IMP 011 Bornholdt - Walter Chatton On Future Contingents - Between Formalism and Ontology PDF

Walter Chatton on Future Contingents
Investigating Medieval Philosophy
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volume 11
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Walter Chatton
on Future Contingents
Between Formalism and Ontology
by
Jon Bornholdt
leiden | boston
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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Explanation of Symbols x
Citation Style xii
List of Figures xiii
1 Introduction: History and Logical Analysis of the Problem 1

1 The Heart of the Problem: A Question of Truth-Makers and
Truth-Bearers 1
2 Models of the World and Theories of Truth 6
2.1 Two Models of the World 8
2.2 Fitting Truth Operators to Ontology: The Correspondence
Assumption 12
3 Either the Fallibility of God as Foreknower, or the Necessitation of
Creaturely Action: Sophismata or Genuine Puzzles? 15
3.1 A First Try: The Appeal to Scope Disambiguation 16
3.2 The Inadequacy of the Sophismatic Solution 21
4 The Boethian Analysis and Its Influence 28
4.1 Boethius Slippery T2 Theory: Broad Bivalence and the Operators
Definite and Indefinite 29
4.2 The Assertability Conditions of the Boethian Future Tense(s) 34
4.3 A Fruitful Ambiguity: Simple vs. Conditional Necessity 37
4.4 From the Commentary Theory to the Consolation Theory 43
4.5 The Boethian or Logical-Compatibilist Model 49
4.6 Historical Developments: Further Applications of the System 61
5 Overcoming the Limitations of Logical Compatibilism: The Need for
Alternative Real Futures 81
5.1 Making Room for Divine (and More Room for Human) Freedom:
Gods Power over the Past and the Divine Modal Pleroma 83
5.2 The System of Duns Scotus 97
6 The (Re)Turn to the Formal: Thomas Wylton, Peter Auriol, and the
Rejection of the Correspondence Assumption 116
6.1 The Wylton Scope Analysis 116
6.2 The Position of Peter Auriol: A Closed-Future Model in
Open-Future Guise 124
7 The System(s) of William Ockham 144
7.1 Determinate Truth and the Mystery of Gods Mysterious
Foreknowledge 145
vi contents
7.2 Ockhams Open Future 148

7.3 Ockhams Later Influence: The Communis Opinio 163
8 Ponere [in Esse]: Drifting between the Derivational, the Temporal,
and the Ludic 165
8.1 Ponere [in Esse]: Initial Approaches 165
8.2 Arnold of Strelley and Obligational Theology 167
8.3 Ponere [in Esse] in Sense i: Assumptions and/or Actions 173
8.4 Ponere [in Esse] in Sense ii: The Real Occurrence of a Given Res /
Proposition 174
8.5 Ponere [in Esse]: A Unifying Interpretation? 176
9 Recapitulation 177
10 Walter Chatton on Future Contingents 178
10.1 Chattons Reportatio super Sententias 179
10.2 Chattons Quodlibet 233
11 Concluding Remarks: Chatton in Historical Context 259
2 Translations of Chattons Reportatio super Sententias i, dd. 3841 and

Quodlibet, qq. 2729 265
Reportatio super Sententias i 265
Distinction 38. Unique Question. Whether the Contingency of
Futures is Consistent with Gods Knowledge of Future
Contingents 265
Distinction 39. Unique Question. Whether God Could Know More
Than He Knows 279
Distinctions 4041. Question 1. Whether the Mystery of the Divine
Incarnation was the Meriting Cause of Human
Predestination 286
Distinctions 4041. Question 2. Whether It Can be Consistently
Maintained Both That God Wills That a Shall be Necessarily, and
That a Will Nevertheless Happen Contingently 311
Quodlibet 318
Question 27. Whether Any Creature Could be Apprised of a Future
Contingent 318
Question 28. Whether the Certainty of Revelation of Future
Contingents is Compatible with Their Contingency 331
Question 29. Whether All Forms of the Arguments Which Normally
Occur in This Matter Can be Resolved 342
contents vii
3 Commentary 344
Reportatio super Sententias i 344
Distinction 38. Unique Question: Whether the Contingency of
Futures is Consistent with Gods Knowledge of Future
Contingents 344
Distinction 39. Unique Question: Whether God Could Know More
Than He Knows 368
Distinctions 4041 380
Question 1. Whether the Mystery of the Divine Incarnation was the
Meriting Cause of Human Predestination. 381
Question 2. Whether It Can be Consistently Maintained Both That
God Wills That a Shall be Necessarily, and That a Will Nevertheless
Happen Contingently 411
Quodlibet 424
Contingent 425
Contingents is Compatible with Their Contingency 445
Occur in this Matter Can be Resolved 467
Appendix: Natural-Deduction Derivations of the Pattern

Arguments 469
Bibliography 509
Index of Names 528
Subject Index 531
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, thanks go to Professors Dag Hasse and Jrn Mller, who
have given me unstinting help and advice during every stage of my work on this
study. Their intellectual and moral support has been absolutely indispensable.
Id also like to thank Chris Schabel and Rondo Keele for the advice and encour-
agement they gave me when this project was in its early stages. I am especially
indebted to Professor Keele, who generously allowed me to use not only part
of his and Girard Etzkorns still unpublished edition of Chattons Quodlibet but
also his own seminar notes on, and preliminary translation of, Chattons Repor-
tatio super Sententias, dd. 3841. Susan Brower-Toland and Mark Thakkar were
also generous with help, advice, and access to their scholarly work. A special
word of thanks goes to Susan for her kind and sensible advice at a crucial junc-
ture. I am also grateful to Felicitas Haber, Kathrin Sammetinger, and Roland
Franz for help with the Index of Names. Many thanks are due to John Maren-
bon and the editorial board of the series Investigating Medieval Philosophy for
accepting this book for publication and for guiding a neophyte through the
editing and publishing process.
I gratefully acknowledge the support of a Deutscher Akademischer Aus-
tauschdienst (DAAD) STIBET grant during the period of October 2010May
2011.
And as always, thanks to my family, for their love and support.
Explanation of Symbols
negation (P: not P, P is not the case)

conjunction ((P Q): P and Q)
inclusive disjunction ((P Q): P and/or Q)
material implication ((P Q): If P, then Q)
equivalence ((P Q): P if and only if Q)
= 1. identity (a=b: a and b are identical)
2. logical or notational equivalence (e.g., (S S) = (S S))
nonidentity (ab: a and b are nonidentical/distinct)
existential quantifier ((x) (Fx Gx): Some Fs are Gs)
universal quantifier ((x) (Fx Gx): All Fs are Gs)
logical truth (tautology)
logical falsehood (contradiction)
weak modal operator (P: It is possible that P)
strong modal operator (P: It is necessary that P)
contingency operator (P: It is contingent that P)
(tn) temporal operator, modally unspecified ((tn)P: At time n, P is the case)
(tn[A]) temporal operator, modally specified ((tn[A])P: At time n, in world-
history A, P is the case)
BG doxastic expression: God believes that
BJ doxastic expression: John (some wayfarer) believes that
therefore; it follows that (e.g., {P, (P Q)} Q)
/ non sequitur; it does not follow that (e.g., {Q, (P Q)} / P)
therefore; it follows that (syntactic equivalent of , used in Appendix)
/ non sequitur; it does not follow that (syntactic equivalent of /)
Latin capital letters (A, B, C, etc.) are used for a variety of purposes; for example,
they represent propositions such as Antichrist will be (A), Socrates will sit
(S), etc.
Greek lowercase letters (, , , etc.) are used for three purposes:
1. They indicate second-order propositional variables in quantified expres-

sions such as the following: ()(BGFut Fut), ()(BG ),
()(BJ );
2. They indicate propositions or states of affairs referred to in a very general
way, e.g., some proposition ;
3. They function as temporal indices in B-/C-series expressions such as
(t[TRL])A (At time in the B- or C-series, Antichrist exists)
explanation of symbols xi
Greek uppercase letters (, , etc.) are used as variables for individual world-
histories in time-structures (see Chapter i, 4.5).
Other notational devices are either self-explanatory or are explained in the
text.
Citation Style
My basic policy with respect to citation and quotation has been to be as

immediately informative as possible. In the case of primary sources this has
meant sacrificing brevity to clarity, but it should enable readers to see the
provenance of a given quotation or citation at a glance, without rummaging
through the bibliography. In many cases it should also facilitate reference to
editions other than the ones I use. For example, I often cite medieval sources
in the following way:
Ockham, Tractatus, q. 2, a. 2 [OPh vol. 2, p. 522, l. 68p. 523, l. 81]
The above citation refers first simply to Ockhams Tractatus de praedestina-

tione, question 2, article 2, enabling readers who have access only to Boehners
edition or to Adams and Kretzmanns translation to check the reference; then,
in square brackets, I give the volume, page, and line numbers of the Francis-
can Institute edition of Ockhams works. I take this approach throughout the
following pages wherever possible.
Secondary sources are cited and quoted in the normal way; for example, a
reference to Pelikan 1971: 313 refers to page 313 of the first volume of J. Pelikans
Christian Tradition.
References to Walter Chattons Reportatio super Sententias (rss) and Lectura
super Sententias (lss) are to book, distinction, and section number in Wey and
Etzkorns editions. References to Chattons Quodlibet are to individual question,
article, and section of Etzkorn and Keeles forthcoming edition of Paris BN MS
lat. 15805, ff. 54ra60rb.
In line with my basic policy, I have kept the use of ibid. and op. cit. down to
what I hope are tolerable levels.
All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.
List of Figures
1 Model 1 9
2 Model 2 9
3 A cross-tabulation of the A vs. B-/C-series and the actualist vs. modal realist
interpretations of the future 10
4 An example of a time-structure in the right-branching system 51
5 A schematization of Scotus instants of nature 101
6 The polarity-switch interpretation of Scotus synchronic contingency 107
7 The progress of a Scotistic creaturely agent through time 109
8 An initial model of Auriols world-picture 133
9 The world according to Auriol 135
10 The Revocable Default Future (RDF) model 157
11 A schematic representation of a Chattonian divine-knowledge2 claim 185
12 An example of a time-structure illustrating Chattons Day 2 system 213
13 A linear representation of Chattons Day 3 model 222
14 The Ockhamist Revocable Default Future model adapted to the doctrine of the
Contingency of Signification 237
15 The effects of Peters decisive action on the enthymeme 239
chapter 1
Introduction: History and Logical Analysis of the

Problem
1 The Heart of the Problem: A Question of Truth-Makers and

Truth-Bearers
Aristotles De Interpretatione, chapter 9, sets out the problem of future con-

tingents as follows. As agents, we generally assume that the future is open
regarding events that are up to us in some way: things may turn out one way
if we do one thing, or another way if we do something else. As respecters of
logic, however, we live under the iron rule of certain very basic truths, one of
which is the Law of Bivalence: for every proposition P, either it is true that P or
it is false that P.1 For Aristotle, as for modern classical logic, this principle was
unproblematically valid for statements of all kinds relating to present or past
states of affairs. Now, there seems no prima facie reason to make an exception
to the principle for statements about the future; hence, to take Aristotles own
example, the statement tomorrow there will be a sea-battle,2 which is the sort
of claim we normally associate with the contingency of human choice, must in
fact already have a discrete truth-value, albeit one unknown to us. Assuming
a standard correspondence theory of truth, this means that there is a matter
of fact today with respect to a supposedly contingent event tomorrow. This, in
turn, means that in some troubling intuitive sense, we are not free. The mat-
ter of fact regarding each of our free decisions tomorrow is already fixed; and
1 De Interpretatione ch. 9 is sometimes read as arguing for a distinction between the Law of
Excluded Middle (LEM) and the Principle of Bivalence (Biv). This is a very modern reading,
albeit an interesting one (see Kneale and Kneale 1962: 47 for the application of this distinction
to the interpretation of De Interpretatione ch. 9). In fact, the distinction between LEM and
Biv is a good example of a piece of technical nomenclature in search of a fixed meaning.
Depending on whom you ask, it clarifies either a distinction between semantics and syntax,
a distinction between object language and metalanguage, or a distinction regarding the locus
of affixation of a truth operator. A simple example of a system in which the two principles
come apart is Bochvars external three-valued logic, in which LEM, in the form T( ),
is valid, while Biv, in the form T() or F(), is not (Bergmann 2008: 8084). For a detailed
discussion of the distinction, see Devidi and Solomon 1999.
2 For the exact forms in which the example is given, see De Interpretatione 19a2932.
koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/9789004338340_002

2 chapter 1
although we do not yet have epistemic access to that matter of fact, there is
nothing we can do now to change that fixed future. To sum up, adherence to
a very fundamental principle of logic seems to lead inexorably to a violation
of a very fundamental principle of ethics and action theory: truth about the
future implies necessity in advance, which implies unfreedom. The doctrine
Aristotle sketches here has acquired the somewhat ill-fitting name of logi-
cal determinism to distinguish it from other forms of determinism, e.g., the
causal, Laplacean variety. The general line of reasoning by which he arrives at
it, which gives rise to the Mower Argument and the Lazy Argument in Hellenis-
tic philosophy, can be referred to by Suzanne Bobziens term truth-to-necessity
argument: by conceding future truth, one incurs present necessity.3
I intend no in-depth discussion of the ninth chapter of De Interpretatione.4
In this context, I merely want to emphasize that there are at least two general
kinds of worry in the problem as presented by Aristotle. Here they are, supple-
mented with some of the lines of inquiry to which they typically give rise:
(1) What is the reality status of future things, events, or states of affairs5 that
depend on chance or on agentic choice? Are such facts already in some
3 See Bobzien 1998: 7881 for the truth-to-necessity argument in the form of the Mower; for
the Lazy Argument, see ibid., 182198. The Master Argument of Diodorus Cronus should be
mentioned here as well. This was the claim that the following sentences form an inconsistent
triad:
(1) Every past truth is necessary.

(2) Something impossible does not follow from something possible.
(3) There is something possible which neither is nor will be true. (quoted in Long and
Sedley 1987: 230)
The argument has been variously construed (for a representative sampling of the different
versions, see Rescher 1966b, Prior 1967: 3235, Gaskin 1995: 282296, Denyer 1996, Bobzien
1999: 8892, and White 1999). A crux is the question of whether follow in sentence (2)
should be taken logically or chronologically; valid versions have been presented for both (see,
e.g., Prior and Gaskin for the first and Rescher for the second). As the interpretation of the
Master is so controversial, I have decided not to number it among the obvious progeny of De
Interpretatione ch. 9.
4 For those new to this enormous subject, Craig 1988: 158 is a good modern nontechnical
discussion. Also useful, though to my mind somewhat eccentric, is Ackrills commentary in
Aristotle 1963: 132142. For a short bibliography on the secondary literature on De Interpreta-
tione ch. 9, see Barnes (ed.) 1995: 312313.
5 Here and throughout this study, I often adopt the suggestion of Kretzmann (in Ammonius
and Boethius 1998, p. 187), translating res as things, events, and/or states of affairs. This
introduction: history and logical analysis of the problem 3
sense part of the present world, or do they have some degree of unreality?
Whether real or unreal, is the future already fixed in some sense, or
is it radically (i.e., ontologically) open? Does the either-or character of
these questions admit of no alternative, or is there a halfway house or
compromise between extreme positions?
(2) How do we assign truth-values to propositions about future contingent
things, events, or states of affairs? Are such propositions true, false, or
neither? Can a determinate truth-value be reconciled with real contin-
gency? If it cannotthat is, if contingency requires that such proposi-
tions be neither true nor falsedo future contingent propositions have a
third truth-value of intermediate character, or do they lack a truth-value
altogether? If they lack a truth-value, are they really propositions at all, or
are they some other kind of formal object or speech act?
Although the worries grouped in (1) and (2) are obviously related, they are
just as obviously distinct. The issues in (1) are ontological in character. They
center on facts about the world, including future facts (if such there be). The
worries here have to do with what are known, in modern parlance, as truth-
makers. By contrast, the issues in (2) are formal: they center on the truth-
status of propositions and call into question the propositional status of claims
about the future. The worries here are concerned with what are called truth-
bearers. Correspondence, including the Aristotelian variety,6 makes it easy to
slide between the two types of worry, butas we shall seetheir status as
distinct topics contributes to the most striking aspects of some of the theories
discussed in this study.
The foregoing sketch, which sticks to issues of truth-bearers and truth-
makers, is of course not the whole story. As the Neoplatonist Ammonius, writ-
ing in the fifth or early sixth century, observed, one of the reasons why the prob-
lem of future contingents is of perennial interest is that it is a nexus of many
different dilemmas, all of them difficult and important: an inquiry that initially
seems merely technical, and of relatively modest proportions, turns out upon
reflection to be a central and inescapable problem for any thinking person, and
to involve profound issues of ethics, natural science, and theology.7 The most
translation suggests the general and often ambiguous character of res in the scholastic
literature. As we shall see, this ambiguity plays a crucial role in Chattons approach to the
problem.
6 See Categories ch. 10 (12b1116), ch. 12 (14b1422); Metaphysics ch. 7 (1011b2527) for Aristo-
tles version of correspondence.
7 See Ammonius and Boethius 1998, pp. 9394.
4 chapter 1
important of these larger issues, for our purposes, is the dilemma of freedom
and divine foreknowledge. From the Hellenistic era on, the Divine as a knower
and willer of the future was perceived to threaten human freedom. When, in
the course of history, the Divine became the Creator God, a God whom one was
required to believe both omniscient and absolutely just, the problem of future
contingents assumed its most intractable form: faith demanded a belief in per-
fect divine foreknowledge and therefore (so it seemed) future facts to foreknow,
while at the same time it insisted on personal creaturely responsibility and
therefore (so it seemed to Aristotle, and so it seems to many people today)
real alternatives to those future facts. Modern Western thinkers, if they are so
inclined, can with impunity disregard the first demand, but the schoolmen had
no such luxury. They had to affirm divine omniscience and omnipotence while
developing an account of creaturely freedom sufficiently robust to allow the
legitimate ascription of responsibility for choices to the creatures themselves.
Indeed, as Keele 2014: 5.1 remarks, it was precisely the ineluctable character
of these competing demands that was responsible for the subtlety and com-
plexity of medieval solutions to the problem of future contingents. But even
for thinkers like Peter Auriol, William Ockham, and Walter Chatton, the issues
touched on in (1) and (2) remained central to the problem. These issues served
then, as they serve today, to define the problem of future contingents as a topic
in its own right, a topic that is distinct from the related ethical, scientific, and
theological concerns mentioned by Ammonius.
We have, then, a central knot of metaphysics, ontology, and theory of truth,
a knot that comes to be surrounded in the Middle Ages by a daunting tan-
gle of theological concerns. The examination of any thinkers approach to this
difficult and subtle problem demands contextualization. In order to under-
stand the attitude adopted toward the problem by Walter Chatton, an early
fourteenth-century English Franciscan best known for his relentless opposition
to Ockham on issues such as the structure of human cognition and explanatory
parsimony,8 it is necessary to describe the array of different approaches to the
problem he had at his disposal. Accordingly, this Introduction is an attempt
to trace the intellectual ancestry of Chattons ideas in this area, followed by an
analysis of Chattons own solution, or rather solutions, to the problem of future
contingents.
The structure of this Introduction is as follows. First, I present (in 2) a
simple schematic table representing what I regard as the basic positions one
8 For good introductions to Chatton and his significance, see Courtenay 1978: 6674, Keele
(2007: 666668; 2014) and Brower-Toland 2011.
might take on the question of future contingents from the ontological or truth-
maker perspective, followed by a discussion of how theories of truth pattern
with models of the world. This is followed (3) by a brief and equally schematic
historical account of three central pattern arguments that play a crucial role
in the development of scholastic thought on this question. Sections 47
consist of a chronologically ordered survey of the main models that influenced
Chattons thinking. 8 examines the usage provisions governing the important
scholastic term ponere in esse (posit in being). 9 sums up the analysis of
the foregoing sections. Finally, 10 presents my interpretation of Chattons
inconclusive struggle with the problem and 11 places his thought in historical
context.
It is, of course, impossible to render a complete account of the intellectual
context of any thinker on any subject, and this Introduction does not pretend
to be a comprehensive guide to the status quaestionis as it presented itself to
the mind of a rather quirky and original Franciscan in the early 1320s. Two
self-imposed limitations in particular should be mentioned. The first is one
of topical focus. Although a specific structural difference between divine and
creaturely cognition plays a large role in my analysis, I otherwise concentrate
on the interaction of world-picture and theory of truth, paying relatively lit-
tle attention to the surrounding theological issues. Predestination, in particu-
lar, is touched upon only intermittently. This limitation is in keeping with my
belief that the issues discussed in (1) and (2) above represent the heart of the
problem of future contingents. It is also in keeping with the peculiar histori-
cal juncture occupied by Walter Chatton as a theorist of that problem. Chatton
stands near the beginning of a tradition which Hoenen 1993: 244 has called
logico-semantic. This approach sees a central role for the formal analysis of
propositions and inference in solving problems associated with divine cog-
nition. Hoenen claims that the tradition begins in earnest with Ockham and
Chatton, butas he himself acknowledgesthe ideas had been lingering in
the background since late antiquity (ibid.). Whether or not Hoenen is right
about Ockham, he is certainly right about Chatton: the latters treatment of
future contingents is strikingly dependent on an array of logico-semantic tools
developed specially for the purpose of solving the problems under discussion.
Accordingly, my main focus is on analytical rather than theological forerunners
of Chattons ideas.
The second limitation, or rather principle of selection, has to do with
thinkers. Throughout this study, the focus is more on conceptual structure than
on indisputable doctrinal influence, and that for two reasons. First, one of the
points I want to make is that many ostensibly different theories are in fact close
conceptual variants of each other: what I call Boethian logical compatibilism
6 chapter 1
is the default position during the entire Middle Ages (and, I would argue, even
today). Second, until we get to the late thirteenth century, what matters is less
the establishment of a definite pedigree of influence (virtually impossible in
any case) than a fixing of the broad developmental outlines of medieval thought
on future contingents as seen from Chattons perspective. Chatton is reacting to
the entire tradition, but he is doing so in a highly idiosyncratic way; my histori-
cal review of the problem is conditioned by this idiosyncrasy. In consequence,
as a general rule I only discuss thinkers who fall into one of three categories:
(a) those whose writings display, in perspicuous form, crucial features of any
of the major variants of the right-branching analysis that develops over the
centuries preceding Chattons workBoethius is the palmary example here;
(b) those whose work participates in what I call the pleromatic tradition that
responds to perceived inadequacies in the Boethian modelPeter Damian and
William of Auvergne are two examples; and (c) those whose writings illus-
trate ideas that indeed exercised a special influence on Chatton himself, as
evidenced in dd. 3841 of Book i of his Reportatio super Sententias and, to a
lesser extent, qq. 2729 of his Quodlibetand these writers include Duns Sco-
tus, Thomas Wylton, Peter Auriol, and William Ockham. On the other hand,
I do not discuss St. Augustines views on time and free choice, although they
can hardly have failed to exert a deep influence on Chatton the man; I pass
over Anselm of Canterbury, since his views on future contingents are largely
outgrowths of those of Boethius; and I omit any discussion of the highly inter-
esting and original writings of Siger of Brabant and Durandus of Saint-Pourain
simply because they seem to have exerted no influence on Chattons views on
future contingents and fall outside the topics that were of central concern to
him.9
2 Models of the World and Theories of Truth
In order to sharpen the focus on the problem of future contingents, let us return
briefly to Aristotle. Despite its notorious obscurity, De Interpretatione ch. 9 lays
out the problem of logical determinism in an attractively simple way. The fun-
damental threat is clearly presented: future truth seems to imperil present
9 There are some exceptions to these exceptions. Anxiety about falling into heresy on the
subject of predestination plays a crucial role in shaping Chattons own presentation of
his views on future contingents; hence there is some discussion of different doctrines on
predestination in 10 below. Predestination is, of course, a major theme in dd. 4041, and
is therefore discussed in some detail in the commentary on this part of Chattons text.
conative freedom. Aristotles solution, however, is not so clear. The text of De

Interpretatione has given rise to two basic approaches to the problem. One of
them questions the need of assigning one of the truth-values T or F to future
statements. According to this approach, all statements about the present and
past have a unique and fixed truth-value (whether T or F), but future contin-
gent propositions have, as yet, either no truth-value or an intermediate one.
The other main approach retains fixed truth-values for future contingents but
appends modal or quasi-modal operators to them: every statement about the
future has a unique truth-value, but some true statements about the future,
including those under the control of free agents, are not definitely or deter-
minately true, and some false statements about the future are not definitely
or determinately false. By contrast, propositionsall propositionsabout
the present and the past have both unique and definite or determinate truth-
values. (The operators definitely and determinately can often be read, par-
ticularly in the early literature, as the modal operator necessarily.) The two
approaches just described are, in fact, rival interpretations of Aristotle him-
self. The first approach, which reads Aristotle as introducing truth-value gaps
or intermediate truth-values, is sometimes called the oldest or traditional
interpretation of De Interpretatione chapter 9; the early Peripatetics and the
Stoics apparently read Aristotle this way. The second approach, which has Aris-
totle holding fast to bivalence but modally qualifying the truth or falsehood of
future statements, is sometimes called the second-oldest or nontraditional
interpretation; Ammonius, Boethius, and al-Frb are important exponents
here, and in the Latin West the source is above all the sections on chapter 9
in Boethius two commentaries on De Interpretatione.10 For ease of reference,
I shall call the first approach T3 (for 3 values, or two plus a truth-value gap)
and the second approach T2 (for two truth-values augmented with the quasi-
modal operator definitely or determinately), with the caveat that it is the
approaches themselves that are so designated rather than their status as inter-
pretations of Aristotle.11
10 Boethius 1877, pp. 103126 and 1880, pp. 184250. I discuss Boethius various theories in
44.5.4.
11 The distinction between the two interpretations of Aristotles text can be characterized
in a number of different ways; the presentation here is in line with that of Sorabji 1980:
9293, Kretzmann 1998: 2426, and Mignucci 1998: 5386. Sorabji 1980: 9294 includes an
extensive list of sources for these attributions. For the nontraditional approach within
the Arabic tradition, see Rescher 1963: 4354 and Adamson 2006. For an alternative
characterization of the two approaches, see Ackrills commentary in [Aristotle 1963, p. 133
and pp. 138142]. (Somewhat confusingly, Ackrills first approach corresponds roughly to
8 chapter 1
2.1 Two Models of the World

