, and inexorably controls not only all things, and all intelligent creatures, but also the Infinite One Himself. All God's plans, purposes and feelings roll forth from necessity. In him there can be no exercise of free-will, and bald fatalism binds him this hour in all his life and creative acts, and in all his benefactions and governmental activities. But if God is a free being he can originate. If he originates, the thing he originates, previous to its origination, had no possible incipiency even in his conception. The activities of the divine Mind and the freedom of the divine Will necessarily imply that in the future, as in the past, God will ever go forth to creations of things absolutely new to himself for the perfection of his ideal universe, and for the elevation and the bliss of his intelligent millions. If God can not now originate a new thought, he never could and never did. If he never did originate a new thought, all his thoughts were eternal and necessary. From this conclusion we all gladly take refuge in the thought that God can and does constantly originate thoughts and purposes and plans relative to a contingent objective universe, new even to himself. If absolutely new to himself, they cannot possibly be foreknown. Thus it is that only by divine nescience of future contingencies can we escape the dreadful and ever-darkening de-energizing system of necessity.