Although it is, as mentioned, common to characterize T3 as a truth-value-
oriented theory (albeit a radical one, incorporating intermediate values or
truth-value gaps) and T2 as a theory that distinguishes between claims about
truth-value and claims about modality, modality is in fact a central concern
of both interpretations; what varies is the uses to which it is put. In order to
illustrate the point, let us turn away from the issues of Aristotle-interpretation
and theories of truth. Pretheoretically, what is at stake in this problem, what
matters to us as agents, is after all not our commitment to this or that theory
of propositional truth or to this or that interpretation of modal operators. The
most important issues have to do with the way we think about the world we
inhabit and in which we act. We seem to be faced with a stark choice between
two models of the world.
In the first model, represented in Fig. 1 (next page), the future is fictile; it
contains an open field for agentic influence. On such a view, there are some
res (i.e., some things, events, or states of affairs) about which there is as yet no
fixed matter of fact, although there may be some res that are more probable,
easier of agentic access, than are others. Those unsettled res are matters that
lie in the absolute future, a future over which some agents, in virtue of their
being situated at a metaphysically privileged now, have real control. Point
B corresponds to (t0), the present; point A represents the state of the world
one unit of time ago (however measured); and points C and C represent two
possible futures, each of them one unit of time hence, for some agent(s) at B.
At C, (some state-description of the world) is the case; at C, is the case. The
issue of which world, C or C, turns out in due course to be the real present, is,
in the strongest possible sense, up to the aforementioned agent(s) at B. This
picture of the world is arguably the default modern common-sense model of
the universe, so designated by Storrs McCall in his book-length investigation
of it (McCall 1994).
In the second model, shown in Fig. 2, the future is fixed. Irrespective of the
causal laws we assume, there is a correct four-dimensional description of the
world, and that description contains elements that are in what appears to us as
the future. In Fig. 2, the real future contains only C, and with it the proposition
or res ; the alternative future C, containing as it were the negation of , is an
unreal modal alternative (however we choose to define such quasi-entities). In
the nontraditional reading, his second approach to the traditional reading.) See also
Goris 1996: 222235 and Sder 1999: 1719 for a different (non-modal) interpretation of
the qualifiers definite and determinate.
figure 1 Model 1 figure 2 Model 2
such a model, the world is an ultimately static object; past, present, and future
are reduced to indexical terms like here and there. Furthermore, agentic
modal alternatives must be conceived as somehow unreal or merely formal in
nature. Such a model can be characterized as the modern (or perhaps early
modern) scientific picture of the world.12
It can be observed that there are two parameters separating the two models.
First of all, Model 1 incorporates an interpretation of time as irreducibly flow-
ing, while Model 2 portrays time as an extended static medium not essentially
different from space. In modern terms, Model 1 shows an A-series interpreta-
tion of time, while Model 2 endorses a B- or C-series approach.13 In the respec-
tive diagrams, this distinction is reflected in the numbering of instants. In Fig. 1,
the branching point is designated as (t0), conceived as the privileged now, a
now which will redomicile itself in one of the two points C and C in the next
instant; in Fig. 2, the branching point is designated as (t), conceived simply as
one moment in the time-sequence without any special privileges and subject
to no redomiciling. A second and equally important difference concerns the
two models conception of the ontological status of the future. In Model 1, both
C and C are real in the sense of having ontological weight sufficient to qual-
12 Note that while Model 1 clearly respects the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (Frank-
furt 1969: 829), the question as to whether Model 2 respects it is by no means easy to
answer.
13 For the distinction, see the classic exposition in McTaggart 1908. McTaggart himself dis-
tinguished carefully between (1) the B-series, a static medium that nevertheless depends
for the meaningfulness of its categories earlier and later on a more fundamental A-
series, and (2) the C-series, an independent and truly timeless medium in which there is
no place for the categories earlier and later but in which there is a strict ordering of
events. Most modern writers who use the term B-series use it in the sense McTaggart
deemed appropriate for the C-series.
10 chapter 1
ify them as genuine possibilities for the strong libertarian power of some agent.
There are possible futures in which obtains, and there are possible futures in
which obtains: as agents move through the time-flow (or, alternatively, as
time flows past agents), one or the other of these futures will be eliminated in
what McCall 1994: 10 terms branch attrition. Model 1, in other words, takes a
modal realist view of the alternative futures: all future possible worlds really
exist, at least in the sense that they represent live possibilities.14 Model 2, how-
ever, has an actualist character. Only future C is real: C is an unreal though
conceptually coherent alternative future, an alternative future which, in fact,
will not take place.
Although there are some conceptual connections between them, the A-
series vs. B-/C-series distinction is orthogonal to the modal realism vs. actu-
alism vis--vis the future distinction. When we cross-tabulate the distinctions,
we get the following table:
Forward-branching Forward-branching
actualism: modal realism:
A-Series: A(a): A(mr):

Boethius, Abelard, Aquinas, Model 1; Alexander of
Gregory of Rimini, many Aphrodisias, Gersonides,
others Storrs McCall
B-/C-Series: BC(a): BC(mr):

Adherents of Model 2 (Default Modal realists such as David
model of Newtonian physics) Lewis
figure 3 A cross-tabulation of the A vs. B-/C-series and the actualist vs. modal realist
interpretations of the future
14 McCall himself draws attention to this feature of his model (McCall 1994: 198). For modal
realism in general, see Lewis 1986; for Lewis critical evaluation of a McCall-like theory,
see ibid., pp. 206209. There is, of course, another way of characterizing the fictile future,
namely as entirely non-existent, as in Broads Growing Block Theory (see Gustavsson
2010: 3). This theory has considerable conceptual territory in common with McCalls
modal realism: both theories postulate that although neither C nor C yet exclusively exists,
both are ontologically available for realization by agents. This symmetry of alternative
futures explains why I am treating Broads theory as a variant of A(mr) despite the
apparently large ontological difference between the two theories.
Obviously, this schema by no means exhausts the conceptual possibilities

inherent in the categories used. For example, the A- vs. B-/C-series distinction
represents merely two out of a wide variety of ways of looking at and thinking
about time; applied to the enormously rich and varied literature on future con-
tingents, it is a crude oversimplification, and doubtless an anachronistic one.
Moreover, the combination of A-series and modal realism does not actually
compel branch attrition, which must be assumed on an ad hoc basis.15 Never-
theless it will serve as a workable typology of the approaches to this network of
problems. Model 1 obviously belongs in the A(mr) corner, and Model 2 fits into
the BC(a) slot. The bottom-right slot suggests a thoroughgoing modal realism
that would include real alternative pasts (since in this corner the A-series does
not successively prune initially real branches out of existence).16 As for the top-
left slot, it suggests a model in which there is a single real line of events, and
in which all modal alternatives have a merely formal character, but in which
the moving now nevertheless constantly (and rather pointlessly, one might
say) slides forward. Such a model has its advantages: it would be an ideal con-
ceptual framework for a thinker who, while conceding the reality of flowing
time, is nevertheless anxious to secure a stable fact of the matter about the
future. Aquinas, on some views, was such a thinker; while affirming Gods eter-
nal knowledge of creation, to include His knowledge of real and counterfactual
futures, he conceded the independent reality of the flowing nunc.17 As I argue
below, Boethius and Abelard belong here too, as indeed do most of the school-
men; and there are doubtless many modern adherents.
15 For example, William of Auvergne seems to have had a robust A-theory of time (see
N. Lewis 2010b: 6.5); furthermore, I characterize him as a modal realist; but his modal
realism seems to have been more encompassing than, say, Gersonides or Alexander of
Aphrosdias, and to have included even past counterfactuals (see 5.1.25.1.2.3 below).
16 Real alternative pasts in the sense of ways the world might have otherwise been given
prior alternative choices or branchings, not alternative in the sense of allowing left-
branching.
17 See st i, q. 14, a. 9, co. [aoo vol. 2, p. 208] for Gods knowledge of reals and counterfactuals
and ibid., q. 10, a. 1, ad 5 and a. 4 ad 2 [aoo vol. 2, p. 196]. In the last text cited, Aquinas
goes so far as to say fluxus ipsius nunc est tempus. Craig 1988: 116118 and Adams
1987: 1121 have downplayed this aspect of Aquinas understanding of time to the extent
of claiming that he was an out-and-out B-theorist; on this issue see the (to my mind)
convincing rebuttal in Zagzebski 1991: 4856.
12 chapter 1
2.2 Fitting Truth Operators to Ontology: The Correspondence

Assumption
Where, then, do T3 and T2 belong in Fig. 3? Recall that T3 is supposed to be
about truth-values, as T2 is about the distinction between truth-values and
quasi-modal operators. Now if T3 introduces a truth-value gap or intermediate
value, a reasonable assumption is that it does so in order to reflect a real
indeterminacyan indeterminacy, that is, on the truth-maker sidebetween
two opposing futures. In other words, if, at time (t0), we assign the truth-value
U (for Undetermined) to the proposition (t+1), we do so because the four-
dimensional facts on the ground compel that assignment. T3, then, would seem
to belong to the same corner as Model 1 and McCalls model, namely A(mr).
On this interpretation, the assignment of the values T or F to any (tf) (where
f is some future moment) are given just in case, at time t0, (tf) is conatively
necessary or impossible respectively, with the further proviso that a modal
realist account is given of the possible futures quantified over by the operators
necessary and impossible.18 Absent such necessity or impossibility, there is
no determinate in-advance matter of fact about . The truth- or false-maker
of the claim , in such a case, can be considered to be in an indeterminate
state, a state which (on correspondence) would compel the assignment of U.
T3, as a way of expressing A(mr), would on this reading reflect a philosophical
sensibility that sees logical determinism as a serious threat to freedom worthy
of a radical response, namely the erosion of the principle of bivalence for a
large class of propositions and states of affairs.
By the same token, T2 seems to belong in the A(a) corner with Boethius and
company. T2s ability to assign a definite value of T or F to any (tf), irrespective
of determinateness (read as necessity or impossibility), comports well with
A(a)s assumption that there is, at time (t0), a stable and uniquely real truth-
or false-maker for the proposition (tf). This truth- or false-maker is a state
of affairs which obtains, whether or not it can be known, independently of
the presence or absence of modal or quasi-modal alternatives. T2, as a way of
expressing A(a), fits a sensibility that takes logical determinism as a relatively
trivial threat (if a threat at all); no radical response is necessary, just a bit of
conceptual analysis.
This intuitive assignment of theories of truth to world-pictures explains why
endorsing a multivalued logic (or anything approaching it) was so dangerous
for philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages. According to this schema,
18 Once again, Broads Growing Block Theory can be subsumed under the heading of modal
realism for our purposes.
T3 amounts to the claim that the future, in order to safeguard creaturely free-
dom, must be genuinely unsettled; hence, there must be things that God cannot
know until they actually happen, a result which seems to impugn divine omni-
science and to render uncertain of fulfillment the promises made by God and
His messengers in prophecy. Moreover, it also implies that His store of knowl-
edge is constantly growing, a result which ill comports with His immutability.
Finally, the dependence of Gods knowledge of the future on the occurrence
of that future opens the door to, though it does not directly imply, a Pelagian
approach to the question of personal salvation: if God does not know whether
or not X will be saved, perhaps it is Xs effective and independent will, to be exer-
cised in the future, that blocks the precise lineaments of that future from Gods
view.19 The danger was very real and very personal: Peter de Rivo, a fifteenth-
century master at the University of Louvain who made the tactical mistake of
defending T3, with considerable rhetorical flair, as his own theory, found him-
self accused of heresy and forced to recant.20 T2, by contrast, was and isagain
on this assignment of theories of truth to world-picturesa relatively peace-
ful harbor for an orthodox theologian anxious to safeguard Gods omniscience
and immutability, although perspectival truths having to do with the locus of
the moving now still create unsettling problems.21
19 The various references in this study to Pelagius, Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism

may require a brief explanation. Pelagius (fl. c. 400) was a (probably Irish) heresiarch
who, along with his followers Julian of Eclanum and Celestius, became embroiled with St.
Augustine in a series of disputes in the early fifth century on the subjects of predestination,
original sin, and free will. Put simply, Pelagius and his followers rejected the doctrine of
original sin and held that the unaided human will, without the need of special grace,
sufficed to achieve salvation. The semi-Pelagians (the term dates from the sixteenth
century) were a group of fifth- and sixth-century theologians who sided with Augustine
on the questions of original sin and the need for grace while rejecting his strict doctrine of
predestination (see Pelikan 1971: 313320). Accusations of Pelagianism during the Middle
Ages can focus on any of these aspects.
20 For de Rivo and his opponents, see the texts collected in Baudry 1950 and the discussion
in Schabel 2000: 315336.
21 Of the two positions on the top tier, A(a) is the clearly the more stable position for
an orthodox theologian of any of the Abrahamic religions. Hence it is unsurprising to
find such a position urged in the Thirteenth Discussion of al-Ghazls Incoherence of
the Philosophers [al-Ghazl 2000, pp. 136139] and in Maimonides distinction between
human and divine cognition in the Guide of the Perplexed iii: 2021 [Maimonides 1963,
pp. 480485]. Both al-Ghazl and Maimonides insist, against the philosophers, that
God knows particular events from eternity; for this to be the case, such particular events,
events that fall under the scope of an ontologically exclusive disjunction, must in some
14 chapter 1
As we shall see, however, not all thinkers endorsed this intuitively plausible
Correspondence Assumption. Theories of propositional truth and models of
the world can and do come apart; there are T2 models that should be placed in
the A(mr) field, and T3 models that should be placed in the A(a) field. Moreover,
way exist. Modal realism with respect to alternative possibilities in the future, in other
words, is a non-starter for these two thinkers. Yet both also take temporal flow seriously.
This can be seen especially clearly in the case of al-Ghazl, who deems it necessary, in
order to establish divine immutability, to construe Gods relation to the moving now
as an instance of mere Cambridge change [al-Ghazl 2000, pp. 138139]. This last is a
popular option in the Latin west as well; see, e.g., the discussion of Ockham below at
7.2.2.
As for A(mr), it was represented, as indicated in Fig. 3, by the occasional ancient or
medieval theorist of importance. That Alexander of Aphrodisias was an adherent of A(mr)
is strongly suggested by his libertarian account of human action in On Fate, chapter 15
(translated in Sharples 1983: 6364), as well as the rather laissez-faire causal indetermin-
ism outlined in chapters 2325 (ibid., 7175). Calcidius is another candidate; his doctrine
on these matters seems similar to that of Alexander (see, e.g., his remarks on the appar-
ently strong metaphysical causal power of human choices in Den Boeft 1970: 28, section
151). The fourteenth-century Jewish philosopher Gersonides is a complicated and inter-
esting case; embracing A(mr), he solved the divine mutability problems associated with
this model by simply quarantining Gods knowledge from any contact with contingency.
He endorsed the following doctrines: God, being immutable, can have no knowledge of
temporal reality, since the latter necessarily involves flux (Levi ben Gershom 1987, vol. 2,
p. 120). Since, as a God of the Arabic Neoplatonic stamp, He knows no contingent particu-
lars (ibid., pp. 117118), He has no knowledge of the temporal indices attaching to particular
events, nor which of several real options any creature will choose in the future (ibid.,
p. 118). However, this is not in any meaningful sense a cognitive deficit, since He has all the
knowledge that is condign for God to have, namely a complete knowledge of the function-
ing of eternal physical and moral laws (ibid., pp. 118119). The implications of this model
are even more radical than a superficial reading already suggests: since (a) there is a multi-
tude of really possible futures but only one real present (this is never specifically asserted,
but assumed throughout the discussion) and (b) Gods immutable knowledge does not
register particular free choices made by His creatures in time (specifically asserted at ibid.,
p. 134), it follows that (c) God does not know which, of the set of histories of the world
which He has allowed to be possible, is the real history. He has a complete knowledge
of the branching modal map of the world, as it were the geography of Borges Garden of
Forking Paths, but does not know which path His creatures have chosen to follow. Gerson-
ides chapter on providence has been called a theological monstrosity (Husik 1941: 346);
it is at all events a most striking and original piece of work, and it is rather a pity to have
to relegate it to a footnote, but it falls outside the scope of this study except as a sugges-
tive comparandum with some of Walter Chattons theories (see 10.1.2.1, 10.1.4.10.1.4.3
below).
there are cases (as will become clear when we look at Boethius) in which it is
hard to say whether the theory of truth is best characterized as T2 or T3.
3 Either the Fallibility of God as Foreknower, or the Necessitation of

Creaturely Action: Sophismata or Genuine Puzzles?
Before analyzing individual thinkers treatments of the problem of future con-

tingents, I want to set forth a problem complex that underlies many thinkers
solutions to the problem from late antiquity to the Middle Ages. This is a group
of illustrative arguments purporting to erode either freedom of choice or divine
omniscience and immutability. Some of these arguments simply invoke Aris-
totelian logical determinism, leaving God out of the account entirely. In antiq-
uity, the aforementioned Lazy and Mower Arguments make no mention of
God or the gods. In the Middle Ages, God is of course an imposing presence
in these discussions, but not an inescapable one. Anselm, for example, reduces
the problem of foreknowledge and freedom to the truth-to-necessity argument,
bracketing considerations of divine foreknowledge until he has established
the distinction between precedent and sequent necessity; Peter Auriol regards
truth-to-necessity as a powerful argument quite apart from divine foreknowl-
edge; and Walter Chatton accepts logical determinism with regards to a specific
class of propositions or states of affairs, again without bringing God into the
equation.22
Many arguments, however, directly involve problems associated with divine
cognition of the future. Such problems, Anselms (and some modern com-
mentators23) confidence notwithstanding, cannot be reduced to the truth-to-
necessity argument. Many issues involved in so-called theological determin-
ism are absent from the logical variety, and these subtleties merit a discus-
sion of their own. As we shall see, the treatment of the specifically theological
issues is conditioned by the psychology of human epistemic reasoning.
22 For Anselm, see De concordia i (2) [Anselmi opera omnia vol. 2, p. 248, l. 7p. 249, l. 2]:
Quare cum dico quia si praescit deus aliquid, necesse est illud esse futurum: idem est
ac si dicam: Si erit, ex necessitate erit. Auriols theory is discussed in 6.26.2.7 below.
The Chatton text (admittedly rather obscure) is rss i, d. 38 [34] and [48]; see text and
commentary on these sections.
23 hrstrm 2009: 18 is one.
16 chapter 1
3.1 A First Try: The Appeal to Scope Disambiguation

In their simplest forms, the arguments here discussed do not require any specif-
ically temporal-logical machinery for their evaluation. Ultimately, they are
based on what Marenbon 2005: 14 calls the nave argument against contin-
gency, which takes the following form:
1. Necessarily, if A knows that P, then P.

2. A knows that P.
3. It follows that, necessarily, P.
The argument, though psychologically plausible,24 is a formal fallacy. In any

normal modal logic, Step 3 does not follow from steps 1 and 2: we may con-
clude P, but not P, from the premise set. The argument can be made all
the more psychologically plausible by stipulating that the knower in ques-
tion is God; it can be made all the more psychologically unnerving when the
known in question is an event which has not yet taken place. I shall use the
term Divine Foreknowledge Necessitates, abbreviated as DFN, for any ver-
sion of the nave argument that has these two features. As Marenbon 2005: 44
stresses in connection with Boethius presentation of the nave argument, fore-
knowledge as such plays no significant role in the reasoning. What is relevant
are the mere semantics of the verb know and the fact that those semantics
seem to apply with necessitating force when it is Gods knowledge that is at
issue.
The roots of DFN extend back to late Hellenism. Cicero, presumably speak-
ing for the New Academy, presents the dilemma in a simple, intuitive, and valid
modus tollens form: if God knows the future, the future will certainly take place;
but chance exists (i.e., we have no right to the certainly); hence, there is no
foreknowledge.25 If we read certainly (certe) as necessarily, the first premise
is DFN in little. In reasoning from the denial of the consequent to the denial of
the antecedent, one of course accepts the (dubious) validity of the argument
that is packed into the conditional sentence. After Cicero, the modus tollens
structure of the argument remains, but its valence is reversed: this reasoning
is used not as a means of establishing divine fallibility (or lack of certain fore-
knowledge) but as a provocative argument in favor of determinism. If chance
(or creaturely freedom) exists, there is no certain foreknowledge; but, on pain
of impiety, there is certain foreknowledge; hence, there is no chance or crea-
24 See Swartz 2011 for a thorough discussion.

25 See Cicero, De divinatione ii. vii. 18 [Cicero 1923, pp. 388390].
turely freedom. It is in this form that we encounter the argument in Boethius

Consolation of Philosophy:
For if [creaturely actions] can be turned aside into a different way from
that foreseen, then there will no longer be firm foreknowledge of the
future, but rather uncertain opinion, which I judge impious to believe of
God.26
Tr. tester, in boethius 1973, p. 395
Using the notation of standard second-order propositional logic with tempo-

ral, modal, and doxastic operators, we can represent the transition from the
Ciceronian to the Boethian presentation of the argument in this way (keeping
in mind that Fut means it will be the case that ):
The Ciceronian version of the argument:
1. ()(BGFut Fut) ()(Fut Fut)27

2. ()(Fut Fut)
3. ()(BGFut Fut) = ()(BGFut Fut)
The Boethian version of the argument:
1. ()(Fut Fut) ()(BGFut Fut)

2. ()(BGFut Fut)
3. ()(Fut Fut) = ()(Fut Fut)
By the twelfth century, these two arguments acquire an enthymematic charac-

ter; the explicit (and questionable) first premises retreat into the conceptual
background, and the validity of the arguments comes to turn on underlying
26 The Consolation of Philosophy, v. pr. iii [Boethius 1973, p. 394]: Nam si aliorsum quam
provisae sunt detorqueri valent, non iam erit futuri firma praescientia, sed opinio potius
incerta, quod de deo credere nefas iudico.
27 Throughout this study, I formulate divine knowledge claims as in terms of doxastic rather
than epistemic operators, i.e., BG for God believes that . Formulating divine knowledge
in this way allows me to sidestep irrelevant issues associated with the knowledge axiom
(K ) and to clarify the relation between divine cognition, which is presumed to be
complete and infallible, and creaturely cognition, which is presumed to be neither. Note
that for God, belief and knowledge coincide in any case, i.e., some form of the axiom (BG
) must always be presumed to be in effect.
18 chapter 1
assumptions about scope, time, and the nature of modality. The scholastic
literature now almost invariably presents these arguments as sophisms. The
Boethian version turns into DFN. A late but representative syllogistic variant is
given by Walter Chatton:
Everything known by God is, of necessity, true; that Antichrist will be is

known by God; therefore, of necessity, it is true.28
Quite obviously, the validity of this argument turns on the scope of the neces-
sity operator, which is notoriously ambiguous in many natural languages,
including Latin and English. If we formulate the first premise as ()(BG
), we have an invalid argument with true premises; if we formulate it as
()(BG ), we have a valid argument whose soundness depends on the
truth of its first premise.
From the Ciceronian version, shorn of its first premise, there emerges, per-
haps by way of Augustine as well as Boethius,29 an argument that turns up
quite often in scholastic philosophy,30 and which I shall call God Can Be
Wrong, abbreviated as GCBW. According to Marenbon 1997: 227, this argument
appears for the first time as an independent sophism in William of Champeaux.
Abelard, who presumably inherited it from his former master, has two fairly
substantial discussions of it.31 In Peter Lombards Sentences, it appears in the
following form:
28 Chatton, rss i, d. 38 [1]: [O]mne scitum a Deo de necessitate est verum: Antichristum
fore est scitum a Deo; igitur de necessitate est verum.
29 See De civitate Dei v.9 [Augustinus 1955, pp. 136140], cited in Abelard, Logica [Philosophis-
che Schriften p. 429, l. 29].
30 For example, it is clear from Abelards language in the Logica that the argument was
already widely known in the twelfth century:
Nunc autem illam callidam, sed cavillatoriam ponamus et solvamus argumentationem,

qua plerique conantur ostendere ex eo quod res aliter evenire possunt quam eveniunt,
posse Deum falli
Philosophische Schriften, p. 429, ll. 2628
Now let us pose and solve that clever but sophistical argument by which very many people
try to show that the fact that something can happen otherwise than it happens [implies]
that God can be wrong
31 Abelard, in Dialectica ii. ii. [ed. De Rijk, 1956, pp. 217219], distinguishes between the
incorrect de sensu interpretation, (BG ), and the correct de re interpretation (BG
). Later writers replace the term de sensu with the familiar de dicto. In Abelards
God foreknew that this one would hold a lecture, or something of this
kind; but it can be that this one does not hold the lecture; therefore it can
be otherwise than God foreknew; therefore Gods foreknowledge can be
mistaken.32
The subsequent history of these two sophisms can be sketched as follows. As

the two examples above suggest, at some point before or during the thirteenth
century, the sophisms were pulled into the formal orbit of Aristotles modal
syllogistic. Solutions during this period are conceptually organized around the
claim that the triad {BGP, P, ()(BG )} is inconsistent. Appeal is often
made to Analytica Priora 30a1530a23, which seems to provide authoritative
support for this claim.33 Reactions to the claim focus on showing, by appeal
to correct scope analysis, that the triad is consistent. The tools employed for
this analysis are the de re / de dicto distinction, the sensus compositus / sen-
other discussion of the sophism, which takes place in the context of his commentary
on De Interpretatione chapter 9, he explores options that do not make use of scope
disambiguation (see 4.6.1 for discussion).
32 Sententiae i, d. 38, c. 2 [Lombard 1971, p. 278, l. 27p. 279, l. 2]: Deus praescivit hunc
lecturum, vel aliquid huiusmodi; sed potest esse ut iste non legat; ergo potest aliter esse
quam Deus praescivit; ergo potest falli Dei praescientia.
33 In fact, this passage represents a notorious crux in the interpretation of Aristotles modal
syllogistic:
Accidit autem quandoque et altera propositione necessaria necessarium fieri syllogis-

mum ut si A quidem B ex necessitate sumptum est inesse vel non inesse, B autem C
inesse tantum; sic enim sumptis propositionibus, ex necessitate A inerit C vel non inerit.
Analytica priora p. 21, ll. 511, 30a1530a23
It sometimes happens that if one of the propositions is necessary, a necessary syllogism

[i.e., with a necessary conclusion] comes to be as [for example] if A is assumed to
belong or not belong to B necessarily, but B [belongs to] C only assertorically; taking the
propositions this way, A will belong or not belong to C necessarily.
The exposition is problematic because it virtually compels a de re reading, according to

which the first premise would come out as All B is (necessarily A). But such a reading
conflicts with the conversion rules, which, if applied as stated, would license the following
clearly invalid sequent:
All B is (necessarily A) Some A is (necessarily B)
See Lagerlund 2010 for details.

20 chapter 1
sus divisus distinction, the distinction between necessitas consequentiae and

necessitas consequentis, andwithin the context of modal syllogisticthe dis-
tinction between the modes de inesse ut nunc and de inesse simpliciter. The first
three distinctions often function as simple scope disambiguators; the fourth
effectively points out that the arguments might be made valid if a necessity
operator (i.e., an operator of the mode de inesse simpliciter) were prefixed to
BGFutP.34 Many of these conceptual tools can be observed in a careful anal-
ysis by Duns Scotus which William Ockham takes over almost without alter-
ation, although both these analyses postdate the early phase under discussion
here.35
We end up with two obviously related argument forms, both of which fre-
quently appear side by side in Sentences commentaries of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries. These are two of several pattern arguments which I have
found useful in articulating the general approach of scholastic thinkers on the
problem of future contingents; more will follow.36 As for these two, they practi-
cally invite a solution by scope disambiguation of the modal operator. On such
an analysis, DFN comes out as either invalid or unsound, while GCBW emerges
as either invalid or harmless. Assuming that P is a contingently true claim about
the future, the disambiguated structures of these arguments look like this:
Divine Foreknowledge Necessitates:
Wide scope: {()(BG ), BGFutP} FutP (Invalid)

True True False
Narrow scope: {()(BG ), BGFutP} FutP (Valid but unsound)

False True False
34 Marenbon 2005: 93116 mentions Stephen Langton, Peter of Poitiers, Roland of Bologne,
and Alain de Lille as belonging to the sophismatic tradition. Indeed, examples of the use
of these tools to tackle this argument-complex could be multiplied arbitrarily by anyone
familiar with Book i, dd. 3839 of 13th15th c. Sentences commentaries.
35 For the discussion in Scotus, see Ordinatio i, d. 38, pt. 2d. 39, qq. 15 [Vat. vol. 6, p. 402, l. 15
p. 403, l. 4; p. 433, l. 11p. 436, l. 4] and the analyses below at 3.2.2 and 5.2.3. Ockhams
version appears in the Tractatus de praedestinatione (see OPh vol. 2, p. 521, l. 43p. 524,
l. 104).
36 I define a total of seven pattern arguments, but only three of them are discussed in this
Introduction. For the complete list, together with formalizations, see Appendix.
God Can Be Wrong:
Wide scope: {BGFutP, FutP} ()(BG ) (Invalid)

True True False
Narrow scope: {BGFutP, FutP} ()(BG ) (Valid but harmless)

True True True
Marenbon 2005: 93116 gives the name sophismatic solution to this analysis,
which he traces to Peter Lombard. Lombard himself finds an easy riposte to
GCBW. If, counterfactually, the future were not to happen, God would not know
it:
Indeed, something can fail to happen, even though it is foreknown that

it will happen; however, it cannot therefore be inferred that Gods fore-
knowledge can err, since if that thing failed to occur, it would not have
been foreknown by God to occur.37
As we shall see, this move is anything but unproblematic.
3.2 The Inadequacy of the Sophismatic Solution

Despite its perennial popularity,38 this sophismatic solution is too coarse-
grained to do justice to the problem. Moreover, it has been felt to be so by
thinkers from late antiquity to the present; hence the conversation continued,
and continues. The problem, essentially, is that the solution validates some
arguments that should come out invalid, and invalidates some that should
come out valid. I shall begin with the first.
3.2.1 The Validation of DFN and GCBW in Their Strengthened

(Past-Necessitated) Forms
As Marenbon 2005: 93 points out, the sophismatic solution ignores the tem-
poral aspect of the problem exemplified by these two arguments. According
to an ancient principle, all facts about the past are irrevocable and there-
37 Sententiae, i, d. 38, c. 2 [Lombard 1971, p. 279, ll. 35]: Potest equidem non fieri aliquid, et
illud tamen praescitum est fieri; non ideo tamen potest falli Dei praescientia, quia si illud
non fieret, nec a Deo praescitum esset fieri.
38 In modern elementary presentations of modal and temporal logic, the analysis is often
presented as definitive; see, e.g., Swartz 2011 and Hughes and Cresswell 1996: 1516.
22 chapter 1
fore necessary.39 The necessity in question is not, of course, metaphysical or

logical, but agentic-conative. The principle was broadly accepted in antiq-
uity and the Middle Ages.40 Authorities testifying to its truth include Aristo-
tle41 and, in a Christian context, St. Augustine and St. Jerome. The latter pro-
vides the classic formulation of the principle with his assertion that while
God can do all things, he cannot cause a virgin to be restored after she has
fallen.42 So if we locate Gods knowledge in the past, then we must, in view
of the principle, prefix a necessity operator to the expression BGFutP. Once we
have done this, the wide-scope interpretations of both arguments come out
valid:
39 This principle, extended to include facts about the present, appears as Pattern Argument
1 in the Appendix.
40 There are some apparent exceptions in antiquity, but they turn out on closer inspection to
be nuanced limitations of the principle rather than wholesale rejections of it. Cleanthes,
according to Epictetus testimony, rejected the first sentence of the Master Argument;
Long and Sedley speculate that Cleanthes here excludes future-dependent propositions
domiciled grammatically in the past (Long and Sedley 1987: 230231, 235). This exception,
as we shall see, is entirely in keeping with an affirmation of a limited version of the original
principle. As for the Middle Ages, opinions differ. On my reading, Peter Damians notorious
speculation that God can change the past does not allow God to change it qua past. Here
I follow Courtenay 1985: 243245 and Schabel 2000: 229, footnote 22; cf. 5.1 below. But
note that the alternative view, namely that Damian and several other medieval thinkers
endorse genuine contingency of the past in the fullest sense (i.e., qua past), has been
maintained by Gaskin 1997. Thomas Bradwardine claims to have been tempted by the
thesis that God is exempt from the constraints even of consequent necessity, and therefore
(given Bradwardines system, which, like many others, aligns consequent necessity with
potentia ordinata; see footnote 43 of this chapter) exempt from the necessity of the past;
but he rejects the idea [Bradwardine 1618/1976: 701 A]. For more on Bradwardine, see 7.3
below.
There is, of course, a sense in which extrinsic facts about the pastthose parasitic
upon facts which are intrinsically futurecan be genuinely contingent (see 4.5.4
below). Such facts, however, are not at issue in the principle of the necessity of the past;
what matters is the modal stability of what Pike 1966 and Adams 1967 call hard facts, i.e.,
state-descriptions and historical facts about some designated present. For another twist
on the concept of the non-necessitation of these parasitic facts, involving alternative
real futures, see 5, 5.2.2, 7.2.27.2.3, 7.3, and 10.2.1 below.
41 See Ethica Nichomachea 1139b511, De Caelo 283b1214, De Interpretatione 19a23.
42 Epistle 22 ad Eustochium 5, in Hieronymus 1845, p. 396: Cum omnia possit Deus, suscitare
virginem not potest post ruinam. See also Augustine, Contra Faustum book 26, ch. 5
[P.L. 42, p. 481].
DFN: {()(BG ), BGFutP} FutP (Valid)

GCBW: {BGFutP, FutP} ()(BG ) (Valid)
Gods past knowledge of what I will do succeeds in necessitating my future

action. The result is that the sophisms become powerful arguments, the refu-
tation of which requires hard work and considerable ingenuity. Note that in
spite of the importance of the necessity of the past in many scholastic discus-
sions of these arguments, Gods knowledge need not be past-necessitated in
order for the argument to go through; any source of necessitation, for example
in the ontological primacy of the divine being, will do, provided that it is strong
enough to imply conative necessity.
We can, of course, save the scope analysis even for the strengthened variants
of these argument-forms by interpreting them as employing mixed modal-
ities. For example, in the formulae below, if subscript-B operators quantify
over a nonsubset of subscript-A worlds, the wide-scope arguments are still
invalid:
DFN: {B()(BG ), ABGFutP} BFutP (Invalid)

GCBW: {ABGFutP, BFutP} B()(BG ) (Invalid)
Let us suppose, for example, that subscript-A operators quantify over worlds
or situations that are conatively possible for some agent, while subscript-B
operators quantify over worlds or situations that are logically or metaphysically
possible. Clearly, from the fact that nothing can be done about Gods having
known somethingin other words, from the conative necessity of Gods having
known itit does not follow that what is known is metaphysically or logically
necessary. Hence, even assuming CONBGFutP, the arguments fail as before, as
is clear from the (a) and (b) versions of DFN and GCBW, in which P is some
conatively necessary but metaphysically contingent proposition:
Divine Foreknowledge Necessitates, wide-scope (a) mixed modality and (b)

unmixed modality versions:
(a) {MET()(BG ), CONBGFutP} METFutP (Invalid)

True True False
(b) {CON()(BG ), CONBGFutP} CONFutP (Valid and sound, but
True True True irrelevant)
24 chapter 1
God Can Be Wrong, wide-scope (a) mixed modality and (b) unmixed
modality versions:
(a) {CONBGFutP, METFutP} MET()(BG ) (Invalid)

True True False
(b) {CONBGFutP, CONFutP} CON()(BG ) (Valid, unsound, and
True False False irrelevant)
There is, however, a powerful objection to this attempt to save the scope
analysis: the (b) versions are not irrelevant. When it comes to establishing our
freedom of choice, it is precisely conative rather than metaphysical or logical
modality that most of us care about. Let us convert Lombards argument at d. 38
c. 2 from GCBW to DFN as an example:
kind; Gods foreknowledge cannot be mistaken; therefore it cannot be
that this one does not hold the lecture.
It is of little use, in the face of a powerful deterministic argument such as this,

to point out that Gods foreknowledge does not remove the metaphysical or
merely logical possibility that one might (perhaps in some alternate universe
available to God via potentia absoluta43) have been able to avoid lecturing; what
one wants to secure is precisely what is ruled out by the argument, namely the
live, conative option of really not lecturing. Matters stand just as badly with
GCBW: the prefixing of CON to the divine knowledge claim implies, by the
principle of divine infallibility, the falsehood of CONFutP, so that the premise
set comes out as inconsistent. If we deny that it is inconsistent, then we may
licitly conclude that it is within our power to make God wrong.
3.2.2 The Invalidation of the Human Variant of GCBW

The second flaw of the appeal to scope analysis, as mentioned, is that it invali-
dates arguments we want to see come out valid. This becomes clear as soon as
we ask ourselves why, given the ease with which simple versions of DFN and
GCBW are shown to depend on fallacious reasoning, they nevertheless seem
43 Gods potentia absoluta or absolute power is His untrammeled power to act in some
notional first moment of creation; His potentia ordinata or ordained power is the power
to which He has restricted Himself in virtue of imposing physical and moral laws on the
actual world. The idea was subject to considerable interpretation. For an account of the
development of the distinction, see Courtenay 1990: 4385.
so intuitively plausible, even when we do not explicitly necessitate the dox-

astic expression. The answer is that they depend on treating divine beliefs as
though they were equivalent to creaturely beliefs. To see this, we need only
retain the structure and assumptions of both arguments while replacing God
with a human agent. For expository purposes I shall limit myself to the human
version of GCBW. Let us assume that we are dealing with a fairly ordinary fellow
named John, an amateur meteorologist:
John Can Be Wrong (JCBW):
1. John believes that it will rain tomorrow.

2. It is possible that it will not rain tomorrow.
3. Therefore, it is possible that John has a false belief.
JCBW seems not only plausible but valid. However, the same reasoning that
invalidates GCBW as a scope fallacy invalidates JCBW as well. Nothing in
premises 1 or 2 rules out the possibility that John, like God, is doxastically
infallible, i.e., that his beliefs vary across modal space to keep pace with local
reality. Once more, a scope-disambiguation analysis gives us the following two
options, while claiming that only the second one is correct (see next page):
Wide scope: {BJFutR, FutR} ()(BJ ) (Invalid)

True True False
Narrow scope: {BJ FutR, FutR} ()(BJ ) (Valid but harmless44)

True True True
The inquiry into the question of Johns fallibility returns a Scottish verdict of
not proven. But intuitively, this seems absurd. Ex hypothesi, John is nobody
special; accordingly, his beliefs cannot infallibly reflect his modal surroundings,
be they factual or counterfactual. If he believes something that can fail to be the
case, then he can be wrong, and our analysis should reflect that obvious fact.
To sum up: Scope analysis is incapable of invalidating DFN and GCBW due to
its vulnerability to the necessitation of the divine belief expression, a necessita-
tion whichgiven the necessity of the pastseems entirely licit; and it is inca-
pable of validating JCBW without positing the necessitation of the creaturely
belief expression, a necessitation whichgiven the clear relevance to Johns
44 Harmless in the sense that Johns putative doxastic infallibility is not hereby impugned.
26 chapter 1
fallibility of live modal alternatives, whether or not we past-necessitate his

beliefseems supererogatory. But orthodox Christian philosophers want DFN
and GCBW to come out invalid; and all of us, orthodox Christian philosophers
included, want JCBW, which I shall now take on board as the third pattern
argument, to come out valid. These combined demands, I submit, exert a con-
stant pressure on the theories of future contingents developed from late antiq-
uity to the Middle Ages, forcing thinkers away from scope-disambiguation solu-
tions and toward stronger, more complex models and approaches. The most
successful theories (and components of theories) establish both results with-
out recourse to the dodges of scope disambiguation or heterogeneous modality.
Nevertheless, scope-disambiguation approaches have a simple and enduring
formal appeal, and turn up even in the work of highly sophisticated thinkers.
The temptation to solve paradoxes of divine foreknowledge by a maximally
simple formal expedient is constantly pushing against the intuitive objections
embodied in JCBW and associated argument forms.
While DFN and GCBW became standard problem cases in scholastic litera-
ture, evidence for the importance of JCBW is usually indirect. It may be asked
why I then present it as a medieval pattern argument. My answer is this. On the
one hand, the dilemma of reconciling the invalidity of DFN and GCBW with
the validity of JCBW emerges naturally from the architecture of the problem
itself. As soon as one has isolated certain elements of the problem as formally
distinct (namely a temporal, a modal, and a doxastic element), one is faced
with the problem of working out how these elements interact for God and
His creatures; and as soon as one does so, one is faced with two results that
stand in glaring contrast, namely that God must not, and creatures can, fall
into error. On the other hand, in the medieval literature on future contingents,
the focus is overwhelmingly on Gods cognition and the threat of necessitation
it seems to imply (or, conversely, the threat of divine error that non-necessity
seems to imply). It is thus hardly surprising that, in this context, human cog-
nition and the possibility of human error recede into the background, to be
dealt with on other occasions. For this reason, JCBW is not often dealt with
explicitly, a circumstance which does not imply its necessary absence from the
minds of the writers who dealt, and deal, with the problem. In any case, my
claim that the invalidation of JCBW was normally present as a felt danger from
late antiquity to the Middle Ages can be supported by at least two examples,
albeit of the indirect variety. Consider the new kind of future tense suggested
by Boethius in his Second Commentary on De Interpretatione (discussed in
4.2 and 4.5.3 below). In demanding a mode of expression capable of mak-
ing falsifiable predictions about the future, Boethius implies the existence of a
doxastic expression allowing falsification of a creaturely belief. Another, much
later example comes from Duns Scotus. In his discussion of GCBW, using the
pedagogical device of explaining the unfamiliar through the familiar, he shifts
from a direct refutation of GCBW to a presumably more intuitive version of the
doxastic/alethic problem complex, one involving a counterfactual scenario in
which he himself is doxastically infallible (cf. his similar maneuver in Reporta-
tio I-A, d. 38, qq. 12, n. 39, p. 458). Here is the passage:
[I]f my intellect always kept up with the change in things, so that while
you are sitting I think that you are sitting and when you stand up I
think that you are standing up, I cannot be deceived, and yet from these
propositions: You are sitting at time A, [but you could be not sitting,]
and I cannot be deceived, there follows only this: Therefore, I do not
necessarily know that you are sitting at time A.45
Tr. tweedale, in bosley and tweedale 1997: 296, slightly altered
Scotus is trying to make the fallacious character of GCBW more apparent by

reasoning as follows (where BS stands for Scotus believes that ). The
premise set consisting of {P, ()(BS )} yields BSP but not BSP.
Now, the (presumably obvious) fallacy {P, ()(BS )} BSP, when
transposed, yields {P, BSP} ()(BS ). The latter, which Scotus
evidently intends as an implicit stand-in for GCBW, is to be rejected; however,
it is a close formal variant of JCBW. Scotus may have considered presenting
{P, BSP} ()(BS ) directly, only to find that, although fallacious, it
felt valid and was thus unusable as an expository prop; hence the recourse to
the transposed version, which makes use of a per impossibile premise (namely
Scotus doxastic infallibility) which is sufficiently bizarre that it gives rise to
no inappropriate intuitive reactions but merely illustrates the scope fallacy.
There are two ironies here. First, as the sequents {P, BSP} ()(BS
) and {P, ()(BS )} BSP both rely on the supposed inconsistency
of the triad {P, ()(BS ), BSP}, they stand or fall together. Thus Scotus
implicit endorsement of the first (implicit in the sense that he shies away from
presenting it as a fallacy) is an implicit endorsement of the second; transposing
the argument will not save him. Secondly, Scotus own model of time and willed
45 Scotus, Ordinatio i, d. 38, pt. 2d. 39, qq. 15, n. 27 [Vat. vol. 6, p. 434, ll. 1114]: [S]i
intellectus meus semper sequeretur mutationem in re, ita quod te sedente opinarer te
sedere et te surgente opinarer te surgere, non possem decipi, et tamen ex istis tu sedes
pro a et non possum decipi non sequitur nisi ergo non necessario scio te sedere pro
a.
28 chapter 1
action (both divine and creaturely) exhibits a level of sophistication that would
seem to obviate the need of any crude scope-mongering of this kind. But, as we
shall see in 5.2.3, it is not so.
For an example of an immensely influential thinker who managed to avoid
the lure of a solution via scope disambiguation,46 I turn to Boethius.
4 The Boethian Analysis and Its Influence
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c. 475526 C.E.), who in his capacity as
the last of the Romans and the first of the Scholastics has a central importance
for the history of medieval Western philosophy in general, has a particular sig-
nificance for the problem of future contingents. He gave three distinct, and
subtly different, treatments of our problem; moreover, many of the tools he
used in his analysis, some of which he took over from the Neoplatonic tradi-
tion and some of which he refined and developed, became common scholas-
tic property for the next thousand years. These include the following: broad
bivalence,47 an interesting halfway-house between T2 and T3; the introduc-
tion of the quasi-modal operators definite and indefinite, which qualify sim-
ple truth-values; the distinction between licit and illicit forms of the future
tense; the distinction between simple and conditional necessity; the distinc-
tion between creaturely and divine modes of knowing; and the appeal to Gods
status as a being who is in some sense eternally present to all of created real-
ity.
While Boethius engagement with future contingents yielded its stablest and
most coherent solution in his last work, the Consolation of Philosophy, many
of the tools listed above are already present even in his earliest treatment, the
First Commentary on Aristotles De Interpretatione. Accordingly, my discussion
of Boethius instrumentarium is organized primarily by instrument and only
secondarily by text. In 4.5, I present a formalization which, with minor adjust-
ments, can cover both the Commentary and the Consolation theories, theories
which furnished a point of departure for treatments of future contingents for
the rest of the Middle Ages.
46 Assuming that he could have understood the idea of scope (which I do assume); see 4.3
and footnote 74 below.
47 The term is Norman Kretzmanns: see Kretzmann 1998: 46.
4.1 Boethius Slippery T2 Theory: Broad Bivalence and the Operators

Definite and Indefinite
With respect to theory of truth, Boethius the commentator seems at times
an adamant T2 theorist. In his Second Commentary on De Interpretatione, he
defends Aristotle against the interpretation attributed to the Stoics, namely the
oldest or traditional reading according to which future contingent proposi-
tions are neither true nor false:
For Aristotle does not say that both are neither true nor false, but of
course, that each of them is either true or falsenot, however, definitely,
as with those having to do with past matters or those having to do with
present matters. [He says] instead that there is in a way a dual nature of
statement-making utterances: some of them are not only such that the
true and the false is found in them, but also such that one of them is
definitely true [and] the other definitely false; of the other [statement-
making utterances], however, one is true [and] the other is false, but
indefinitely and mutablyand this as a result of their own nature, not
relative to our ignorance or knowledge.48
Tr. kretzmann, in ammonius and boethius 1998, p. 160
Given that Boethius rules out a simple denial of bivalence, i.e., a straight T3
theory, what kind of validity is in fact conceded here to bivalence? The answer
to this question turns on our interpretation of the quasi-modal operators def-
inite and indefinite. Two possibilities suggest themselves. One is that truth
and falsity are to be construed in the normal way, while definite is assimi-
lated to an alethic strong modal operator (i.e., to some form of necessity)
and indefinite to the corresponding contingency operator. On such a reading,
advanced by Mignucci 1998: 5859, the status of future truth is fundamentally
the same as that of present or past truth. There are currently true proposi-
tions about the future; some of them are definite verum, e.g., the proposition
the sun will set today, while some are indefinite verum, such as the proposi-
48 Boethius 1880, p. 208, ll. 718: Non enim hoc Aristoteles dicit, quod utraeque nec verae
nec falsae sunt, sed quod una quidem ipsarum quaelibet aut vera aut falsa est, non
tamen quemadmodum in praeteritis definite nec quemadmodum in praesentibus, sed
enuntiativarum vocum duplicem quodammodo esse naturam, quarum quaedam essent
non modo in quibus verum et falsum inveniretur, sed in quibus una etiam esset defi-
nite vera, falsa altera definite, in aliis vero una quidem vera, altera falsa, sed indefinite
et commutabiliter et hoc per suam naturam, non ad nostrum ignorantiam atque noti-
tiam.
30 chapter 1
tion Socrates will read today (on the assumption that he will, in the event,
actually choose to read today). Boethius avowed commitment to Aristotelian
correspondence49 would thus seem to entail an A(a) world-model according
to which there are true but conatively defeasible or avoidable facts about the
future.
Another interpretation, suggested by Sorabji 1998, endorsed by Kretzmann
1998, and dubbed by the latter broad bivalence, reads definite and indefinite as
referring, somehow, to the relation between truth-values and the propositions
they pertain to. According to this reading, all pairs of contradictory proposi-
tions contain the truth-values T and F, but somethe definitely true and
definitely false onescontain them discretely, in such a way that a single
value pertains to each side of the contradiction,50 while somethe indef-
initely true-or-false onescontain them in some unassigned or free-floating
way that nevertheless respects bivalence. In Sorabjis vivid image:
The [future contingent] pair is treated differently from the members

taken singly: It has one member true, one false, and that is how neither
true nor false is avoided. But the truth and falsity are not yet distributed
in one direction rather than the other. Picking up Boethius word volubilis,
we can imagine the truth and falsity already contained somewhere within
the pair, ready to roll (volubilis) into their appropriate positions, but not
yet having rolled.
sorabji 1998: 9
Sorabji adds that he himself finds this view incoherent, but that it does justice
to certain trends of thought and turns of phrase in Boethius two commen-
taries (ibid.). Textual evidence suggests that Kretzmanns broad bivalence
does indeed represent Boethius approach. The most important evidence for
this interpretation is negative. Nowhere in either Commentary does Boethius
categorize any proposition as indefinitely true or as indefinitely false; the
expression used always amounts to indefinitely true or false.51 The truth-value
49 A commitment which Boethius, at least in his capacity as an exponent of the Peripatetic

philosophy, repeatedly concedes, both in the First Commentary [1877, p. 110, ll. 1618] and
the Second [1880, p. 200, ll. 2225].
50 A contradiction, in the Latin literature on future contingents, often means simply a pair
of sentences (, ). It can also, of course, mean a logical impossibility of some kind, as
in the case where both and are affirmed. I use the word in both senses throughout
this study; context will (I hope) allow the reader to distinguish the two.
51 A typical formulation runs as follows:
of future contingent propositions is thus, as far as Boethius the commentator

is concerned, irreducibly disjunctive. But what could an irreducibly disjunctive
truth-value assignment really mean? Gaskin 1995: 148149 persuasively argues
that the difference between indefinite truth-or-falsity on the one hand and a
third truth-value on the other is merely notational. Boethius, then, has a super-
ficially T2 model that is underlyingly T3.
In accordance with the Correspondence Assumption, we would expect a
world-model with genuine indeterminacy, i.e., an A(mr) model. And, at times,
that is what we seem to get. Disjunctive truth is explicitly founded on an
indeterminate ontology with respect to future states of affairs:
[J]ust as being and not being itself is variable as regards those that are
contingent and future (although it is necessary that they be or not be),
so also truth or falsity is indeed uncertain as regards affirmations and
negations presenting these contingents; for in accordance with the nature
of these propositions it is unknown which is true and which is false. All
the same, it is necessary that one be true [and] the other false.52
Ut si dicam Philoxenus cenaturus est, Philoxenus cenaturus non est, in tota quidem con-
tradictione una vera est, altera falsa, sed nullus potest dividere, ut dicat aut adfirmationem
constitute et definite veram esse aut negationem.
boethius 1877, p. 123, ll. 1822
If I say Philoxenus is going to have dinner, Philoxenus is not going to have dinner, then
as regards the whole contradiction, indeed, one is true and the other false. But no one
can divide it so as to say that the affirmation is determinately and definitely true, or the
negation.
Even when Boethius seems to parcel out truth-values to individual sides of the contra-
diction, his formulation remains undecided; both truth and falsity are mentioned. For
example, he writes that while some propositions are definitely true or definitely false, in
others una quidem vera, altera falsa, sed indefinite et commutabiliter [1880, p. 208
ll. 1517]. Cf. also 1877, p. 108, ll. 15, 1880, p. 216, ll. 2627, and 1880, p. 245, ll. 910.
52 Boethius 1880, p. 200, l. 25p. 201, l. 2: Igitur in contingentibus et futuris sicut ipsum esse
et non esse instabile est, esse tamen aut non esse necesse est, ita quoque in adfirmation-
ibus et negationibus contingentia ipsa prodentibus veritas quidem vel falsitas in incerto
est (quae enim vera sit, quae falsa secundum ipsarum propositionum naturam ignoratur),
necesse est tamen unam veram esse, alteram falsam.
32 chapter 1
Boethius phrase it is unknown which is true and which is false might lead
one to think that his criterion for the affixation of the indefinite verum truth-
value53 is the simple epistemic inaccessibility of the corresponding matter of
fact to a normal speaker. But Boethius insists that there is more at stake than
this. While we cannot know whether the number of stars is odd or even, nature
knows the facts of the case; by contrast, a future chance meeting with my
friend is currently unknown even to nature, whose knowledge of the meeting
must await its actually taking place [Boethius 1880, p. 192, ll. 515]. Likewise,
there are no current facts with respect to Socrates free decision to read or not
to read tomorrow, facts of which we could in principle be aware if we had the
superhuman but logically possible ability to listen in on the future (audientes
de futuro); instead, the very nature of the things, events, or states of affairs that
are expressed propositionally [is] dubitable.54
The epistemic language used here suggests that things known to nature
constitute the set of things, events, or states of affairs that are epistemically
accessible at any given point in the timeline to an ideal creaturely knower.
Boethius repeated claim that there are things unknown even to such a
knowernamely events dependent on chance or on free decisions of
agents55might seem to equate to strong ontological indeterminacy, but in
fact it does not. Consider the role of God in the Second Commentary. Although
Boethius says rather little about divine knowledge in this text, what he says
suggests that there are things whose outcome is unknown to nature but is nev-
ertheless known to God. There is both indirect and direct evidence for this
53 Obviously, this way of phrasing it reveals my adherence to a T3 reading; those who resist
such a reading are welcome to expand it as the affixation of either of the disjunctive pair
verum / falsum in an indefinite mode.
54 Kretzmanns translations [Ammonius and Boethius 1998, p. 183]. The Latin reads as fol-
lows:
[V]erum natura ipsa harum rerum quae proponuntur dubitabilis, ut in ea propositione

quae est Socrates hodie lecturus est, Socrates hodie lecturus non est.
boethius 1880, p. 245, ll. 1113
Hoc autem non quod audientes de futuro nesciamus, sed quod eadem res et esse possit et
non esse.
Ibid., ll. 1921
55 Boethius would, of course, also stipulate that events caused by direct divine intervention,
i.e., miracles, are beyond the remit of an ideal creaturely knower. However, in discussing
what nature knows, we must be prescinding from Gods power to violate His own physical
laws; otherwise there is almost nothing left for nature to know.
claim. The first is supplied by the following text: Socrates dying tomorrow is
indeed uncertain to us, but it is not uncertain to nature and so neither is it
uncertain to God, who knows nature itself perfectly.56 The implication is that
everything known to nature is known to God; but we are not given the converse,
viz., that whatever is known to God is known to nature. The direct evidence
is Boethius assertion, cryptic in this context, that God knows future contin-
gents by reason of human beings themselves and their actions.57 No temporal
restriction or assertion of timelessness is placed on Gods knowledge: He just
knows everything, including such things as correspond to indefinitely true-or-
false propositions. We thus have an implicit hierarchy of knowers. Humans are
at the bottom: although there are gaps in our knowledge, we can know present
or past facts, as well as such future facts as are currently unpreventable or cona-
tively necessary, but the outcome of future contingents is unknown to us. The
next step up is nature, which in fact knows all things that are currently unpre-
ventable, and whose epistemic remit represents a limiting case of creaturely
knowledge; however, nature, too, is ignorant of the outcome of future contin-
gents. At the top is God, Who knows all things, future contingents included, as
well as their modal status.
What kind of a theory-of-truth / world-model pairing does Boethius the
commentator represent, then? Superficially, we have a theory of truth that
respects bivalence combined with a world-model that allows ontological inde-
terminacy, i.e., a T2A(mr) pairing. But on the theory-of-truth side, matters
are complicated by the fact that the future contingent propositions attach to
their supposedly generic truth-values in such an abnormal or outr fashion,
and we seem rather to have a T3 theory without the courage of its convictions,
so to speak. On the world-model side, there are matters unknown to nature,
namely matters that derive ultimately from the choices of free agents, which
suggests an A(mr) model. But even such contingent matters are ultimately
known and (implicitly) also foreknown to God; a complete four-dimensional
account of the world would include such facts. Hence a more accurate charac-
terization would be an A(a) model. With a surface pairing of T2A(mr) and an
56 Kretzmanns translation [Ammonius and Boethius 1998, p. 156]. The Latin [Boethius 1880,
p. 202, l. 29p. 203, l. 2]: [N]obis quidem cras moriturum esse Socratem incertum est,
naturae autem incertum non est atque ideo nec deo quoque incertum est, qui ipsam
naturam optime novit.
57 Kretzmanns translation [Ammonius and Boethius 1998, p. 171]. Boethius 1880, p. 226, ll. 9
13: Novit enim futura Deus non ut ex necessitate evenientia sed ut contingenter, ita ut
etiam aliud posse fieri non ignoret, quid tamen fiat ex ipsorum hominum et actuum
ratione persciscat.
34 chapter 1
underlying pairing of T3A(a), then, Boethius the commentator isdespite

his explicit insistence on Aristotelian correspondenceour first example of an
exception to (a straightforward interpretation of) the Correspondence Assump-
tion.
The two-tiered character of the analysis in these commentaries, as well as
the difficulty of some of the doctrines here developed, should not be allowed
to obscure the fundamental simplicity, one might almost say the cheery for-
malist optimism, of Boethius approach. The classification of future contingent
propositions as indefinitely true-or-false is presented as in itself an adequate
defense against the possibility of necessitation in advance, even though the
world-model contains unambiguous matters of fact corresponding to those
propositions. Thus while presenting himself as a mere interpreter of Aristotle,
Boethius contrives to evade the issue that, arguably, mattered most to Aristo-
tle himself, namely the question of the ontological closure or openness of the
future.58 The danger posed by future facts to conative freedom is simply denied
by an appeal to broad bivalence; and this formal expedient reduces to the claim
that nonactual but modally viable pathways to the future exist.59
4.2 The Assertability Conditions of the Boethian Future Tense(s)

Developing a line of analysis ultimately deriving from Aristotles On Generation
and Corruption 337b37, Boethius distinguishes a licit from an illicit way of
using the future tense. The distinction dovetails with his analysis of simple
necessity as well as his distinction between definite and indefinite truth /
falsity, though the latter is not mentioned explicitly in the text. According to
Boethius, the speaker who makes a simple assertion about a future contingent
expresses a falsity:
[A]nyone who says [regarding a future contingent] It will be puts a kind

of necessity in that very prediction, which is understood on this basis: if he
says truly that that which is predicted is going to be, then it is not possible
that it not happen, but it is necessary that it happen . Therefore, anyone
who says of one of the things that come about contingently that it will
be speaks falsely in that he says that that which perhaps comes about,
58 These remarks serve to expose me as a partisan both of the traditional interpretation of

De Interpretatione 9 and of my own Correspondence Assumption.
59 Note that while Mignuccis reading of the definite operator as interchangeable with the
necessity operator does not seem to be what Boethius has in mind, it seems to be what
broad bivalence ultimately amounts to; after all, the usage provisions of the two opera-
tors are equivalent.
contingently, is going to be. Even if the thing, event, or state of affairs he

predicted should occur, he still spoke falsely; for it is not the outcome that
its false, but the mode of the prediction.60
In modern terms, the speakers error might be construed as a violation of the

Gricean maxim of quality: he asserts something for which he lacks adequate
evidence. In fact, the falsity runs deeper than this, since a simple assertion
about the future puts a kind of necessity into the prediction of an ex hypothesi
contingent event, so that he could not, even in principle, have been speaking
truly. How, then, should we make predictions about the future? At first, the
recommendation seems to be that we emend the prediction by adjoining a
modal adverb to it (contingenter): For he ought to have said Tomorrow a sea
battle contingently will come aboutwhich is to say, if it does come about,
it comes about in such a way that it could have failed to come about.61 A few
lines later, Boethius abandons the idea of an explicit adverbial pendant in favor
of a mode of speaking, perhaps a kind of grammatical mood:
[W]here contingents are concerned, if the statement will be true, it must

predict in such a way that it does indeed say that something is going to
be, but [also], on the other hand, in such a way that it leaves open the
possibility that it is not going to be.62
Tr. kretzmann, from ammonius and boethius 1998, p. 163
Boethius treatment of the future tense remains sketchy, but he seems to be

reaching for a concept that has only relatively recently come in for extended
discussion in modern philosophy of language, viz., an analysis of ordinary
60 Boethius 1880, p. 212, ll. 414: Nam qui dicit erit, ille quandam necessitatem in ipsa praed-
icatione ponit. hoc inde intellegitur, quod si vere dicat futurum esse id quod praedicitur
non possibile sit non fieri, hoc autem ex necessitate sit fieri. Ergo qui dicit, quoniam erit
aliquid eorum quae contingenter eveniunt, in eo quod futurum esse dicit id quod con-
tingenter evenit fortasse mentitur; vel si contigerit res illa quam praedicit, ille tamen
mentitus est: non enim eventus falsus est, sed modus praedictionis.
15: Namque ita oportuit dicere: cras bellum navale contingenter eveniet, hoc est dicere:
ita evenit, si evenerit, ut potuerit non evenire.
62 Boethius 1880, p. 213, ll. 710: Oportet enim in contingentibus ita aliquid praedicere, si
vera erit enuntiatio, ut dicat quidem futurum esse aliquid, sed ita, ut rursus relinquat esse
possibile, ut futurum non sit.
36 chapter 1
predictions that construes them as something other than simple assertions. We

might think of a prediction as a bet placed on a future outcome: one places the
bet while withholding any claims of certainty or necessity about the outcome.
(A bettor, after all, reckons with the possibility that he may well lose.)63
However these two kinds of future statement are to be formalized (see
4.5.3 below for a suggestion), it is clear that they both have licit uses. The
(presumably definite) truth of an assertion about the future corresponds to the
necessity attending the relevant thing, event, or state of affairs: If someone
stumbles upon (incurrerit) that necessity, then what he predicts is true.64 The
assertability conditions of what we can call the strong future tense are simple:
we have a right to assert a prediction that something will be the case or occur
if and only if we have adequate reason to believe that nature knows that that
thing will be the case or occur, i.e., that that thing is simply necessary in the
sense explained in 4.3 (1). The assertability conditions of the corresponding
weak future tense are more relaxed. They are not spelled out, but we can
guess at them: we have a right to hazard a prediction that something will be the
case if we have adequate reason to believe that nature does not know that the
thing will not be the case or occur. A strong prediction made without proper
warrant is false, even if it turns out to be correct, because it inappropriately
affixes definiteness to a proposition, which is to say that it posits necessity to
an outcome that is unknown not only to the speaker but to a higher knower,
namely nature.65
63 A pioneering analysis is Ryle 1954, in which statements about the future are treated as
guesses. Thakkar 2006: 3 points out that statements about the future, unlike those about
the present and past, are defeasible by appeal to even if clauses. The same has been said
about counterfactuals by David Lewis in his treatment of the fallacy of strengthening the
antecedent (see Lewis 1973a, b). See also Belnap and Green 1994: 382384 (who discuss the
idea of assertions about the future as reflecting credit/discredit on the speaker depending
on whether they turn out to be true or false when the time comes) and Sorabji 1998: 4
(who discusses the category of guarded statements about the future).
16: Non enim adfirmationem et negationem esse necesse est, sed idcirco ea esse necesse
est quae futura sunt, quoniam in natura propria quandam habent necessitatem, in quam
si quis incurrerit, verum est quod praedicit.
65 Note that the use of weak prediction under circumstances that would entitle us to the
strong variety would, in modern terms, constitute a violation of the Gricean maxim of
quantity.
4.3 A Fruitful Ambiguity: Simple vs. Conditional Necessity

Boethius rendition of Aristotles De Interpretatione 19a2327 reads as follows:
Therefore, it is necessary that whatever is is when it is, and that whatever

is not is not when it is not. But it is not necessary that everything that
is be, nor is it necessary that everything that is not not be. For that
everything that is is necessarily when it is is not the same as its simply
being necessarily; [similarly as regards whatever is not.]66
Tr. kretzmann, from ammonius and boethius 1998, p. 180
Drawing on this text, Boethius develops a distinction between simple necessity

(necessitas simplex) and conditional necessity (necessitas condicionis). The dis-
tinction is carried over into the Consolation account. Simple necessity is the
variety that cancels freedom of choice, while conditional necessity leaves it
unscathed. Like the Aristotelian text on which it is based, the simplicity of the
expression veils a radical, subtle, and notorious ambiguity. At least three inter-
pretations of Boethius distinction are possible:
(1) Temporal interpretation. Simple necessity is necessity before the fact (var-
iously comprising metaphysical necessity and the necessity of natural laws),
while conditional necessity is the necessity of the present and the past (cf.
Boethius 1880, p. 189). While it is not simply necessary for Socrates to be sitting
at this instant, the fact of his sitting makes it impossible for him as an agent to
refrain from sitting at precisely this instant, nor can he undertake any action
that could result in his not having sat at this instant.
(2) Derivational interpretation. Simple necessity is read as in 1, while condi-

tional necessity represents the limitations imposed on a doxastic agent who
is making assumptions in a formal system. Within a formal frame defined by
a given assumption, say S, we cannot on pain of contradiction entertain the
proposition S; this cannot has the force of a necessity operator prefixed to S.
(3) Scope interpretation. The two types of necessity correspond to the scope
distinction between S and (S S), where S stands for Socrates is sitting.
On this reading, the distinction is trivial and depends not on mixed modalities
66 Boethius 1880, p. 240, ll. 2631: Igitur esse quod est, quando est, et non esse quod non est,
quando non est, necesse est; sed non quod est omne necesse est esse nec quod non est
necesse est non esse. Non enim idem est omne quod est esse necessario, quando est, et
simpliciter esse ex necessitate.
38 chapter 1
of any kindin both cases, general alethic necessity is under discussionbut

rather on the character of the proposition or state of affairs that is necessitated.
The point is simply that we cannot, from the mere fact that Socrates is sitting,
conclude that he sits by necessity (i.e., / (S S)), though we are certainly
entitled to the tautological observation that, necessarily, if he sits, then he sits
(i.e., (S S)). Such a distinction might serve as a vehicle for the sophismatic
approach.
Support for all three readings can be adduced from the commentaries on De
Interpretatione as well as the Consolation. Often, the same locus can be read
according to more than one interpretation. Consider texts A, B, and C, taken
from the First Commentary, the Second Commentary, and the Consolation
respectively:
A. Now he describes what is necessary temporally. For he says that regard-

ing everything, when it is, it is without doubt necessary that it be; for it
cannot happen that when it is, it is not. And, on the other hand, regarding
something that is not, when it is not, it is necessary that it not be; for nei-
ther can it happen that when it is not it is. But if when it is, it is necessary
that it be, it is not for that reason necessary unconditionally (simpliciter)
and without the ascription of present time.67
Tr. kretzmann, ammonius and boethius 1998, p. 142
B. And it is indeed revealed by simple predication when we say that it is

necessary that the sun move; for necessity appears in the motion of the
sun not only because it moves now, but because it will never not move.
But the other, which is expressed with a condition, is of this sort: when
we say of Socrates that it is necessary that he be seated when he is seated,
and that it is necessary that he be not seated when he is not seated. For
since the same person cannot be seated and not seated at the same time,
whoever is seated cannot not be seated at the time when he is seated;
therefore, it is necessary that he be seated.68
67 Boethius 1877, p. 121, l. 20p. 122, l. 1: Nunc quid sit necessarium temporale describit. Ait
enim: res omnis quando est eam sine dubio esse necesse est. non enim fieri potest ut cum
est non sit. et rursus res quae non est quando non est eam non esse necesse est. Neque
enim fieri potest ut quando non est sit. Sed si, quando est, eam esse necesse est, non idcirco
simpliciter et sine temporis praesentis descriptione ex necessitate.
68 Boethius 1880, p. 241, ll. 313: Et simplici quidem praedicatione profertur, ut cum dici-
C. For there are really two necessities, the one simple, as that it is neces-
sary that all men are mortal; the other conditional, as for example, if you
know that someone is walking, it is necessary that he is walking. Whatever
anyone knows cannot be otherwise than as it is known, but this condi-
tional necessity by no means carries with it that other simple kind. For
this sort of necessity is not caused by a things proper nature but by the
addition of the condition; for no necessity forces him to go who walks of
his own will, even though it is necessary that he is going at the time when
he is walking.69
Tr. tester, in boethius 1973, pp. 429431
The temporal language of text A seems to vouch for reading 1; however, if

we read the quando of the second sentence as a cum or si, we have reading
2, and if we then construe the necesse est as having the whole clause within
its scopea possible reading, given the systematic scope ambiguity of modal
operators in Latin (as in many natural languages, English included)then we
have reading 3. Text B emphasizes a prohibition on contradictory predicates
at a single time, which accords well with the scope interpretation (since
(S S) = (S S)). Yet time is mentioned, which beckons toward reading
1. Text C seems to lean heavily toward reading 2 (note the phrasing if you
know that someone is walking, which suggests an epistemic or derivational
interpretation); yet here too time is mentioned, suggesting reading 1, while the
last clause (quamvis eum tum cum graditur incedere necessarium sit) puts us
back in scope territory.
The presence of evidence supporting all three interpretations in Boethius
commentaries on De Interpretatione as well as in the Consolation suggests that
mus solem moveri necesse est. Non enim solum quia nunc movetur, sed quia numquam
non movebitur, idcirco in solis motu necessitas venit. Altera vero quae cum condicione
dicitur talis est: ut cum dicimus Socratem sedere necesse est, cum sedet, et non sedere
necesse est, cum non sedet. Nam cum idem eodem tempore sedere et non sedere non
possit, quicumque sedet non potest non sedere, tunc cum sedet: igitur sedere necesse
est.
69 The Consolation of Philosophy, v. pr. vi [Boethius 1973, pp. 428430]: Duae sunt etenim
necessitates, simplex una, veluti quod necesse est omnes homines esse mortals, altera
condicionis, ut si aliquem ambulare scias, eum ambulare necesse est; quod enim quisque
novit, id esse aliter ac notum est nequit sed haec condicio minime secum illam simplicem
trahit. Hanc enim necessitate non propria facit natura sed condicionis adiectio; nulla enim
necessitas cogit incedere voluntate gradientem, quamvis eum tum cum graditur incedere
necessarium sit.
40 chapter 1
the idea of a correct interpretation is chimerical.70 All three are live options in
Boethius texts and serve to emphasize different aspects of his model. The tem-
poral reading is salient when the focus is on the necessity of present and past,
as in a passage at the beginning of the Second Commentary;71 the derivational
70 Pace Gaskin 1995: 130, who is sensitive to the ambiguity in these passages but nevertheless
sees a disambiguation in the following:
Sed ista cum condicione quae proponitur necessitas non illam simplicem secum trahit
(non enim quicumque sedet simpliciter eum sedere necesse est, sed cum adiectione ea
quae est tunc cum sedet) Alioquin non simpliciter ex necessitate sedet, sed contingen-
ter, potest enim surgere.
boethius 1880, p. 241, ll. 2024; p. 243, ll. 46
But this necessity which is put forward with a condition does not drag the unconditional
sort along with it. For of anyone who is seated, it is not unconditionally necessary that he
be seated, but [only] with that addition: at the time when he is seated [H]e is seated
not unconditionally necessarily, but contingently, since he can get up.
Tr. kretzmann, in ammonius and boethius 1998, pp. 180181
For Gaskin, the last phrase is decisive: since the contingency of Socrates sitting is vouched
for by his ability to get up at another time, the temporal interpretation must be the
underlying and unifying concept for Boethius. But clearly Boethius, who is not committed
to a statistical or Diodorian interpretation of modality, is using Socrates ability to get
up at another time simply as a way of speaking about the kind of predicate that sitting
is. It is an accidental rather than an essential predicate, something which can be but
need not be true of Socrates at any given time: Socrates is not, as it were, sessile, he is
merely sitting right now. Since we cannot directly inspect alternative presents and take
note of his non-sitting in those presents, we take his ability to get up in the next instant
as a warrant for his previous ability to avoid sitting in this one (cf. in this connection
J. Evans 2004: 257). More generally, any of the three interpretations can be claimed to be
the underlying, real interpretation on the basis of an arbitrary emphasis on this or that
passage.
71 As his framing of an example shows, Boethius has a clear idea of the essentially unitary
character of the necessity of present and past:
[S]i ipse sponte praeterita nocte in agrum profectus sum, antequam hoc fieret, ut non
proficiscerer fieri poterat, postquam profectus sum vel cum profectus sum, ut id non fieret
quod fiebat aut non factum esset quod erat factum, fieri non valebat.
boethius 1880, p. 190, ll. 1924
[I]f I freely walked out into the field last night, before that happened it could have
happened that I did not walk out. After I walked out, or when I walked out, it could not
reading helps to allay truth-to-necessity worries that arise as a result of Aris-

totelian correspondence;72 and the scope reading comes to the fore whenever
Boethius wants to affirm the necessity of tautologies or block the possibility
of contradictions.73 Furthermore, the ambiguity of the distinctionwhatever
the terminology used for the two kinds of necessitypersists in much of the
Latin literature on future contingents influenced by these texts, which is to say
in much of that literature in general. This can be frustrating to an exegete, but
it makes sense. On many occasions, in the course of defending God against the
charge of being the author of creaturely actions, an apologist may find himself
in the position of having to insist that such-and-such a thing, event, or state of
affairs is necessitated only relative to its actually having taken place (temporal
reading), or relative to someones assumption of its existence (derivational);
in either case, given that our apologist does not know in advance how things
will turn out, he may resort to a variation on que sera, sera (scope), whether he
believes that the informational vacuity of this response is compelled by onto-
logical indeterminacy (assuming an A(mr) model) or merely the limitations of
creaturely or natural forecasting (assuming an A(a) model).74 Indeed, such
discursive occasions may overlap partially or even totally; hence the ambiguity
is only intermittently noticed, and is never definitively cleared up. For example,
even a writer as careful and perspicacious as Robert Grosseteste, when com-
paring the distinction as employed by Boethius with that employed by Anselm
of Canterbury, distinguishes only between interpretations 1 and 2 on the one
hand, and interpretation 3 on the other; it does not occur to him to distinguish
between the temporal and the derivational interpretations.75 Some thinkers
happen that what was happening should not have been happening, or that what had
happened should not have happened.
72 See Boethius 1877, p. 110, ll. 24; 1880, p. 206, ll. 1011; and The Consolation of Philosophy, v.
pr. iii [Boethius 1973, p. 396].
73 For the first, see, e.g., Boethius 1877, p. 107, ll. 58; for the second, Boethius 1880, p. 191,
ll. 210.
74 Marenbon 2003: 141, drawing on the work of Christopher Martin, thinks it unlikely [Boe-
thius] could have even dimly envisaged the scope distinction modern thinkers make. But
why? The distinction is simple enough, and Boethius was a bright fellow; it doesnt seem
unreasonable to hypothesize that he was able to intuit a distinction of this kind, even
if his adherence to Peripatetic term logic did not allow him to formalize it properly (cf.
the remarks at the beginning of 4.5 below). See Kneale and Kneale 1962: 189194 and
C. Martin 2009 for Boethius logic.
75 Grosseteste notes and criticizes a contemporary (early thirteenth century) tendency to
read Boethius distinction according to interpretation 3:
42 chapter 1
show more of an understanding of the complexities here than others; but in

general, the interpretive blur continues to this day.76 In the scholastic develop-
Ut puta cum dicitur: Si homo currit, movet pedes, hic est necessitas consecutionis
consequentis ad antecedens, licet utrumque, scilicet tam consequens quam antecedens,
sit contingens. Ex verbis autem ipsius Boethii interius consideratis melius perpendi potest
ipsum vocasse necessitatem conditionis quam supra necessitatem sequentem dicebamus.
grosseteste, De libero arbitrio, 3.7, ll. 220223, in neil 1991: 40
As for example, when the following is said: If a human runs, he moves his feet, this is the
necessity of the connection of antecedent and consequent, though both antecedent and
consequent are [absolutely] contingent. From a closer consideration of Boethius words,
however, we may take him to have given the designation conditional necessity to that
which we have called sequent necessity in the discussion above.
But he describes his preferred reading in the following two ways:
1. Dum enim sedeo necesse est me sedere, et postquam sedi necesse est me sedisse.
[Ibid., 3.5, ll. 195196, in Neil 1991: 39]
For when I sit, it is necessary that I be sitting, and after I have sat, it is necessary for
me to have sat.
2. Et ita, cum ex hoc invariabili Deum scire hoc contingens sequatur esse huius contin-
gens, ex necessario, secundum Boethii sententiam, sequi videtur contingens, non
tamen ex necessario absoluto sive antecedente, quod cogit rem esse, sed ex neces-
sario conditionis et sequente, quod permittit rei liberum esse. [Ibid., 3.8, ll. 237241,
in Neil 1991: 40]
And thus, from this invariable [fact] that God knows this contingent there follows the
contingent existence of this [thing, etc.]; hence, according to Boethius doctrine,
from something necessary there seems to follow something contingentnot, how-
ever, by absolute or antecedent necessity, which forces something to be, but from
conditional and sequent necessity, which permits the thing to remain free.
Passages 1 and 2 correspond to interpretations 1 and 2 of Boethius modal distinction;

Grosseteste apparently sees no important difference between the two.
76 For example, Anselms necessitas praecedens / necessitas sequens distinction, a direct
descendant of Boethius simple / conditional necessity split, has been subjected both
to interpretation 1 (e.g., Knuuttila 2004: 122124) and to interpretation 3 (e.g., Visser and
Williams 2009: 149169). Genest 1992: 129132 distinguishes between a de dicto reading
of Anselm (interpretation 3) and a de re reading (interpretation 1 or 2), and sees both
interpretations as possible; like Grosseteste, whose analysis he mentions, he does not
distinguish between interpretations 1 and 2.
For an example of a medieval thinker with an exceptionally acute understanding of the
ambiguities at play here, see Gregory of Riminis analysis in Thakkar 2005, pp. A.57A.60.
ment of the problem complex of future contingents, the ambiguity of the two
kinds of necessity distinction is partially isomorphic with that of the lexical
semantics of the phrase ponere (in) esse, for which see 88.5 below.
4.4 From the Commentary Theory to the Consolation Theory

Let us return to Boethius very brief remarks on God and divine knowledge
in the Second Commentary (there are none in the corresponding text in the
First Commentary). These remarks seem evasive and do not directly address
the threats posed to freedom by prophecy in their simplest and most straight-
forward form. Prophecy, Boethius writes, does not predict that events will occur
necessarily, and for just this reason it is often phrased in conditional form: This
is indeed going to come about; but if that happens, it will not come aboutas
if it could be interrupted, and come about in some other way.77 What about
an unconditional divine prediction, such as This night, before the cock crow,
thou shalt deny me thricemay we assume that the prophesied event is sim-
ply necessary? Boethius seems to supply an answer to this unasked question:
For God knows future things not as coming about necessarily but as
[coming about] contingently, in such a way that he does not fail to know
that something else can happen too.78
Taken as an analysis of a divine prophecy, that is, of a speech act of some kind,
this sounds uncomfortably like Boethius second try at an analysis of creaturely
prognostication, discussed at 4.2 above, according to which a human pre-
diction must predict in such a way that it does indeed say that something is
going to be, but [also], on the other hand, in such a way that it leaves open
the possibility that it is not going to be. Must we then accord the same degree
of uncertainty to divine prophecy as we do to human (non-divinely-inspired)
prediction? Obviously not, since knowledge is under discussion, and that which
is known is (certainly, though not necessarily) true. A prediction like thou
shalt deny me thrice is on this interpretation true in advance but in some
sense conatively defeasible, i.e., unnecessary. In this passage we thus seem to
have an adumbrationno more than thatof the kind of theory of truth
8: [H]oc quidem eventurum est, sed si hoc fit non eveniet, quasi intercidei possit et alio
modo evenire.
12: Novit enim futura Deus non ut ex necessitate evenientia, sed ut contingenter, ita ut
etiam aliud posse fieri non ignoret.
44 chapter 1
that Mignucci 1998, to my mind mistakenly, attributes to both Ammonius and

Boethius the commentator, namely one in which there are fixed truth-values
for all propositional variables while the distinction determine / indetermine
functions analogously to necessary / contingent.
The transition from the theory presented in Boethius commentaries on
Aristotle to that presented in the Consolation of Philosophy can be expressed by
the following formula: what is merely adumbrated in the brief passage of the
Second Commentary quoted above becomes the main line of analysis in the
Consolation. This shift is somewhat obscured by terminology, but close reading
brings it out. In contrast to the commentaries, the problematic character of
divine foreknowledge occupies center stage in the treatment of the problem
of future contingents in the Consolation. Gods inescapable presence in the
latter text permanently polarizes the truth-values, and talk of definite or
indefinite truth-or-falsity is dropped from the account as an unnecessary
excrescence. Instead, we have two stand-ins for truth simpliciter, namely (1)
divine foreknowledge of a res / proposition and (2) current status as a future
event. These stand-ins can be seen in the following texts, all taken from Book v,
prose iv:
But foreknowledge, you will say, although it does not constitute a neces-
sity for future things, of their happening, yet it is a sign that they will
necessarily come to be. In this way, then, even had there been no fore-
knowledge, it would be agreed that the outcome of future things is neces-
sary; for every sign only points to what is, but does not cause to be what it
signifies. Wherefore it must first be demonstrated that nothing happens
except of necessity, that foreknowledge may be seen to be the sign of that
necessity; otherwise, if there is no necessity, nor then will foreknowledge
be able to be a sign for that which does not exist.79
Therefore things which, while they are happening, lack any necessity of
being so, these same things, before they happen, are future without any
79 The Consolation of Philosophy, v. pr. iv [Boethius 1973, p. 406]: Sed praescientia, inquires,
tametsi futuris eveniendi necessitas non est, signum tamen nest necessario ea esse ven-
tura. Hoc igitur modo, etiam si praecognitio non fuisset, necessaries futurorum exitus esse
constaret. Omne etenim signum tantum quid sit ostendit, non vero efficit quod designat.
Quare demonstrandum prius est nihil non ex necessitate contingere, ut praenotionem
signum esse huius necessitates appareat. Alioquin si haec nulla est, ne illa quidem eius rei
signum poterit esse quae non est.
necessity. And therefore there are some things going to happen [eventura]
the occurrence of which is free from all necessity.80
Tr. tester, in ibid., p. 409
For these two [foreknowledge and not-necessary outcomes] seem to be

incompatible, and you think that if things are foreseen, necessity is a
consequence, and if there is no necessity, they cannot be foreknown at
all, and nothing can be grasped by knowledge except what is certain.81
Tr. tester, in ibid.
If we systematically replace references to divine foreknowledge and to future

status with references to truth simpliciteran unproblematic substitution,
given the knowledge axiom (K ) and Aristotelian correspondencewe
get a rejection of the doctrine of broad bivalence proffered in the Second
Commentary on De Interpretatione, and an embrace of plain old T2, against
a background of A(a).
So why has Boethius been able to dispense with broad bivalence and to
embrace orthodox bivalence? One possibility is that he was presenting the
slippery T2A(a) model merely in his capacity as an exponent of Peripatetic
philosophy. But given that he (in the guise of Lady Philosophy) apparently
refers in the Consolation to his previous work as an exegete of Aristotle in a
manner suggesting that he believed it,82 we can assume that there is a con-
ceptual advance here. That advance is represented by the presence, in the
Consolation, of two elements lacking in the commentaries on De Interpreta-
tione, namely the principle of subject-relativized knowledge and the doctrine
of Gods status as a being to whom all of creation is somehow eternally present.
Before showing how these two fit together, I shall simply describe them.
4.4.1 The Principle of Subject-Relativized Knowledge (SRK)

This Neoplatonic principle states that the form of knowledge depends not on
the object but on the subject of the knowledge-relation. The doctrine is asso-
80 The Consolation of Philosophy, v. pr. iv [Boethius 1973, p. 408]: Quae igitur cum fiunt carent
exsistendi necessitate, eadem prius quam fiant sine necessitate future sunt. Quare sunt
quaedam eventura quorum exitus ab omni necessitate sit absolutus.
81 Ibid.: Dissonare etenim videntur putasque si praevideantur consequi necessitatem, si
necessitas desit minime praesciri nihilque scientia comprehendi posse nisi certum.
82 Ibid., 404: Vetus, inquit, haec est de providentia querela Marcoque Tullio, cum divina-
tionem distribuit, vehementer agitate tibique ipsi res diu prorsus multumque quaesita,
sed haud quaquam ab ullo vestrum heactenus satis diligenter ac firmiter expedita.
46 chapter 1
ciated with with Proclus and is attributed by Ammonius to Iamblichus.83 Its

purpose seems to be to allow God to have epistemic contact with created reality
without that contact canceling any of the predicates normally associated with
Godhead. Though sketchily presented in the Neoplatonic sources, it seems to
be quite complex, as evidenced in this passage from Proclus On Providence:
[T]he form of knowledge must not correspond to what the object of

knowledge is, but to what the subject of knowledge is .
For it is possible to know the inferior in a superior manner and the
superior in an inferior manner .
Therefore, since the gods are superior to all things, they anticipate all
things in a superior way, that is in the manner of their own existence: in
a timeless way what exists according to time, in an immaterial way the
material things, in a determinate way what is indeterminate, in a stable
way what is unstable, and in an ungenerated way what is generated.
Tr. steel, in proclus 2007, 64, p. 71
Ammonius similar treatment appears in Ammonius and Boethius 1998, pp. 98

99. Drawing on this tradition, which includes Origen and Chrysostom as well
as Proclus,84 Boethius states SRK thus:
[E]verything which is known is grasped not according to its own power

but rather according to the capability of those who know it.85
In Boethius, too, SRK has a complex character, but it differs considerably from
previous treatments such as that found in Proclus. As in the Second Commen-
tary, we are given (this time explicitly) an epistemic hierarchy with divinity,
or something akin to divinity, at the top. A given form can be cognized by
sense, imagination, reason, and intelligence (in ascending order of cognitive
power). Humans have the first three, while God alone seems to have the fourth,
although the text is not entirely clear on this. Each level cognizes the object, in
this case a form, at a distinct remove from its underlying matter: sense exam-
ines the form as constituted in the matter, intelligence looks with the pure
83 See Ammonius and Boethius 1998, p. 98 and J. Evans 2004: 268.

84 See Huber 1976: 3036 for the Neoplatonic pedigree of this approach.
85 The Consolation of Philosophy, v. pr. iv [Boethius 1973, p. 410]: Omne enim quod cognosc-
itur non secundum sui vim sed secundum cognoscentium potius comprehenditur facul-
tatem.
sight of the mind at the simple Form itself, and reason and imagination occupy
intermediate positions.86 While Boethius does not spell out the details of this
system, we clearly have a hierarchy of knowers, and the higher power of com-
prehension embraces the lower, while the lower in no way rises to the higher.87
4.4.2 Gods Eternal Present

Drawing directly on Plato (Timaeus 37c38c) and indirectly on the whole
Neoplatonic tradition, Boethius asserts that God has an always eternal and
present nature. The doctrine of Gods status as a being to whom all of creation
is somehow eternally present is, of course, quite ancient.88 Boethius himself, in
De Trinitate, had already distinguished between eternity and sempiternity: the
former is the timelessness proper to assertions about God, while the latter is the
endless temporal flow proper to assertions about creation.89 A reasonable (or
at least intuitive) interpretation of the claim that God, though eternal, knows
creation, which is sempiternal, is the claim that creation is present to God in
some way analogous to that in which some spatially extended state of affairs
is present to us at any given moment. According to such a construal, Gods
knowledge is permanent in the simplicity of his present, and embracing all
the infinite spaces of the future and the past, considers them in his simple act
of knowing as though they were now going on. Hence, Boethius continues,
His foreknowledge should be referred to not as praevidentia, a foreseeing, but
as providentia, a looking-forth.90 A spectator who observes a man walking, says
86 Testers translation. The Consolation of Philosophy, v. pr. iv [Boethius 1973, p. 410]: Sensus
enim figuram in subiecta materia constitutam, imaginatio vero solam sine materia iudicat
figuram. Ratio vero hanc quoque transcendit speciemque ipsam quae singularibus inest
universali consideratione perpendit. Intellegentiae vero celsior oculus exsistit; super-
gressa namque universitatis ambitum ipsam illam simplicem formam pura mentis acie
contuetur.
87 Testers translation. The Consolation of Philosophy, v. pr. iv [Boethius 1973: 410]: [S]uperior
comprehendendi vis amplectitur inferiorem, inferior vero ad superiorem nullo modo
consurgit.
88 Sorabji 1983: 98130 traces the doctrine of timeless eternity back to Parmenides, with
important contributions made first by Plato and then by Plotinus and his followers; he
plays down the contributions of Aristotle and Augustine.
89 See Boethius 1973, pp. 2224.
90 Tr. Tester et al., in The Consolation of Philosophy, v. pr. vi [Boethius 1973, p. 426]: [E]st
autem deo semper aeternus ac praesentarius status; scientia quoque eius omnem tempo-
ris supergressa motionem in suae manet simplicitate praesentiae infinitaque praeteriti ac
future spatia complectens omnia quasi iam gerantur in sua simplici cognitione consid-
erat. Itaque sie praescientiam pensare velis qua cuncta dinoscit, non esse praescientiam
48 chapter 1
Philosophy, is aware of the events he sees, even though they are occurring with
no (simple) necessity; analogously, God foresees things that will, in some future
moment, non-necessarily happen. To be sure, tomorrows free choices have the
status conditionally necessary from Gods perspective, but they retain their
simple contingency.91
Opinions differ on the nature of Gods eternal present in Boethius: is it some-
how real, or is it merely figurative? Sorabji 1983: 255256, arguing for the former,
takes what one might call the orthodox view that Boethius invokes an actual
eternal present from which God sees and acts; the idea is that events viewed
from such a standpoint are in no sense forcibly necessitated by the viewer, any
more than the pedestrian of the previous paragraph is forced to walk merely
in virtue of the fact that someone is looking at him. However, Marenbon 2005:
3137 argues, to my mind persuasively, that the recourse to Gods presential
cognition of futures is not ontological but figurative or adverbial: God sees the
future in a way merely analogous to the way in which we view the present. For
the purposes of evaluating Boethius argument, however, it is not necessary to
decide between these two interpretations. The point is that whether Gods eter-
nal present should be read as real or as figurative, the only work it is doing is as
a mode of cognition.
To clarify this point, consider the conceptual connection between the simple
/ conditional necessity distinction, the doctrine of Gods eternal present, and
the Principle of Subject-Relativized Knowledge. The latter, for example, is a
powerful (and potentially versatile) tool of analysis, but the only aspect of SRK
that is put to use here is the divine ability to see the future in its complete modal
context. This involves seeing each thing, event, or state of affairs (1) as though
it were present while (2) seeing all modal alternatives to that thing, event, or
state of affairs, if such there be. The eternal present from which God views the
world allows Him to see the future with the clarity and distinctness of present
res (whether or not He is really present to those res); the distinction between
simple and conditional necessity allows Him to distinguish simply contingent
from simply necessary res. What matters for Boethius is not the location or
nature of the redoubt from which God views the world, but rather the clarity
and completeness of His vision of all events both possible and actual. God,
unlike us, can know things about the future that are non-necessary; a corollary,
quasi futuri sed scientiam numquam deficientis instantiae rectius aestimabis; unde non
praevidentia sed providentia potius dicitur, quod porro ab rebus infimis constituta quasi
ab excelso rerum cacumine cuncta prospiciat.
91 The Consolation of Philosophy, v. pr. vi [Boethius 1973, pp. 428430].
implicitly endorsed by Boethius inasmuch as he has abandoned the quasi-

modal operators definite and indefinite, is that future truth-value and modality
come apart.92
4.5 The Boethian or Logical-Compatibilist Model

The following model, a fairly conventional scheme of forward-branching tem-
poral logic, is intended as a formalization of Boethius explicit and implicit
doctrines regarding time, freedom, and belief (both creaturely and divine).93
Of course, by allowing the model to formalize Boethius implicit doctrines, I run
the risk of imputing to him a formal sophistication he clearly lacked. Hence I
must emphasize that I do not claim that Boethius consciously endorsed any
of the following analysis, still less that he employed any part of the (purely
modern) formalism in which it is here expressed. Rather, my claim is that the
analysis provides a conceptual framework that explains a number of impor-
tant features of the Boethian account in a satisfying way (see 4.5.14.5.4).
A framework such as this, I would argue, is at any rate implied by Boethius
account, whether or not it was in any sense intended by Boethius; and inten-
tions of dead authors being notoriously irrecoverable, implications will have
to do in their stead. In any case, the model is sufficiently general to accommo-
date, with minor adjustments, the analyses in both the Commentaries and the
Consolation; the conceptual advances of the latter over the former can be char-
acterized as insights into the expressive possibilities inherent in the system.
Indeed, the model here presented underlies a great many medieval ap-
proaches to the problem of future contingents. It acts as a kind of organizing
matrix for most scholastic systems developed to handle our problem; even
thinkers who reject some of its assumptions (such as Peter Abelard and Peter
Auriol) develop theories that recall Boethius general approach, while others
92 The point is well expressed by Sharples, who notes that for us, necessity is a criterion of
foreknowledge, whereas, according to Boethius, it is not so for God: The challenge to
Philosophy is to show that CSFpLFp, [which applies to our foreknowledge], does not apply
to Gods foreknowledge (Sharples 2009: 219). Sharples analysis, according to which Gods
eternal present (however construed), the simple/conditional necessity distinction, and
SRK operate in tandem, is essentially in harmony with my own.
93 I claim no formal originality for what follows. The great pioneer in formalizing temporal
(or tense) logic was, of course, Arthur Prior; for information about other important
contributors, see hrstrm and Hasle 2011 and Galton 2008, as well as the names listed
in Appendix A0.1. The model presented here bears an obvious affinity to the sketch of a
Boethian temporal logic presented in J. Martin 2004 as well as the Ockhamist system of
Burgess 1978, but is not identical to either of them.
50 chapter 1
(such as Thomas Wylton, William Ockham, and Walter Chatton) develop com-
plex models that build on rather than reject his solution. This model, while
more complicated than the simple conceptual scheme underlying the scope-
disambiguation approach, nevertheless treats the entire problem-complex as
amenable to conceptual analysis, without the necessity of any radicalizing
moves such as the assumption of a genuinely unsettled future.94 Specifically,
it allows thinkers a response to truth-to-necessity while giving them a way to
distinguish between creaturely and divine cognition so as to validate John Can
Be Wrong and invalidate Divine Foreknowledge Necessitates and God Can Be
Wrong. Since the approach associated with this model concedes the premise of
logical determinism (as there is already a fact of the matter about every future
contingent) but denies that it entails conative necessitation (as there are licit
modal alternatives), I call this model logical compatibilism. The most impor-
tant feature of the model is the concept of forward-branching time suggested
in Fig. 2. A tiny piece of the time-structure of such a model, fitted out with a
few features that will facilitate the analysis of medieval discussions of future
contingents, might look like Fig. 4 (see next page).
Each branching point in Fig. 4, as in Figures 1 and 2, represents a choice-
point for some agent. To keep things simple, we can imagine that a single
creaturely agent is involved, and that the temporal-modal map represents that
agents choices from (t-2) to (t+2). Each of the eight paths shown represents a
possible history of the world. As is clear from the map, these eight histories
are bundled together (or are identical) from (t-2) to (t-1); then a branching
occurs, producing a counterfactual present at (t0); then further branchings
occur, until we reach our notional end-points A through H, which are labeled
arbitrarily. Again arbitrarily, the real history of the world runs along the top
of the forward-branching tree and is assigned to history index A. We can also,
94 Toivo Holopainen has stressed the trivializing quality of eleventh- and early twelfth-
century analyses of futura contingentia. He writes that such analyses (those of Anselm
of Canterbury, Peter Damian and Anselm of Besate) suggest that early scholastic ana-
lysts did not find the problem particularly interesting, hence their reliance on the
distinction between precedent and sequent necessity, which only works as a definitive
analysis on the assumption of a relatively low-gear kind of contingency (Holopainen 2006:
103). I basically agree with Holopainens analysis, but would suggest that the triviality
in question is inherited from Boethius treatment, and that it does not imply any lack of
interestboth Damian and Anselm of Canterbury wrote extensively on the problem, after
all. I would in any case distinguish between Anselm of Canterburys lucid and trivializing
A(a) approach and Damians foggier but more radical sense of divine counterfactual pos-
sibility (see the initial remarks in section 5.1 below).
figure 4 An example of a time-structure in the right-branching system. T, U, and V are

avoided in the propositional roster of (t)/(t+2) to prevent confusion with logical
symbols
following Belnap and Green 1994, give the designation Thin Red Line (TRL)
to the timeline which contains the real future (hence the color-coding).95 The
letters P through X are propositions standing for states of affairs that obtain at
specific points. According to the diagram, then, it is currently really the case
that Q; that is, (t0[A]) Q or (t0[TRL]) Q. Likewise, it is currently the case that it was
the case, one unit of time ago, that P; that is, (t0[TRL]) [(t-1[TRL])P]. However, it
is currently an open question, a question which is up to the agent, whether
95 Like the Ghost in the Machine and the Big Bang, the term Thin Red Line is intended by
its authors as a label for an intellectual mistake. Belnap and Green believe that the idea of a
TRL is not only incorrect but actually incoherent. Their case for this surprising claim rests
primarily on their assumption that the idea requires each node, including counterfactual
nodes, to have a single actual future: in other words, future actuality varies with temporal-
modal node (Belnap and Green 1994: 379380). Their model is complex and bears some
affinities to the Revocable Default Future approach of Ockham and the communis opinio
(see 7.2.2 and 7.3) and Chattonian Day 2 (see 10.1.4.2). In any case, the assumption
here is that there is at least nothing contradictory about the idea of a privileged temporal-
modal line; if we do not accept that each node (including non-TRL nodes) needs its own
special actual future, the concept is unproblematic even if intuitively troubling. In the
terminology of J. Martin 2004: 57, the TRL is the set of times designated as A(t).
52 chapter 1
R will obtain one unit hence: (t+1) R is a future contingent. It is further unde-
cided whether, at (t+2), S or S will obtain.
A number of clarifications are in order at this point:
First, except insofar as they compel an ordered sequence, the units of time
indicated by the numbers are entirely arbitrary, and nothing depends on their
duration, density, or discreteness. In most scholastic discussions of future con-
tingents, a time-specification is either explicitly present or is implied by the
context. In the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century discussions, a future instant
a is often under discussion. Hence, for the formalization of these statements
and arguments, the inclusion of a time index (t+1) or (tf) for statements about
the future and (t-1) for those about the past helps to prevent unnecessary com-
plications. Depending on the formal context, instant a can be rendered vari-
ously as (t+1 [TRL]), (tf [TRL]), orif we are dealing with B-/C-series indicesas
(t [TRL]), (t [TRL]), (t [TRL]), etc.
Second, the nodes in Fig. 4 are connected by both conative and alethic
modality. The timelines represent conative modality, i.e., the kind of modality
proper to an agent in time. In this function, accessibility from one node to
another is forward-only: an agent situated at (t0[AD]) may bring about the
world-state designated by the nodes (t+1[A,B]) or (t+1[C,D]), but not (t0[AD]) or
(t-1[AH]) (its own proper present and past respectively).96 Alethic modality, on
the other hand, has to do with what Dummett 1969: 245 calls truth-value links.
These links guarantee world-internal and trans-world truth. They concern not
what agents can achieve, but with what simply is the case with respect both
to the immediate propositional constituents (or, on the truth-maker side, the
states of affairs) of a given world-time and to the propositional constituents /
states of affairs of other world-times in the same time-structure (i.e., the same
forward-branching tree). Crucially, the accessibility relation of alethic modality
is universal: the world-state intrinsic to any individual node is an extrinsic fact
about any other node. In terms of formal syntax, we can adopt the following
derivational schema to our system to express this relation:
(tn[]) (tm[]) [(tn[])]
No restriction is placed on n, m, , or . This feature of the model ensures

that the modal field is stablethere is a single Garden of Forking Paths, and
96 To be specific, conative R is forward-only, left-connected (i.e., backward branching is

disallowed) but not right-connected (i.e., forward branching is allowed), left-total but not
right-total, irreflexive, and transitive. See Appendix for details.
it looks the same from any one of its nodes97and it allows the simple
expression of pasts and futures proper to any node. We have already seen one
example of this: (t0[TRL]) [(t-1[TRL]) P], it was the case, one unit of time ago, that
P. We can likewise express statements about the real future: (t0[TRL]) [(t+1[TRL])
R], it will be the case, one unit of time hence, that R.98
Third, the non-TRL nodes that are conatively available to an agent acting
at (t0[TRL]) count, for the purposes of this model, as options which will not be
exercised but which are nevertheless (somehow) available. The nonactuality
of these alternatives does not deprive them of their status as guarantors of
agentic freedom. This insouciant attitude toward the threat of a fixed future is
the hallmark of the (self-consciously) A(a) model, i.e., of logical compatibilism.
Finally, the model does not pretend to assume anything about the internal
structure or powers of the facultative will making decisions in time; it aims
merely to provide a temporal-modal framework that can be seen as a fit vehicle
for such a will. All branchings that are conatively accessible from a given
node represent options which an agent can, by the normal function of its
will, bring into being, and all questions about the specific properties of such
a normal function are simply bracketed. This restriction is in keeping with
the vast majority of medieval discussions of future contingents that take, as
their starting point, the ninth chapter of De Interpretatione (which most of
them do, either implicitly or explicitly): such discussions focus on the threat
of logical determinism, leaving other worriese.g., the threat posed by causal
determinism to an adequate account of the function of the facultative willto
be dealt with on other occasions.
4.5.1 How the Boethian Model Lets Us Handle Simple / Conditional

Necessity
The first (temporal) interpretation of the simple / conditional necessity dis-
tinction (see 4.3 above) emerges naturally from this model. Let us review an
agents situation and options in Fig. 4. Certain aspects of reality are not up to
the agent; these include the action of all logical, metaphysical, and physical
laws. Let the proposition X, for example, stand for the sun rises, and let (t+2)
be tomorrow morning. Since the agent neither has nor ever had any say in this
97 The universality of the alethic relation actually goes beyond Dummetts idea of truth-value
links, which latter are explicitly limited to events on what I term the TRL (see Dummett
1969: 244245).
98 The universal alethic relation is so intuitively basic that it can be hard to see why it is
necessary to insist on it. Suffice it to say that it is impossible to express such basic ideas as
the (temporal) distinction between simple and conditional necessity without it.
54 chapter 1
matter, X is included in the state-description of all nodes (t+2). By contrast, W

is clearly something the agent might very well have prevented from happen-
ing at (t+2) if he had opted for (t0) Q; but having chosen (t0) Q, he has made
(t+2) W inevitable. Both (t+2) W and (t+2) X, then, are (for different reasons)
antecedently necessary; that is, W and X are the case at the (t+2) nodes of all
paths accessible to the agent. We can express this as (t0[TRL]) (t+2) [W X].
We turn to future contingents. The agent, acting at (t0[TRL]), will really choose
(t+1) R, a fact we can express either by focusing directly on the node in
question, as in (t+1[TRL]) R, or by focusing on its status as an extrinsic fact about
the present moment, as in (t0[TRL]) [(t+1[TRL]) R]. But we cannot conclude from
this fact, however expressed, that the agent antecedently or simply must choose
(t+1)R. In fact, it is not the case that (t+1)R is simply necessary for the agent,
i.e., that (t0[TRL]) (t+1) R. There is at least one (t+1) node on which R is the case;
that is, (t0[TRL]) (t+1) R. Clearly, then, truth does not logically compel simple
necessity.
It does, however, compel conditional necessity. We can express the temporal
interpretation of the distinction between simple and conditional necessity
in two ways. First, we can hold the time indices constant and express the
distinction by exploiting the difference between modally open and closed
future-tense sentences.99 For example, given (t+1[TRL])R, a future truth, we may
take note of the fact that on all nodes of all histories accessible to the agent,
(t+1[TRL]) R is the case. (This is guaranteed by the provision that the alethic
relationthe relation among world-times that simply specifies what is true in
a given world-time from the perspective of another world-timeis universal.)
Hence, although, as we have established, it is not the case that (t0[TRL]) (t+1)
R (which would be a claim of simple necessity), it is the case that (t0[TRL])
99 In formulating these ideas about the nature of future-tense claims, I have been much
influenced by the theories presented in MacFarlane 2003 and 2007, Belnap and Green 1994,
and Thakkar 2006 on future truth, as well as the brief remarks on the subject by Sorabji
1998: 4. Belnap and Green, in particular, stress the open-sentence status of future-tense
sentences:
In contrast to the senselessness of asserting an assignment-open sentence such as x is

brindle, there is no radical defect in asserting a typical future-tense sentence such as
The die will show six, even under conditions, even known to the speaker, of radical
indeterminism.
belnap and green 1994: 377
The assertion of open sentences will become crucial in Wyltons system (see 6.1).
(t+1[TRL]) R (which stands here for conditional necessity). The difference, of

course, is that the history-subscript is missing from the first expression, making
(t+1) R, by itself, an open sentence whose truth-value varies from history to
history, whereas it is included in the second expression, making (t+1[TRL]) R a
closed sentence with a stable truth-value.100
The second way to express the temporal distinction between the two kinds
of necessity is to leave the history-subscript out in both cases but to require
that, if conditional necessity is meant, the temporal index of the necessitated
proposition be less than or equal to that from which the necessity is held to
obtain. Once again, given (t+1[TRL]) R, it follows that on every history conatively
accessible to (t+1[TRL]), (t+1) R characterizes that history, a fact we can express
as (t+1[TRL]) (t+1) R. If we express conditional necessity in this way, Boethius
two temporal necessities can be given a unitary reading: an expression of the
form (tm[TRL]) (tn) must assert simple necessity if m<n, but may assert
conditional necessity if mn.101 Note that the two clauses of (the temporal
interpretation of) Aristotles text at De Interpretatione 19a23 (it is necessary
that whatever is is when it is, and that whatever is not is not when it is not)
come out as follows:
1. [(tn[]) (tmn[])(tn)]
2. [(tn[]) (tmn[])(tn) ]102
As for the second (derivational) interpretation of the distinction between sim-

ple and conditional necessity (see again 4.3), note that in any normal deriva-
tional framework, including the one sketched in the Appendix, the following
100 Both expressions, (t0[TRL]) (t+1) R and (t0[TRL]) (t+1[TRL]) R, are (as whole expres-
sions) closed. See Appendix for details on how to interpret these timed modal claims as
predicate-logic expressions, with modal operators expressed as and quantifying over
histories and/or temporal indices.
101 If m<n, then (tm[])(tn) must express simple necessity for an agent located at tm[];
however, even if mn, we may not want to count some proposition (tm[])(tn) as an
example of conditional necessity, since (tn) could stand for some such proposition as
the sun rose yesterday.
102 The formulation is similar to Dorothea Fredes suggestion of pt Ntpt (Frede 1972: 163)
and to Knuuttilas predicate-logic version (x) (tx ttx) (Knuuttila 2012: 317) except
for the modal subscripts and the inclusion of , which allows the formulation to cover the
necessity of the present and the past. See Appendix, A2.11A2.14, for natural-deduction
proofs of [(tn[]) (tmn[])(tn)]. The second clause in the text above, of course, can be
dispensed with if we assume free substitution for in the first clause.
56 chapter 1
rule holds: within any sub-derivation or any individual world in the temporal-
modal logic presupposed in this model, a commitment to any proposition P
will make it necessary, on pain of contradiction, to refrain from introducing
P into that subderivation or that world. If I have assumed Psay, because
I believe itthen it is impossible, in the sense of producing inconsistent
beliefs on my part, to entertain the possibility that P under the scope of my
assumption. The second interpretation of the simple / conditional necessity
distinction thus follows the rules of standard doxastic logic (as in, e.g., the KD4
system described in Hintikka 1962).103
The third (scope) interpretation of the distinction is secured by the simple
expedient of stipulating that all rules of standard propositional modal logic
obtain in this system, including those that recognize the scope distinction
between (S S) and (S S).
4.5.2 How the Model Lets Us Apply the Principle of Subject-Relativized

Knowledge: Open- vs. Closed-Sentence Belief Clauses and the
Pattern Arguments
Let us turn to issues of divine and creaturely cognition. Recall that the desi-
deratum presented in 3.2.2 was to find an account that would invalidate
Divine Foreknowledge Necessitates and God Can Be Wrong without invali-
dating John Can Be Wrong, an account that appeals neither to scope disam-
biguation nor to heterogeneous modality. This is done, in Boethian logical com-
patibilism, by interpreting SRK as a simple formal distinction between beliefs
about the future held by creatures and those held by God. If we stipulate that
creaturely beliefs take modally open sentences as complements, while God
believes modally closed sentences, we have a straightforward way of dealing
with the pattern arguments, i.e., of validating JCBW and invalidating DFN and
GCBW.
Consider again Fig. 4. The real future at (t+1) is represented by the node
(t+1[TRL]); however, (t+1[C]) and (t+1[D]) are licit modal alternatives. If, at the
present moment, a creature C believes that R will be the case at (t+1), we
can express that belief simply as (t0[TRL]) BC (t+1) R, leaving the modal index
[A/TRL], [B], [C], etc., out of the expression governed by the doxastic operator
BC. Such a belief can be thought of as a guarded statement of fact (Sorabji 1998:
4): depending on events (i.e., on the issue of whether [A], [B], [C], etc., turns
103 More specifically, it follows those rules as supplemented by the convention that strong
doxastic operators are silently prefixed to all the assertions in a given argument or set of
propositions uttered in a dialectical context. See the proposed solution to Moores paradox
in Hintikka 1962: 6471.
out to be the real future), the belief can be verified or falsified in retrospect,
since there are both verification-nodes and falsification-nodes accessible to
point (t0[TRL]). John, in other words, can be wrong.104 On the other hand, Gods
belief that R will be the case at (t+1) is expressed as BG (t+1[TRL]) R (or,
ignoring problems associated with giving a time-index to statements about
God, as (t0[TRL]) BG (t+1[TRL]) R); God believes, correctly, that on the branch
corresponding to the real future, R is the case. There is no branch in which it
is not the case that (t+1[TRL]) R (although there is a branch on which (t+1[C]) R,
which, however, is quite another thing). Thus, Gods belief that R will be the
case is necessarily correct: He cannot be wrong. Moreover, the same grounds
that allow us to reject truth-to-necessity (see 4.5.1 above) show us why Gods
foreknowledge does not necessitate: Gods knowledge that (t+1[TRL]) R does
not cancel the fact that (t0[TRL]) (t+1) R.
4.5.3 How the Model Lets Us Handle Broad Bivalence and the
Boethian Assertability Conditions
The strong future tense can be assimilated to a simple-necessity claim about
the future, as in (t0[TRL]) (t+1) R. Since (t+1) R is a future contingent in Fig. 4,
this expression is, in accordance with Boethius text, false no matter what hap-
pens. That is, its truth-value does not change from false to true once (t+1[TRL])
becomes the present moment and the fact or state of affairs corresponding to
R actually occurs.
The weak future tense can be treated as the assertion of an open sen-
tence.105 In line with the structure of creaturely doxastic clauses explained
above, this can be expressed using an operator A which works like a strong
modal or doxastic operator in that it quantifies over all histories accessible from
a given node but which, in contrast to the necessity claim (t0[TRL]) (t+1) R and
104 Such an analysis is in line with Thomas Aquinas doctrine on the subject of human
cognition of future contingents:
Contingens enim, cum futurum est, potest non esse: et sic cognitio aestimantis ipsum
futurum esse falli potest; falletur enim si non erit quod futurum esse aestimavit.
Summa contra gentiles i, ch. 67, n. 2 [aoo vol. 2, p. 17]
For a contingent, when it is future, can not-be; and thus the cognition of the one who
believes that that thing will be, can be wrong; for it will be wrong if that which he believed
would be, will not be.
105 Here I draw the readers attention once more to the remarks of Belnap and Green 1994 on
the importance of this feature of future-tense claims (see note 99).
58 chapter 1
the belief claim (t0[TRL]) BC (t+1) R, merely gives the content of a weak assertion.
Unlike other tensed expressions, a proposition containing the A operator can
be indefinitely true-or-false; it is so just in case the corresponding contingency
claim is true. Given a future contingent R, then, the forward-branching system
gives us ways of expressing the truth-values of (1) a creaturely weak prediction
that R will be, (2) the corresponding creaturely strong prediction, and (3) a
divine future-tense predictionsay a prophecy or a divine announcement
that R will be:
Background assumption: (t0[TRL]) (t+1) R
Type of prediction: Formalization: Truth-value:
1. Weak: (t0[TRL]) A (t+1) R Indefinitely true-or-false

2. Strong: (t0[TRL]) (t+1) R Definitely false
3. Divine: (t0[TRL]) (t+1[TRL]) R Definitely true
Boethius has nothing to say about the status of an asserted open sentence like
(1) once (t+1[TRL]) becomes the present moment. There is, however, nothing in
either Commentary (let alone in the Consolation) to indicate that such a weak
prediction should change in truth-value any more than should the strong
prediction. In accordance with the alethic analysis in Boethius Commentaries,
which reads truth-values directly off the modal or known-to-nature status
(necessary, contingent, impossible) of states of affairs, such an expression can
be considered indefinitely true-or-false both before and after (t+1[TRL]).106 Like a
106 This analysis differs from that of Kretzmann 1998: 4244 in that the latter construes the
Boethian weak prediction as having the form of a conditional the apodosis of which con-
tains a modal expression. The weak prediction of a sea-battle comes out, for Kretzmann,
as follows:
(At [this time] on [todays date] it is definitely true that) if a sea battle does come about
tomorrow, [tomorrows date], it comes about in such a way that it could have failed to
come about.
kretzmann 1998: 43
This interpretation has a basis in Boethius text [Boethius 1880, p. 212, ll. 1415, quoted in
4.2 above]. However, as an interpretation of Boethius intentions respecting the weak
creaturely belief about a future contingent, it can be confirmed or disconfirmed

(i.e., turn out to be right or wrong) but it is neither definitely true nor definitely
false.
Note that this system has the resources to accommodate Boethius slippery
T2 theory but need not do so. An indefinitely true-or-false claim about the
future can, as above, be expressed as a modally open sentence; but we can, if
we are so inclined, abolish the category of the indefinitely true-or-false from
the system by disallowing the assertion of open sentences, i.e., by abolishing
the A operator.
4.5.4 How the Model Lets Us Express the Ockhamist Escape Clause
In addition to handling the problems foremost in Boethius mind, the logical
compatibilist model also affords a way to formalize analyses not propounded
by Boethius himself. For example, it gives us an easy way to express the idea
that propositions whose truth depends on the future are not subject to past-
necessitation. As noted by Marenbon 2005: 106, this future-dependency escape
clause, though its invention is routinely credited to William Ockham, appears
as early as the twelfth century in the Sentences commentary of Peter of Poitiers:
If God has foreknown something, it will take place; it is necessary that God
have foreknown this; therefore it is necessary that this take place. And this
[problem] is resolved by rejecting the assumption; for it is not necessary
that God have foreknown this, even though it concerns the past, since its
outcome looks toward the future.107
Here is Ockhams more familiar formulation of the idea:
future, it has the disadvantage that it predicts no specific event but reduces to the mere
assertion of the possible non-occurrence of that event; this is the price of securing it
a definite truth-value of T, which latter is in any case alien to Boethius intention. My
interpretation, rather than asserting the contingency of the outcome as does Kretzmanns,
builds the contingency into the expression itself by leaving the prediction modally open.
Not only does this approach bring assertion in line with expressions of creaturely belief,
but it also has the virtue of incorporating an actual claim about the future into the
formulation, which seems natural (cf. also Boethius reformulation of the weak future
tense at Boethius 1880, p. 213, ll. 710, also quoted in 4.2).
107 Peter of Poitiers 1943, p. 125, ll. 186191, quoted in Marenbon 2005: 106: Si Deus aliquid
prescivit, illud eveniet; necesse est hoc Deum prescivisse; ergo necesse est hoc evenire.
Et hoc solvendum per interemptionem assumptionis; non enim est necesse Deum hoc
prescivisse, licet hoc sit de preterito, quia eius eventus spectat ad futurum.
60 chapter 1
[A]ll propositions in these matters [i.e., predestination and reprobation],

although they may be vocally about the present or the past, are neverthe-
less equally about the future, since their truth depends on the truth of
propositions that are formally about the future.108
In fact, the resources for this move, already implicit in Aristotles De Inter-
pretatione 19a23, are also an immediate consequence of the basic features of
the system formulated by Boethius in the sixth century C.E. We can express
the point made here by using the distinction between open and closed time-
indexed propositions. Let us suppose that our agent is Peter, and that S stands
for Peter attains salvation. Clearly this is true in the real history of the world
at (t+2), i.e., (t+2[TRL]) S. The latter is extrinsically true about node (t-1[TRL]), i.e.,
(t-1[TRL]) [(t+2[TRL]) S]; this fact about (t-1[TRL]) depends on, or is convertible with,
the truth of the simple expression (t+2[TRL]) S. Like all present and past facts,
however, this fact is now temporally, or conditionally, necessary; i.e., (t0[TRL])
(t-1) [(t+2[TRL]) S]. But since the last segment of this expression is a modally
closed sentence, what is conditionally necessitated is merely Peters salvation
in the real future: we have not necessitated and cannot necessitate his salva-
tion simpliciter, as in (t0[TRL]) (t-1) [(t+2) S], which would reduce to the simple
(t0[TRL]) (t+2) S, i.e., to the claim that all (t+2) nodes conatively accessible
from (t0[TRL]) have S in their immediate propositional/state-of-affairs roster.109
In fact, since (t+2[B]) S can be verified in the time-structure, and (t+2[B]) is a
node conatively accessible to (t0[TRL]), we can see that the denial of the strong
or nontrivial necessitation claim is also verified, i.e., (t0[TRL]) (t+2) S is the
case. In general, then, as illustrated by the time-structure in Fig. 4, the Boethian
model unequivocally verifies the necessitation of hard past facts, while neces-
sitating soft, future-dependent facts (including future contingents) only in a
trivial way:110
108 Ockham, Tractatus de praedestinatione, q. 1 [OPh vol. 2, p. 515, ll. 221224]: Quod omnes
propositiones in ista materia, quantumcumque sint vocaliter de praesenti vel de praeter-
ito, sunt tamen aequivalenter de futuro, quia earum veritas dependet ex veritate proposi-
tionum formaliter de futuro.
109 See Appendix for natural-deduction proofs both of conditional necessity, i.e., the necessity
of the present and past, and of the Ockhamist clause excepting future-dependent truths
from necessitation, both within the simple right-branching model appropriate to A(a).
110 Pike 1966: 369370 introduced the much-discussed and oft-criticized hard vs. soft fact
distinction (cf. also Adams 1967: 493494). For the problems attending the distinction, see
Fischer 1986 and 1989 (Introduction), Gaskin 1995: 7879, and Denyer 2009: 37. These prob-
lems all turn on the difficulty of achieving a water-tight criterion distinguishing facts that
(t0[TRL]) (t-1) P: Verified (a hard fact about the past is neces-

sary)
(t0[TRL]) (t-1) [(t+2[TRL]) S]: Verified but harmless (a soft fact about the past
is trivially necessary)
(t0[TRL]) (t+2) S: Falsified
This approach, which disallows strong necessitation of the future via the neces-
sity of the past, can function as a response not only to worries about divine fore-
knowledge (which require also the distinction between divine and creaturely
cognition; see 4.5.2 above) but also to one interpretation of the Hellenistic
Master Argument, namely that of Gaskin 1995: 282296.111
4.6 Historical Developments: Further Applications of the System

Obviously, there is an almost endless amount to say about how divine and crea-
turely cognition differ. However, the simple open / closed sentence analysis
can be shown to underlie some of the best-known medieval analyses of the
differences between human and divine cognition, including some whose gen-
eral tendency might seem at first blush to resist formulation according to a
right-branching model. We have already seen one such instance in the form
of the so-called Ockhamist future-dependency escape clause. Anselms dis-
cussions of freedom and divine foreknowledge in De concordia and Cur Deus
homo, which include the distinction between precedent necessity (simple
necessity) and sequent necessity (conditional necessity), clearly continue
the Boethian model.112 And the analyses of Peter Abelard (10791142), Thomas
are, in some basic way, about the present and past from those that are about the future;
problem cases include predicates implying indefinite future time-indices (e.g., This sign-
post is temporary) as well as artificial grue predicates of various kinds. While admitting
that the examples adduced are perplexing and render the hard / soft distinction formally
problematic, I would insist that the distinction is nevertheless at least pretheoretically
coherent and intuitive. More generally, in line with the hard cases make bad law princi-
ple, I think we should resist the urge to draw far-reaching conclusions from such atypical
counterexamples.
111 The so-called Ockhamist future-dependency escape clause argument is also adaptable
to more complex systems, including Ockhams own, where it may imply the possibility of
changing the real future (see 7.2.2 below, as well as Chatton, rss i, d. 38 [56][59], and
commentary on these sections). For the Master, see footnote 3.
112 The Latin terms are necessitas praecedens and sequens; the former is sometimes translated
as antecedent necessity, the latter as consequent or subsequent necessity. See Cur
Deus homo ii 17 [Anselmi opera omnia vol. 2, p. 125, l. 8l. 22] and De concordia i (3) [ibid.,
p. 250, l. 13p. 251, l. 2].
62 chapter 1
Aquinas (12251274), and Bonaventure (c. 12171274) furnish more examples.

Brief discussions of the last-named thinkers ideas will serve to show the versa-
tility of the Boethian model.
4.6.1 Abelards Nescient Stone

Let us begin with Abelard, who is known for a rather extreme-sounding form of
divine actualism. God, he writes in Theologia Christiana, cannot in any way
do more or better things than He does; nor can He cease to do these things,
but all those things which He does, He does necessarily.113 If cognition is one
of the things God does, then this actualism extends to the things God knows;
and the necessitation of Gods cognition allows Abelard a straightforward way
to invalidate God Can Be Wrong. After weighing, and rejecting as irrelevant,
an alternative approach to which we shall return (see 5 below), he argues
for a special treatment of divine knowledge-claims. Here is the relevant pas-
sage:
[W]hen we say: It is possible for a thing to happen otherwise than it hap-

pens, or than God foresawthat is, in the opposite waywe understand
otherwise not relatively, but negatively, as if we were saying the follow-
ing: It is possible that it not happen in the way in which it happens or [in
which] God foresaw it, [i.e., as if we were] simply denying the outcome,
not positing any diversity of mode in these things But indeed, though
we accept it is possible for the thing to happen otherwise than God fore-
saw it, and not in that mode in which He foresaw it, it does not follow
either that He could have foreseen in some other way or that He could
be deceived. For though it is possible for a thing to happen not in the way
that a stone foresaw, that doesnt mean that the stone could have foreseen
otherwise or could be deceived, since a stone cannot in any way foresee or
be deceived. By parity of reasoning, the following inference is fallacious:
If something happens not in the way that God foresaw, then God foresaw
otherwise, or God was deceived, since the same line of reasoning is falla-
cious with regard to the stone.114
113 Theologia Christiana v. 32 [Opera Theologica vol. 2, p. 359]: Istis ergo rationibus adstruen-
dum videtur quod plura Deus nullatenus facere possit quam faciat, aut melius facere, aut
ab his cessare, sed omnia ita ut faciat necessario facere.
114 Petrus Abaelardus, Logica [Philosophische Schriften p. 430, l. 39p. 431, l. 12]: Praeterea
cum dicimus: possibile est rem aliter euenire, quam euenit vel quam deus prouidit, id est
opposito modo, aliter non relatiue sed negatiue accipimus, ac si diceretur: possibile est,
This text invites at least two interpretations. First, given Abelards stress on
the distinction between a relative and a negative interpretation of counterfactu-
als, perhaps he is here equating counterfactuals with negative facts.115 On such
an account, Gods knowledge amounts to a necessary cognition of all events
that will in fact take place, while all alternative paths (and only such paths)
contain non-events of the form . It is, however, notoriously difficult to dis-
tinguish positive and negative facts so as to banish the latter from our account
of the actual world. Moreover, we cannot in any case render consistent the
following set of sentences, all of which may be assumed to obtain in the sce-
nario sketched in the passage quoted above (once again, for simplicitys sake
I assume a standard second-order propositional modal logic with a reflexive
frame):
1. Necessarily, God knows all positive facts and only () (BG )

positive facts.
2. Everything God knows, He knows necessarily. () (BG BG)
3. It is possible for a thing to happen otherwise than it () ( )
happens.
Even if we cannot substitute any negated expression for , the set is inconsis-
tent.116
ut non eueniat eo modo quo euenit vel Deus prouidit, euentum simpliciter negantes, non
aliquam diversitatem modi ponentes in his quae nunquam simul esse contingit vel quae
aliquid esse non possunt, dictis scilicet propositionum. At vero cum negatiue accipiamus
possibile est rem aliter euenire, quam deus prouidit et non eo modo quo prouidit, non
sequitur quod vel ipse alio modo posset prouidere vel deceptus esse. Cum enim possibile
sit rem euenire non eo modo quo lapis prouidit, non tamen vel aliter lapis prouidisse
potuit vel decipi, quia omnino prouidere lapis nihil potest nec decipi; sed nec eadem
ratione illud sequitur, quod si euenit non eo modo quo deus prouidit, deus aliter prouidit
vel deceptus est, quia idem similiter in lapide fallat.
115 Marenbon, in discussing this text, puts this interpretation as follows:
Events are merely dicta propositionum, not things which can be altered in some respect
or another; and there can only be one event at a time. The correct interpretation of [the
claim it is possible for an event to happen otherwise than God foresaw] is, then, that it
is possible that the event may not happen at all.
marenbon 1997: 228
116 We could make the set consistent by changing the second sentence to () (BG BG),
which if substitution for were unrestricted would be equivalent to () (BG BG).
But what Abelard actually writes is obviously closer to () (BG BG); furthermore,
64 chapter 1
On the second interpretation, Abelards stress on the negative character of

counterfactuals has nothing to do with a distinction between positive and neg-
ative facts; rather, it indicates a distinction between real and merely notional
futures. Thus a real future factany real future fact, whether expressed as an
affirmation or a negationwould be considered positive in Abelards sense
merely in virtue of its being on the TRL. Any divergence from this fact at the
relevant time would be considered negative; such a divergence would count
as a way of that facts not happening. The counterfactual alternatives are out
there in modal spacehence the applicability of the right-branching model to
Abelards analysisbut they have no ontological weight whatsoever: they are
merely formal possibilities. On this assumption, the triad of sentences comes
out as consistent. Sentence 1 comes out as a definition, while sentences 2 and
3 now make use of modal subscripts to distinguish open and closed clauses:
1. God knows =def BG where is either a timeless truth or has the form
(tn[TRL])
2. Everything God knows, ()(n) (BG (tn[TRL]) BG (tn[TRL]) )
He knows necessarily.
3. It is possible for a thing to () ((t+1[TRL]) (t0[TRL])(t+1))
happen otherwise than it
happens.
Sentence 2, as we have seen above, is true; for example, in Fig. 4, every node
accessible to (t0[TRL]) is a node on which BG (t+1[TRL]) R is the case. And
sentence 3 is perfectly compatible with it. No appeal to mixed modality is made,
except for the distinction between expressions specifying and those lacking a
modal or history subscript.
Further evidence for this interpretation is provided by Abelards curious
comparison between the possibility of falsifying Gods prediction and that
we have no right to treat () (BG BG) and () (BG BG) as equivalent, since
with restricted substitution for they are distinct.
Other interpretations than the two mooted in the text are possible, of course; perhaps
Abelards thoughts on counterfactuals are in line with his analysis of de re modality or
with his speculations about a gulf between creaturely and divine modality (see King 2004:
85). The first, however, would lead back to the scope-disambiguation analysis, while the
second leads to the similar trivialities of the mixed-modality approach. The point is that
Abelard, in this passage, seems to be dealing directly with de dicto modal alternatives
and trying to construct a way in which Gods knowledge is necessitated while creaturely
alternatives are (somehow) real.
of falsifying a stones. The comparison is perfectly lucid if we assume that it

depends on the difference between creaturely and divine beliefs as expressed
in the foregoing discussion. On this reading, Abelard is claiming that creaturely
beliefs cannot licitly be attributed either to a stone or, similiter, to God. Let us
take BS(t+1) to mean the stone S believes that will happen tomorrow
and assume a formal postulate restricting to rational creatures timed belief
claims that are open with respect to the history index. We then have every
right to claim that things might happen otherwise than the stone foresaw: for
some , there is some future node accessible to (t0[TRL]) (indeed, all future
nodes) such that it is not the case both that the stone foresaw and that .
This claim is true in virtue of the formal restriction of open-sentence belief
claims to rational creatures: stones dont foresee anything. We are not, however,
entitled to the stronger claim that the stone can be wrong, i.e., that for some
there is some node accessible to (t0[TRL]) on which it is the case both that
the stone foresaw and that is not the case (which would be required for
an actual belief to be incorrect); once again, stones dont foresee anything.
The same category mistake, from the other direction as it were, is made when
we replace S with G(od) in the above examples: since God doesnt foresee
anything in the intended (inferior) sense, the first sentence will be true in
virtue of the postulate, and the second false. The whole passage thus makes
tacit but crucial use of the idea of creaturely foresight, i.e., open-sentence
and therefore fallible beliefs about the future. It is a curious example, rather
like the Scotus passage adduced in footnote 45, of the hidden presence of the
John Can Be Wrong argument (see 3.2.2) in the scholastic literature on these
problems.
4.6.2 The Mode of the Cognizer in Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas is another thinker who distinguishes between divine and
creaturely doxastic modes in a way amenable to the open / closed sentence
analysis. In question 2, article 7 of De veritate, for example, he insists that, in
contrast to humans, God cognizes a thing according to all its conditions, in
such a way that He knows whether or not a thing exists.117 Expanding on
this difference, Aquinas explains that while our intellects cannot know the
essence of a singular, the divine intellect, in virtue of its power to apprehend
matter, can know that essence; and with this knowledge comes knowledge of
all accidents of each individual, one of which [accidents] is time, in which
117 De veritate, q. 2, a. 7, s.c. 2 [aoo vol. 3, p. 14]: [Divina cognitio] cognoscit rem secundum
omnem conditionem eius; et ita cognoscit eam esse vel non esse.
66 chapter 1
every real singular is found; and [it is] according to the determination [of time]
that it is said to exist now or not to exist.118 God knows, then, whether or not
something is now the case. In article 8 of the same question, Aquinas estab-
lishes that God has complete speculative knowledge (speculativa cognitio) of
the field of nonexistent things as well, and can distinguish between them by
decree.119
Aquinas world-picture is thus, as suggested in Fig. 3, an A(a) picture.120
How does this fact condition his approach to the crucial arguments GCBW and
DFN? In a brief response to GCBW, Aquinas makes an appeal to the distinction
between simple and conditional necessity.121 It is in a much longer response
to the strengthened version of DFN, which as we have seen is a transposed
version of strengthened GCBW, that his approach more clearly demonstrates
its affinities to the Abelardian (i.e., in this case, ultimately Boethian) solution
above. After reviewing and rejecting a number of solutions, including both the
Ockhamist solution of a future-dependent exclusion of past-necessitation
and an early precursor of Walter Chattons Copulative Analysis of Divine
Foreknowledge (see 4.6.4 and 10.1.2.1 below), he offers his own solution:
118 De veritate, q. 2, a. 7, co. [aoo vol. 3, p. 14]: Sed intellectus divinus, qui est apprehensor
materiae, comprehendit non solum essentiam universalem specie, sed etiam essentiam
singularem uniuscuiusque individui; et ideo cognoscit omnia accidentia, et communia
toti specie aut generi, et propria unicuique singulari; inter quae unum est tempus, in quo
invenitur unumquodque singulare in rerum natura, secundum cuius determinationem
dicitur nunc esse vel non esse.
119 See De veritate, q. 2, a. 8, co. [aoo vol. 3, p. 14]: quorumdam vero quae nec fuerunt,
nec sunt, nec erunt, quae scilicet nunquam facere disposuit, habet quasi speculativam
cognitionem. There are, to be sure, passages that suggest that God cannot tell the differ-
ence between the possible and the actual (e.g., ibid., q. 2, a. 8, ad 5: in intellectu autem
divino non differt esse in actu et posse; ibid., a. 8, co: apud intellectum divinum, vel arti-
ficis, indifferenter est cognitio rei, sive sit sive non sit), but these passages should be read
in connection with Aquinas aforementioned insistence on Gods dispositive relation to
the real, as well as the distinction between Gods scientia visionis (for occurrent pasts and
futures) and His scientia simplicis notitiae (for counterfactuals); see ibid., q. 2, a. 9, ad 2
[aoo vol. 3, p. 15]. As Aquinas makes clear, these two kinds of divine cognition are facul-
tatively one, but they take distinct objects, and God knows the distinction. For more on
scientia visionis / simplicis notitiae (elsewhere simplicis intelligentiae), see st i, q. 14, a. 9,
co. [aoo vol. 2, p. 208], and below in 5.1.3.
120 The actualist character of Aquinas model is established here; for his commitment to
(something like) the A-series, see footnote 17.
121 De veritate, q. 2, a. 12, ad 2 [aoo vol. 3, p. 17].
The antecedent is simply necessary, and the consequent is absolutely

necessary in the mode in which it follows from the antecedent. Matters
stand one way with those [predicates] attributed to something as it is in
itself, and another way with those [predicates] attributed to it insofar as it
is cognized. For the [predicates] attributed to it as it is in itself belong to it
according to its own mode, but the [predicates] which are attributed to it
or which follow from it insofar as it is cognized are according to the mode
of the cognizer. Hence, if in the antecedent something is signified which
pertains to cognition, the consequent must be accepted according to the
mode of the cognizer, and not that of the thing cognized [W]hen I say
if God knows something, it will be, the consequent is to be taken not
according to the disposition of the thing [as it is] in itself, but according
to the mode of the cognizer. However much the thing in itself may be
future, nevertheless according to the mode of the cognizer it is present;
and therefore one should say if God knows something, it is rather than
it will be. Hence, one must judge the following two propositions in the
same way: If God knows something, it will be, and If I see Socrates
running, Socrates runs; since both are necessary while they are taking
place.122
Aquinas emphasis in this passage on Gods timeless vision of the world might
lead one to assume that he is invoking divine presential cognition as a one-
size-fits-all solution to the problems inherent in DFN and GCBW. Here, as in
the case of Boethius, the analysis of Marenbon 2005: 117162 is on target: what
122 De veritate, q. 2, a. 12, ad 7 [aoo vol. 3, p. 18]: [H]oc antecedens est simpliciter necessarium,
et consequens est necessarium absolute, eo modo quo ad antecedens sequitur. Aliter enim
est de his quae attribuuntur rei secundum se, aliter de his quae attribuuntur ei secundum
quod est cognita. Illa enim quae attribuuntur ei secundum se, convenient ei secundum
modum suum. Sed illa quae attribuuntur ei vel quae consequuntur ad ipsam in quantum
est cognita, sunt secundum modum cognoscentis. Unde, si in antecedente significetur
aliquid quod pertineat ad cognitionem, oportet quod consequens accipiatur secundum
modum cognoscentis, et non secundum modum rei cognitae; ut si dicam: si ego intelligo
aliquid, illud est immateriale; non enim oportet ut quod intelligitur, sit immateriale, nisi
secundum quod est intellectum; et similiter cum dico: si Deus scit aliquid, illud erit;
consequens est sumendum, non secundum dispositionem rei in seipsa, sed secundum
modum cognoscentis. Quamvis autem res in seipsa sit futura, tamen secundum modum
cognoscentis est praesens; et ideo magis esset dicendum: sit Deus scit aliquid, hoc est;
quam: hoc erit; unde idem est iudicium de ista: si Deus scit aliquid, hoc erit: et de hac:
si ego video Socratem currere, Socrates currit: quorum utrumque est necessarium dum
est.
68 chapter 1
is crucial in this explanation, and in Aquinas other discussions of these topics,

is not Gods eternally present standpoint but the structure of the object of
Gods cognition.123 Placing himself in the Neoplatonic tradition as mediated
by Boethius, Aquinas reads divine and creaturely cognition of timed events as
differing fundamentally in structure.124 As with Boethius, this difference may
be expressed by means of the distinction between modally open and modally
closed sentences.
Turning again to Fig. 4, we can consider it this time as a schematization of
Gods understanding of the temporal-modal field according to Aquinas in his
capacity as representative of the Boethian logical-compatibilist tradition. God
cognizes the whole field; He knows not only what is (the Thin Red Line, the
line of real events), but what might have been (hence the non-TRL branches).
Moreover, He knows each thing or state of affairs according to all its condi-
tions. Hence, for example, He knows that in order to establish S at (t+2), some
agent must either first have chosen Q at (t0) and must then choose R at (t+1),
or Q at (t0) and must then choose R at (t+1). Likewise, He knows that choosing
Q and R, or alternatively Q and R, successively at (t0) and (t+1), necessitates
S at (t+2).125 We humans, of course, do not have complete knowledge of any
part of the temporal-modal field; hence the importance of expressing doxas-
tic claims according to the mode of the cognizer, i.e., of taking care that in
every expression making use of a doxastic operator, we express the object of
cognition with a degree of precision appropriate to the cognizer. Hence, we
cannot express Gods beliefs about tomorrow as, say, BG (t+1) R (as we would
for a creaturely belief clause); such a belief would take an open sentence as an
123 Marenbon goes a bit overboard in this analysis, claiming not only that Aquinas relies
chiefly on the divine vs. creaturely cognitive differences for his arguments but also that
he errs by appealing directly to a fallacious logical principe des consquences pistmiques
(2005: 145). In fact, Aquinas principle is not fallacious. Suffice it to say that his analogy
(elided in my translation) is badly chosen precisely because it does not furnish us with
an accurate interpretation of the general principle he enunciates here, which can be
illustrated, as I argue, by the real differences between the cognitive contents of the
expressions BC (t+1) R and BG (t+1[TRL]) R.
124 Aquinas commitment to the Principle of Subject-Relativized Knowledge is deep and
appears in several different forms and in various contexts; see, e.g., st i, q. 12, a. 4, co. [aoo
vol. 2, p. 199]; q. 14, a. 1, ad 3 [ibid., p. 206]; q. 16, a. 1, co. [ibid., p. 211], etc. I am grateful to
Jrn Mller for the references.
125 The first example, i.e., [(t+2)S (t+2)[(t0)Q (t+1)R]], is an example of a fronte neces-
sitation, while the second, i.e., [[(t0)Q (t+1)R] (t+1)(t+2)S], is a tergo necessitation.
For the a fronte / a tergo distinction, which must not be confused with the simple / condi-
tional necessity distinction, see Gaskin 1995: 118127.
object, and thus could be falsified. Instead, we must specify the precise history
on which R takes place, as well as the fact that that history is on the TRL. Once
more, then, as with Boethius, the expression comes out as the fully specified
BG (t+1[TRL]) R.126 Like the Ockhamist future-dependent propositions, such
an expression can be harmlessly past-necessitated. Let R stand for Socrates
sits:
1. Yesterday, God believed that (t-1[TRL]) BG (t+1[TRL]) R Premise

Socrates will not sit tomorrow.
2. Therefore, necessarily, (t0[TRL]) (t-1) BG (t+1[TRL]) R 1, conative
yesterday, God believed that necessity
Socrates will not sit tomorrow. of the past
3. It follows that, necessarily, (t0[TRL]) (t-1) (t+1[TRL]) R 2, divine
Socrates will not sit tomorrow. infallibility
Socrates non-sitting tomorrow will take place necessarily, but the necessity
is, on Aquinas view, innocuous.127 Note that, because of the Aquinate clause
specifying that we retain the mode of the doxastic content (reading mode
here as modally open / closed status), we are not entitled to the open-sentence
conclusion (t0[TRL]) (t-1) (t+1) R, which would reduce to (t0[TRL]) (t+1) R
and amount to the false claim that every node conatively accessible to (t0[TRL])
belongs to a history on which (t+1) R. Indeed, in this time-structure, although
(t0[TRL]) (t+1[TRL]) R (necessarily, Socrates will not-sit tomorrow in the rele-
vant mode, i.e., in reality), nevertheless (t0[TRL]) (t+1) R (possibly, Socrates
126 Alternatively, we could separate the components of Gods knowledge, expressing the same
claim as follows: BG (t[A])R, BG [TRL = A], BG [ = +1]. This approach would square better
with Aquinas doctrine, widely shared among scholastic philosophers, to the effect that
Gods knowledge is non-propositional, or in Aquinas words that divina consideratio non
est ratiocinativa vel discursiva (Summa contra gentiles i, ch. 57, n. 1 [aoo vol. 2, p. 14]). On
such a reading, we simply limit the term discursive to A-series modally open expressions
such as (t+1)R.
127 Craig 1988: 114 worries about Aquinas equivocation between two qualitatively different
kinds of necessity (simpliciter necessarium necessarium absolute); but as this dif-
ference plays no role in Aquinas argument, it may simply be a lapsus manus, especially
since, as Craig himself points out (ibid., 256 note 60), Aquinas elsewhere claims that the
consequent has the same kind of necessity as the antecedent (st i, q. 14, a. 13, ad 2 [aoo
vol. 2, p. 209]); cf. also i S., d. 38, q. 1, a. 5, ad 4 [aoo vol. 1, p. 103]: Ipsum enim necesse
est esse dum est; et ideo similis necessitas est inserenda in consequente, ut scilicet accip-
iatur ipsum quod est Socratem currere, secundum quod est in actu; et sic terminationem
et necessitatem habet.
70 chapter 1
will sit tomorrow, e.g., on histories C through F); moreover, this possibility,
which amounts to the contingency of R, is part of what God knows.128 As with
Boethius, the invocation of Gods present understanding of the future need
not be construed as though God sees the future as present in the sense that
He construes (t+1[TRL]) R as (t0[TRL]) R, but rather that He cognizes the entire
stable and fully specified time structure in a single vision.129
4.6.3 Abelard and Aquinas: T2 or T3?

Abelards and Aquinas solutions to these related pattern arguments (GCBW
and DFN) are thus highly similar, and both are in line with the model given
above for Boethius. This is not to say that these thinkers have the same doctrine
in general. Abelard, for example, constructs a world-picture that denies coun-
terfactuals any but the most exiguous formal status: counterfactuals are merely
ways in which real things could not-be. Aquinas, by contrast, has a robust and
workable approach both to counterfactuals and to Gods knowledge of them;
lodged in Gods speculativa cognitio, they have an almost Meinongian reality
that partakes somewhat of the character of what I call divine modal pleroma
(see 5.1 below). Both thinkers, however, not only make use of an implicit dis-
tinction between closed-sentence and open-sentence beliefs about the future,
but also tie Gods knowledge of fact to a specific, uniquely real future. That
is, they both subscribe to an A(a) picture of the world, i.e., a right-branching
time-structure in which a uniquely privileged future constitutes the object of
Gods foreknowledge while escaping necessitation. On the Correspondence
Assumption enunciated in 2.2, we should therefore expect that they would
both distinguish truth-value and modal statusthat is to say, that they would
both endorse T2.
128 Thus the epistemic or intentional analysis on display here is fully consistent with Aquinas
analysis in st i, q. 22, a. 4, co. et ad 1 ad 3 [aoo vol. 2, p. 222], according to which DFN
is solved by the simple observation that God knows both what will happen and that it will
happen contingently. This is the position which I (following Keele 2010b) call Fallback:
see Chattons rss I, d. 38 [26], [29], [41], [55], commentary on these sections, and 10.1.4.1
below.
129 Hence it is not necessary to assume, as do both Normore 1982: 367 and Craig 1988: 115,
that Aquinas rejects the idea of past-necessitation of divine foreknowledge, thinking it a
conceptual mistake. For example, in Fig. 4, (t-1[TRL]) BG (t+1[TRL]) R past-necessitates, but
harmlessly, as (t0[TRL]) (t-1) BG (t+1[TRL]) R. But it is not the case that (t-1[TRL]) BG (t+1) R,
which would necessitate perniciously as (t0[TRL]) (t-1) BG (t+1) R, reducing to (t0[TRL])
(t+1) R. Once again, the crucial issue here is the subject-relativized nature of what God
foreknows, specifically its modally specified character.
In the case of Abelard, this is exactly what we find. As a commentator on

De Interpretatione, Abelard makes it clear that although for God all things may
be determinate (determinate being the scholastic form of the Boethian definite
operator),130 Aristotle is addressing human affairs, and from this perspective
determinate truth must, in the case of future contingents, await the outcome,
irrespective of any tricky form the proposition might take:
But neither the present-tense [proposition] Socrates is the name of a

man who will eat tomorrow, nor the man who will eat tomorrow is
Socrates, nor I see the man who will eat tomorrow can be determined
except by the future.131
Speaking for himself, Abelard writes:
However, just as the outcome of a future contingent is indeterminate,

so also the propositions that stand for those outcomes are said to be
indeterminately true or false. Those that are true are indeterminately
true, and those that are false are indeterminately false, according to the
indeterminate outcomes which, as we have said, they pronounce.132
Abelard here admits the existence of propositions which, though associated

with a unique truth-value, are nevertheless indeterminate: a clear endorsement
of T2 with quasi-modal operators. Indeed, for Abelard, the operators function
not, as in Boethius, as modes in which the truth-predicate can be affixed to a
proposition, but as sheer stand-ins for modal operators.133
130 Logica [Philosophische Schriften p. 422, ll. 1213]: Omnia determinata dici possunt quan-
tum ad [Deum].
131 Logica [Philosophische Schriften p. 421, l. 39p. 422, l. 17]: Sed nec istae de praesenti
Socrates est nomen hominis comesturi in crastino vel homo comesturus in crastino
est Socrates vel video hominem comesturum in crastino determinari possunt nisi per
futurum.
132 Dialectica ii ii [ed. De Rijk, 1956, p. 211, ll. 2832]: Sicut autem eventus contingentis futuri
indeterminatus est, ita et propositiones quae illos eventus enuntiant indeterminate verae
vel falsae dicuntur. Quae enim verae sunt, indeterminate verae sunt, et quae falsae, inde-
terminate falsae sunt secundum indeterminatos, ut dictum est, eventus quos pronun-
tiant.
133 Abelard thus uses the operators determinate / indeterminate in the way that Mignucci
(wrongly) claims that Boethius uses the operators definite / indefinite; on this see Gaskin
1995: 332334.
72 chapter 1
Aquinas doctrine on this subject is harder to piece together. There are a

number of difficulties. For example, in his commentary on De Interpretatione,
he focuses (like Abelard) on the human rather than the absolute or divine
assertability conditions for the use of the determinate operator. Aquinas, how-
ever, lowers the bar for the human use of determinate. The human conditions,
i.e., the conditions under which we may say that some statement about the
future is determinately true, have to do with the presence, at the time of utter-
ance, of some kind of cause of the truth of that utterance. However, this cause
may fail: a doctor has a right to affix determinate to the truth-value of his own
admittedly defeasible diagnoses and prognoses.134 This analysis would reduce
determinate verum to the status of contingens in maiori parte. The problem is
that T2 and its utilization in the nontraditional interpretation require that
determinate, even in its human usage, be necessitating.
Furthermore, there seems to be no text in Aquinas in which verum is concep-
tually separated from determinate in the crisp and precise manner of Abelards
Dialectica text. In fact, determinate seems to play the role of a mere emphatic
qualifier prefixed to verum in contexts where actuality and fitness as an object
of knowledge are the focus of discussion; it could in many cases be dropped
without loss.135 Particularly revealing is Aquinas response to the terms absence
in a classic statement of logical determinism in I S., d. 40, q. 3, a. 1, arg 5: But if
a future contingent were true [n.b. not determinately true], everything would
happen of necessity, as the Philosopher proves.136 In responding to this objec-
tion, Aquinas appeals to the eternal present from which God views each future
in its presentiality:
[I respond] that that which is measured by eternity is simultaneous with

every time, but in such a way that it is measured by no [time]; and thus
the act of divine foreknowledge cannot be posited to be now as though
134 See Expositio libri Peryermeneias lb. 1, lc. 13, n. 9; for the analogous use of determinate for
esse (i.e., states of affairs corresponding to true propositions) see ibid., n. 11 [both aoo
vol. 4, p. 337].
135 Aquinas puts determinate verum to various uses: in i S., d. 38, it is presented as necessary
(but not as sufficient) for divine cognition (i S., d. 38, q. 1, a. 5, ad 2 [aoo vol. 1, p. 102]), while
in the commentary on book 4 of Aristotles Metaphysics, it serves as a way of stressing that
something is true without being false, a position into which the would-be violator of the
Law of Non-Contradiction forces himself (In libros Metaphysicorum, lib. 4, l. 8, n. 15 [aoo
vol. 4, p. 423]).
136 i S., d. 40, q. 3, a. 1, arg 5 [aoo vol. 1, p. 107]: Sed si futurum contingens esset verum, tunc
accideret de necessitate, ut probat Philosophus
it were measured by the present time and were ordered to its object as
present to future; but to every time and to every object, it is ordered as
present to present.137
We have seen that the appeal to Gods eternal present can be read as an
appeal to the different structures of the objects of creaturely and divine cog-
nition respectively. What is of interest here, however, is less what Aquinas
says than what he does not say: he does not choose the Abelardian option of
distinguishing between plain truth and determinate truth. In refraining from
the use of this conceptual tool, Aquinas suggests that he does not have it
at his disposal. He thus opens up interpretive space for a reading that con-
cedes the force of the truth-to-necessity argument: simple truth before the fact,
according to this reading, would necessitate. Now, such a reading would seem
to lead straight to T3, the introduction of a truth-value gap or intermediate
truth-value for future contingents from a creaturely perspective. But Aquinas
nowhere directly states that future contingents are neither true nor false
indeed, he confers the status of nec verum nec falsum only on non-assertoric
speech acts and on incomplexa (individual terms) as opposed to complexa
(complete propositions).138 The conclusion suggested by such disparate evi-
dence is that Aquinas had no definite doctrine regarding the truth or false-
hood of future contingents qua future (although their determinate truth or
falsehood as objects of Gods timeless cognition is assured). It should also be
noted that his use of determinate as an intensifying or focusing modifier of the
truth operator, rather than a modifier with decisive modal force, becomes com-
mon in scholastic literature on future contingents and related subjects from
the late thirteenth century on, though other interpretations (including ones
close to Boethius early slippery T2 theory) remain in circulation as well.139
137 i S., d. 40, q. 3, a. 1, ad 5 [aoo vol. 1, p. 107]: Ad quintum dicendum, quod illud quod mensu-
ratur aeternitate, est simul cum omni tempore, ita tamen quod nullo eorum mensuratur;
et ideo actus divinae praescientiae non potest poni ita esse nunc, quasi mensuretur per
praesens tempus, ut ordinem praesentis ad futurum ad suum scitum habeat; sed ad omne
tempus et ad omne scitum habet ordinem praesentis ad praesens.
138 See, e.g., Expositio libri Peryermeneias lb. 1, lc. 3, n. 6 and nn. 1113 [aoo vol. 4, pp. 328
329], Summa contra gentiles i, ch. 59, n. 3. [aoo., vol. 2, p. 15], and i S., d. 19, q. 5, a.
1, arg. 7 [aoo., vol. 1, p. 55]. These exclusions are Aristotelian (De Interpretatione 16a9
16).
139 Gaskin 1995: 329350 reviews a number of medieval thinkers from al-Farabi to Peter
de Rivo with respect to their interpretation of Aristotles text; among his conclusions
are that Aquinas, Walter Burleigh, and Adam Wodeham interpret in/determinate in the
74 chapter 1
As we shall see, Scotus reintroduces qualified truth operators, but in fact he

will qualify determinate itself (see 5.2.15.2.2 below). Note that when the
in/determinate operator is reinterpreted in Aquinas essentially rhetorical way,
the terms of the debate between the traditional and the nontraditional
interpretations of Aristotles doctrine change: instead of a distinction between
ways of affixing the truth operator, we find a focus on the classic alethic modal
operators ( and ) and a concern with invalidating truth-to-necessity argu-
ments.140
4.6.4 The Conjunctive Analysis of Divine Cognition

This section deals with another technical expedient that developed as scholas-
tic philosophers wrestled with the problem of future contingents. It is of intrin-
sic interest as an ingenious attempt to solve DFN and GCBW by a single stroke
of sentential analysis, and it is of particular interest for this study because of its
central role in the various solutions proposed by Walter Chatton. Furthermore,
it nicely illustrates the usefulness of the Boethian formal system sketched in
4.5 in expressing subtle distinctions between different thinkers responses to
one and the same idea.
At some point in the early or mid-thirteenth century, an attempt was made
to escape the threat embodied in Divine Foreknowledge Necessitates by the
following analysis, which seems to have developed from an application of the
sensus compositus / sensus divisus distinction141 to the principle of subject-
rhetorical or intensifying way described above, while Abelard and John Buridan interpret
it as a kind of modal operator. He concludes that while a non-negligible proportion
of the examined commentators follows R [= T2 with in/determinate convertible with
contingenter/necessario], the majority construes Aristotle in accordance with either AR
[= T3] or C [= Boethius slippery T2], or a fusion of the two (ibid., 350). Gaskins survey is
limited in its scope in that it looks only at these thinkers interpretation of Aristotle and
not at the doctrines they propound in propria voce; moreover, in some cases (e.g., Auriol)
I think his interpretation is simply wrong; but his conclusions are generally in agreement
with mine.
140 A particularly clear example of this shift is Gregory of Rimini, who formulates an unequiv-
ocal T2A(a) model and distinguishes carefully between determinate factuality (which
is, in his opinion, always given) and necessity (which is not enforced by factuality). See
Thakkar 2005, pp. A.63A.64 and A.67A.68.
141 In the context of future contingents, this scope distinction is routinely used to distin-
guish the correct ([God foreknows P] [P is true]) from the incorrect ([God fore-
knows P] [P is true]) (cf. 3.1 above). In the conjunctive analysis, the entire cor-
rect version is, as it were, packed into the first conjunct and has therefore the modal
status necessary. In a late version of the conjunctive analysis, Duns Scotus (unlike
relativized knowledge. Statements of the form God foreknows are to be ana-

lyzed as conjunctions, of which the first conjunct reads [God cognizes ] and
the second reads [ will be]. The basic idea is to concede the past-necessitation
(or other necessitation) of divine cognition while modally cordoning off that
cognition from its own contents. Clearly, so the reasoning goes, a conjunction
such as [(P P) Q], whose first conjunct is necessary and whose second
conjunct is, by hypothesis, contingent, has as a whole the modal status con-
tingent; analogously, God knows that this will be can be analyzed as God
has cognition of this, which is necessary either because it is past or because
Gods cognition is always necessary, and this will be, which, once again, is by
hypothesis contingent. Thus, since the whole expression God knows that this
will be, properly analyzed, is not necessary, DFN and GCBW are, in the ver-
sions formalized in 3.2.1 above, unsound in virtue of their false second and
first premises respectively. As with the future-dependency escape clause, the
origins of this idea are unclear; Bonaventure and Aquinas both refer to it as an
established approach.
I shall begin with a schematic description of the idea itself, and then look
at Bonaventures and Aquinas distinct but related rejections of it. Let us take
a past-tense divine belief claim about the future that is a candidate for past-
necessitation, with future-necessitation of the doxastic contents to follow; for
example, God foreknew that Socrates will sit, which comes out as (t-1[TRL]) BG
(t+1[TRL])S. Analyzing the divine doxastic claim, we get (1) a reference to Gods
cognition and (2) an assertion of some kind with respect to a future contingent.
(1) can be construed as a mere assertion of Gods existence, y compris all the
attributes that conceptually follow from that existence, including omniscience;
(2) is a prediction. If we keep these two concepts formally separate, we get
something like Yesterday, God was God, and tomorrow, Socrates will sit. The
first conjunct of this tensed proposition is an instance of the law of identity,
and so is informationally vacuous; hence the statement can be shortened to
Yesterday, tomorrow, Socrates will sit, and thence by the truth-value links to
Tomorrow, Socrates will sit, which is ex hypothesi contingent and, for reasons
Bonaventure and Aquinas) explicitly treats it as a version of the sensus compositus /

sensus divisus distinction: a proposition God knows that I will sit can, according to
the proponents, be divided into [Necessarily, God knows] that I will sit, and thus it
is true; or it can be composed as Necessarily, [God knows that I will sit], and thus it
is false. His criticism of this version of the conjunctive analysis is in general harmony
with that of Bonaventure and Aquinas: the separation of the divine doxastic claim from
its contents violates logic (Lectura i, d. 39, qq. 15, nn. 6768 [Vat. vol. 17, p. 502, ll. 1
16]).
76 chapter 1
outlined in 4.5.4, not subject to past-necessitation except in a trivial sense. In

the notation developed above for the Boethian model, the analysis proceeds as
follows:
1. (t-1[TRL])BG(t+1[TRL])S Initial formalization

2. (t-1[TRL])[G=G (t+1[TRL])S] 1, Analysis into conjunctive structure
3. (t-1[TRL])(t+1[TRL])S 2, Elimination of tautological conjunct
4. (t+1[TRL])S 3, (tn[]) (tm[]) [(tn[])] (truth-value links)
Note that given the Boethian assumption that the contents of Gods knowledge
are modally closed, this analysis, like the future-dependency escape clause,
is just a roundabout way of reminding oneself that (t+1)S was assumed to be
contingent from the present moment in the first place, i.e., that (t0[TRL])(t+1)S
is true.
The presence of a background assumption of contingency suggests an alter-
native way of formalizing the conjunctive expression in question: instead of
taking the closed expression (t+1[TRL])S as the second, content-defining con-
junct, we can take the open (t+1)S. The resulting expression, (t-1[TRL])[G=G
(t+1)S], is contingent in the sense of being modally open, since it reduces
to simple (t+1)S, whichonce again given the background assumption that
(t0[TRL])(t+1)S is trueis true in some histories and false in others.142
Roughly speaking, Bonaventure interprets the conjunctive analysis accord-
ing to its closed version, while Aquinas reads it according to its open version.
Both, ultimately, reject it and return to a version of the Principle of Subject-
Relativized Knowledge.
4.6.4.1 Bonaventures Reaction: The Quasi-Conjunctive Analysis

In his critique of the conjunctive analysis, Bonaventure presents it as a concep-
tual extension of the future-dependency escape clause. If, he says, we assume
that the expression God knows, and this will be (or simply God is, and
this will be) is contingent in virtue of its second conjunct, which is future-
dependent, then let us assume that God foreknows this is false and this will
be is true; in such a case, God foreknows this will also be true in virtue of
divine omniscience, producing contradiction. Hence, God foreknows this and
this will be must have the same truth-value or status as obtaining states of
142 Another way to formalize the conjunctive analysis would be to make use of the Boethian
open-sentence assertion operator A (see 4.5.3). This would result in an expression,
(t-1[TRL])[G=G A(t+1)S], which would have (on the interpretation given for A) an inter-
mediate truth-value; the latter would stand in for contingency.
affairs.143 The implication, apparently, is that the necessity of the biconditional

(BGFut Fut) is enough to establish Fut. This seems like a fairly obvi-
ous example of a scope fallacy, but it is at least psychologically plausible, and
that plausibility depends on an unstated commitment to the kind of logical
determinism worries that haunt the entire Boethian solution: if (t+1[TRL])S is
true, so goes the objection, then God must (in a pretheoretical sense) know it;
and if God must know it, it must be true. Put more simply, Bonaventure thinks
that as a saving analysis, [G=G (t+1[TRL])S] wont do, because G=G includes
straightforward knowledge of everything that is the case, including (t+1[TRL])S
itself. Hence the formal solution, the cordoning off of Gods cognition from its
contents, must be handled in some other way than simple conjunction, since
the latter leaves too direct a link for the purpose.
For the correct analysis, says Bonaventure, we read divine knowledge claims
as designating Gods cognition and connoting the future contingent indirectly
by one and the same expression. Here is how he sets forth this idea:
There is a certain dictum about the past, which does not depend [on the
future], but rather connotes it, as if one were to say: God foreknew that
this will be (Deus praescivit hoc futurum).
For since Gods knowledge is only in respect of the true, it connotes
truth about that future dictum; but because the divine cognition does not
take its certainty from the thing, event, or state of affairs, since it neither is
caused by nor originates from that thing, event, or state of affairs, it does
not depend on it; and for this reason, it cannot be mistaken, although it
143 This, at any rate, is how I construe the following passage:
Si tu dicas, sicut aliqui dicunt, quod in hac: Deus praescivit, totum ex futuro est secundum
rem, quamvis intelligatur sub ratione praeteriti, unde nihil plus est dicere: Deus praescit,
nisi: Deus est, et hoc erit; contra: tunc, esto quod Deus nullam haberet cognitionem, dum
tamen res esset futura, haec esset vera: Deus praescit; quod manifeste falsum est.
Commentaria in quatuor libros Sententiarum i d. 38, a. 2, q. 2, arg. 4 [Opera omnia
vol. 1, p. 677]
If you say, as some (aliqui) say, that in this [proposition] God foreknew [this will be], the
whole [proposition], though it is understood in a past-tense sense, is future in accordance
with the thing [i.e., with the res, namely the occurrence of the this in this will be], and
so by saying God foreknows we say nothing more than God is, and this will be, [then
I argue] against [this]: let it be that God has no cognition [of this thing, event, or state of
affairs], while nevertheless the thing were future; [in such a case,] this would be true: God
foreknows [that this will be true]; which is manifestly false.
78 chapter 1
connotes the future. Hence, in foreknowledge, these two things are said:
(1) an act of divine cognition, and this is or was necessarily, and (2) an
ordination of the future to that act, and this ordination of the future
to that act is not necessary. And contingency must be judged to be in
the whole dictum not by reason of the whole or the principle signified,
but [by reason of the] connoted. And if it be posited that God does not
foreknow something that he [in fact] foreknows, this [act of positing] can
and must be understood as the removal not of the principle signified [=
Gods cognition] but of the connoted [thing, event, or state of affairs] or
of the ordering of the temporal to the eternal, which [ordering] is indeed
contingent in virtue of one of [those two], namely the temporal.144
If we analyze God foreknows this not as [G=G (t+1[TRL])S] but as [G=G con-
noting (t+1[TRL])S], then, we avoid the pitfalls of DFN and GCBW. Propositions
such as God foreknows (foreknew) that this will (would) take place are, in
Bonaventures words, a twofold act and composition145 which succeeds in
protecting Gods cognition from infection by uncertainty and in protecting
future freely chosen acts from an overriding necessitation.
Notwithstanding the problematic character of this conceptual analysis,146
its general tendency is clear. Divine knowledge claims about future contin-
gents are not to be analyzed as simple conjunctions, for the reasons spelled
144 Bonaventure, Commentaria i, d. 38, a. 2, q. 2, co. [Opera omnia vol. 1, p. 678]: [Q]uod-
dam est dictum de praeterito, quod non dependet, sed connotat, sicut si dicatur: Deus
praescivit hoc futurum.
Quia enim Dei scientia est solum respectu veri, ideo connotat veritatem circa illud
dictum futurum; sed quoniam divina cognitio non habet certidudinem a re, quia ab ipsa
nec causatur nec oritur, ideo ab illa non dependet; et propterea falli non potest, quamvis
connotet futurum. Unde in praescientia haec duo dicuntur, scilicet actus divinae cogni-
tionis, et hunc necessarium est esse sive fuisse; et ordinatio futuri ad illum actum, et haec
ordinatio futuri ad illum actum non est necessaria. Et iudicanda est contingentia in totali
dicto non ratione totalitatis sive principalis significati, sed connotati. Et si ponatur, Deum
non praescire aliquid, quod praescit, potest et debet intelligi non per remotionem princi-
palis significati, sed ipsius connotati sive illius ordinis ipsius temporalis ad aeternum, qui
quidem est contingens ratione alterius, scilicet temporalis.
145 Commentaria i, d. 38, a. 2, q. 2, co. [Opera omnia vol. 1, pp. 678679]: [H]ic duplex
includitur actus et compositio, videlicet hic: tu salvaberis, et hic: Deus habet cognitionem
de salute tua et habuit cognitionem ab aeterno.
146 An obvious objection, for example, is that connotation seems like a question-begger. It
is, so a skeptic might say, a relation that is arbitrarily endowed with the property of being
a bridge strong enough to join, in a single speech act, (a) a reference to divine cognition
out above, but rather into complex and asymmetrical speech acts which, as it
turns out, function in much the same way as do conjunctions with respect to
the distribution of the operators necessary and contingent, with the result
that the modal status of the whole expression is contingent after all.147 We
may call this speech act a quasi-conjunction and Bonaventures analysis the
quasi-conjunctive analysis. It is clear that Bonaventure regards this analy-
sis as a cashing out of the old Neoplatonic idea of subject-relativized knowl-
edge.148
Now, a feature shared by the conjunctive and the quasi-conjunctive analysis,
as suggested above, is the uncoupling of divine cognition and its ostensible
contents. Not only is this counterintuitivesurely Gods cognition of my free
act should somehow contain or focus on that free act?but it threatens to
make Gods knowledge, if not His mere cognition, dependent on its contingent
component after all: if that component is radically contingent, then, so it seems
to follow, the issue of whether God foreknew yesterday that (a) I would sin
today or (b) I would resist sin today depends on me in the metaphysically
strongest sense, which would amount to a form of Pelagianism. Bonaventure
closes this possibility off by excluding radical contingency from his picture of
the world, i.e., by adopting an A(a) model. This is clear from the distinction he
draws elsewhere between the domains of connoting and of having a respect:
the former deals with things, events, and states of affairs in the real timeline,
while the latter embraces counterfactuals as well. Since in true claims of divine
foreknowledge, the relation between the divine-cognition element and the
future contingent element is precisely one of connotation, no worries about
radically indeterminate divine-knowledge claims need arise.149
and (b) a nod toward a future contingent event, while narrow enough to block necessity
and contingency from crossing over to the wrong sides of the divide.
147 Note the wrap-up of Bonaventures analysis (Opera omnia vol. 1, p. 679): Sed quoniam,
ut significatur per modum praescientiae, connotat futurum contingens, et omne dictum,
quod claudit in se contingens, iudicandum est contingens; ideo totale contingens iudi-
catur.
148 Echoes of the SRK principle can be heard in the conclusion of Bonaventures analysis
(Opera omnia vol. 1, p. 679): Nam actus credulitatis, actus prophetationis et divinae
assertionis propter hoc, quod currunt secundum illustrationem divinae praescientiae,
ideo connotant, et non dependent; ideo certi et infallibiles sunt de rebus in se non certis.
149 See Bonaventure, Commentaria i, d. 27, pt. 2, a. un., q. 2, ad 1 [Opera omnia vol. 1, p. 486],
for the interpretation of which I follow the Quarrachi editors [Opera omnia vol. 1, p. 680,
scholium iii].
80 chapter 1
4.6.4.2 Aquinas Rejection of the Conjunctive Analysis

Aquinas reaction to the conjunctive analysis is simpler than Bonaventures.
Like Bonaventure, he prefaces his treatment of this analysis with a critique of
the future-dependency escape clause, but does not directly connect the two
ideas as did his Franciscan predecessor. Then he proceeds to categorically reject
the analysis. Some (alii) say, writes Aquinas, that statements of the form This
is known by God are composed of a necessary and a contingent; since Gods
knowledge is necessary, while the thing known is contingent, the modal status
of the whole would on this analysis be contingent. Here is Aquinas response:
But this, too, is useless, since the truth of a proposition does not vary
according to necessity and contingency in accordance with that which is
posited materially in the proposition, but only with the principal compo-
sition in which is founded the truth of the proposition. Hence, the same
modal status (ratio) of necessity and contingency is in both of the follow-
ing [propositions]: (a) I think that a human is an animal, (b) I think that
Socrates is running.150
In this passage, the truth of a proposition according to necessity and contin-

gency is its modal status; that which is posited materially is the subordinate
proposition in the scope of divine knowledge (e.g., A human is an animal or
Socrates is running); and the principal composition is the main operator
of the sentence.151 Doxastic claims are treated as operators with modal force:
I think that has a contingent status (after all, I could be wrong) while God
thinks that has necessary status (God cannot be wrong), and this allocation of
modality to doxastic expression is independent of content.
150 Aquinas, De veritate, q. 2, a. 12, ad 7 [aoo vol. 3, p. 18]: Et ideo alii dicunt, quod hoc
antecedens est contingens, quia est compositum ex necessario et contingenti: scientia
enim Dei est necessaria, sed scitum ab eo est contingens: quorum utrumque in praedicto
antecedente includitur; sicut et hoc est contingens: Socrates est homo albus; vel: Socrates
est animal et currit. Sed hoc iterum nihil est: quia veritas propositionis non variatur
per necessitatem et contingentiam, ex eo quod materialiter in locutione ponitur, sed
solum ex principali compositione in qua fundatur veritas propositionis; unde eadem ratio
necessitatis et contingentiae est in utraque istarum: ego cogito hominem esse animal; et:
ego cogito Socratem currere. Cf. also i S., d. 38, q. 1, a. 5, ad 4 [aoo vol. 1, p. 103] and st i, q. 14,
a. 13, ad 2 [aoo vol. 2, p. 209] for Aquinas other treatments of the conjunctive analysis.
Interestingly, in these latter treatments the conjunctive analysis comes out sounding more
like the future-dependency escape clause; cf. 4.6.44.6.4.1 above for the affinity of the
two analyses.
151 I.e., in Polish notation, the leftmost operator.
According to Aquinas, then, adherents of the conjunctive analysis err in try-

ing to pull apart expressions of the form BG as though the link between the
doxastic operator and its contents could be assimilated to a simple and oper-
ator. This will not work: the internal structure of ordinary doxastic propositions
(and modal propositions in general) is more complex, indeed hierarchical. Just
as an expression such as P is necessary in virtue of the necessity operator even
though P is in itself truth-functionally contingent, so BG(t+1)S will (and BC(t+1)S
will not) imply the necessitation of the modally open sentence (t+1)S. What
is needed is the remedy of the SRK principle: the insistence that God knows
things as though they were present, i.e., He knows them as modally closed.
Having dispatched the conjunctive analysis, Aquinas then presents this rem-
edy, as described above in 4.6.2.
5 Overcoming the Limitations of Logical Compatibilism: The Need

for Alternative Real Futures
The closed / open sentence analysis is unconnected to the privileging of a

specific history in the right-branching model. Nevertheless the presence of
such a privileged branch characterizes an approach that includes a whole line
of eternal-cognition theorists from Augustine on, a line that includes Boethius,
Anselm, Abelard, Bonaventure, and Aquinas. For all these thinkers, divine
cognition from eternity is of a specific world-line or history: while provision is
sometimes made for Gods relation to counterfactuals (for example, by making
reference to scientia simplicis notitiae / intelligentiae), one future is true and
serves as the proper object of Gods action and knowledge. Hence, for all these
thinkers, Gods action and His knowledge have the modal status of necessary
in at least one important sense: they are necessary given the real history of
the world; anywhere on the right-branching tree you go, they remain constant.
In other words, while many possible futures are accessible from any given
node on the tree, the timeless fact of which future is real does not change.
In this sense, at least, the actual and the possible coincide for this line of
thinkers.152
This tendency toward actualism presents a number of serious problems.
First of all, it seems to hamper freedom of action both for God and for His
152 Recall from 4.6.1 that Abelard is clear on the fact that his model commits him to this
kind of actualism. See immediately below, however, for Abelards halfhearted flirtation
with alternative versions of divine providence.
82 chapter 1
creatures. It is possible to view the solution to DFN provided by the closed /

open sentence analysis as a kind of cheat, since God necessarily knows the real
future, and neither He nor we can change that future. The absolute stability of
the real future reinstates the old problem of logical determinism for any agent
who demands a genuinely, i.e., ontologically, open future. This kind of worry is
at the heart of Bonaventures rejection of the conjunctive analysis, and it crops
up in many other contexts as well.
A second, related problem has to do with Gods omnipotence.153 The branch-
ing model, after all, represents not just something that God knows, but some-
thing that He has created. The logical-compatibilist model is designed to as-
suage worries associated with logical and epistemic determinism, but suggests
no mechanism whereby Gods overriding creative power, acting from eternity,
could be acquitted of the charge of being the author of all supposedly free crea-
turely actions. Nothing intervenes between Creator and creation in this model,
and nothing seems like too little to ward off necessitation.
A third problem is that logical-compatibilist models, in ensuring the modal
stability of divine knowledge while making room for creaturely freedom, allow
formal conative possibilities that are disallowed to divine knowledge. A natural
response to GCBW, for examplea response essentially consonant with the
sophismatic solutionis the very solution Abelard rejects before endorsing his
brand of actualism, namely the suggestion, made explicitly by Peter Lombard a
few years later, that counterfactual futures would mean counterfactual divine
knowledge of those futures:
For if the things were to happen differently, Gods foreknowledge would

have been different, [and] the event would have followed [it] instead;
nor would He have ever have had the foreknowledge which He has now;
indeed, [He would have had] another [foreknowledge], which would have
fit that event, just as this [foreknowledge fits] this [event].154
153 The point is expressed very clearly by Sharples: [Boethius] has only attempted to recon-
cile human autonomy with divine omniscience. God can foreknow what I will do without
removing my power of independent action. But there still remains the problem of the
relation between human autonomy and divine omnipotence. Solutions can indeed be
suggestedfor example, that God himself chooses to limit his power by giving human
agents the freedom to err but this problem is not one that the Consolation claims to
resolve (Sharples 2009: 221). We shall see some examples (e.g., that of Scotus) that proffer
solutions to the omnipotence problem.
154 Petrus Abaelardus, Dialectica ii. ii. [ed. De Rijk, 1956, p. 218]: Si enim res aliter eventurae
essent, alia fuisset Dei providentia quam ipse eventus sequeretur, nec istam quam modo
Although, as we have seen, Abelard immediately goes on to articulate a

model that avoids counterfactual divine foreknowledge, the attractiveness of
retaining the possibility of such counterfactual cognition is obvious. It rests on
the principle that the reach of creaturely freedom must not exceed the grasp
of divine foreknowledgethe principle that if we can do it, God can know
it.155 Given his actualism, Abelards resistance to this line of reasoning is easy
to understand: if Gods knowledge and its contents are formally necessary (so
that, for example, (t0[TRL]) BG (t+2[TRL]) S, which is true in Fig. 4), and yet it is
possible that some creaturely agent can arrange for some other contents (so
that, for example, (t0[TRL]) (t+2) S, also true in Fig. 4), then the principle
just articulated cannot be true. Those who are committed to the principle in
question, on the other hand, need a conceptual framework that closes the gap
between divine and creaturely modality. Alternative real futures would be a
way of doing this.
Both to give scope to divine and creaturely freedom and to allow divine
cognition to keep track with creaturely choices, then, a looser system may
seem desirable to some sensibilities. For the origins of an approach that makes
room for such alternative real futures, we turn back to the eleventh century to
pursue a line of thought inaugurated by Peter Damian.
5.1 Making Room for Divine (and More Room for Human) Freedom:
Gods Power over the Past and the Divine Modal Pleroma
Peter Damian (c. 10071072) famously attributed to God counterfactual power
over present, future, and past.156 In doing so, he stood at the beginning of
a tradition which, drawing on the ultimately Neoplatonic conception of an
atemporal deity, stipulated a kind of before and after placed orthogonally
to the temporal before and after. According to the model common to this
tradition, there are at least two moments in which Gods creative power is
imagined to operate: a moment of potency, in which a multitude of possible
histories of the world is available for God to realize, and a moment of actuality,
in which Gods power has brought into being the world as we (partially and
imperfectly) know it, from its creation to its notional end. Since Gods creative
habuit providentiam, umquam habuisset, immo aliam quae alii eventui congrueret, sicut
ista isti. A long passage, similar in tendency, can be found in Abelards Logica [Philosophis-
che Schriften p. 429, l. 26p. 430, l. 39].
155 Cf. Sententiae, i, d. 39, c. 1 [Lombard 1971, p. 280, l. 9]: Nihil autem potest fieri, quod non
possit a Deo sciri.
156 See De divina omnipotentia 603AC [Peter Damian 1972, p. 412, l. 11p. 414, l. 37].
84 chapter 1
power is held by this model to operate orthogonally to the timeline, it makes

sense to talk about Gods (temporally) retroactive counterfactual power in
terms not just of things God might have done, but things which He could in
a sense still do even though He has chosen otherwise. Hence, according to
Damian, there is an important sense in which God can now act so that Rome,
which was founded in antiquity, was not founded in antiquity.157 Damian is
not claiming that God can, within time, retroactively cancel things that have
already happened; he is not even claiming that God, within the orthogonal
atemporal medium in which He operates, can cancel His own decisions. Rather,
he is merely drawing attention to the fact that Gods power to realize this or that
state of affairs does not vary over time.158 Using language in an analogical sense,
we refer to Gods having done certain things, but a more strictly appropriate way
of speaking would be to use the present tense: God acts so as to bring about
such-and-such a past, present, or future event, and He always stands at liberty
to act otherwise.159
It is important to realize that Damians point is not just a variation on
the Augustinian-Boethian-Aquinate eternal present approach, although he
makes use both of the imagery and of the conceptual contents of that ap-
proach. His specific contribution is the vivid and salient presence in scholastic
literature of a dichotomy of the world as possibility and the world as actuality, a
dichotomy that is developed over the following centuries in the form of a vari-
ety of conceptual tools for dealing with counterfactuality. Some of these tools,
such as the distinction between Gods absolute power (potentia absoluta) and
ordained power (potentia ordinata),160 become common scholastic property;
others remain associated with particular thinkers or schools. Although its ori-
gins predate the influence of Arabic thought on the Latin west, the dichotomy
is enriched and strengthened by the advent and spread of Avicennian ideas
in the thirteenth century. What characterizes the whole tradition is the sense
of what I shall call a divine modal pleroma. The realm of the possible-for-
God is imagined as somehow real: although God has chosen one voluntary
and cognitive option, there is a sense in which He has not forfeited and will
never have forfeited the others. Note that the pleromatic approach, which
assumes the comprehensive reality of alternative pasts, presents, and futures
157 De divina omnipotentia 619B [Peter Damian 1972, p. 474, ll. 4244].
158 This, in any case, is the main interpretive line of Damians doctrine. For an alternative,
which reads Damian (and a large group of other thinkers) as endorsing genuine backward
causality, see Gaskin 1997.
159 De divina omnipotentia 619B [p. 474, ll. 4457].
160 See footnote 43. For a general introduction, see Courtenay 1990.
from Gods perspective, needs only one simple adjustment in order to generate
the A(mr) world-model, namely the insertion of a moving nunc that cancels
real modal alternatives to the present and past while leaving them in place for
the future.
The pleromatic tradition is not a school but rather a general tendency that
characterizes a broad range of thinkers; it is a category with fuzzy boundaries.
For example, there is an argument, based on his treatment of the modality of
predestination, for including Peter Lombard in this tradition. However, Lom-
bards treatment is about as metaphysically modest as a theory can be while
still remaining pleromatic in my sense of the word. This may seem surprising
given the following passages (from d. 39 c. 1 and d. 40 c. 1 respectively):
And it is granted that [God] is able to know what He does not know, and
that He is able not to know what He knows; because something which is
not can be subject to His knowledge, and something which is can be not
subject, without change in the knowledge itself. [Tr. Silano, in Lombard
2007: 218, slightly altered]161
For it cannot be true that [a predestined human] was predestined from
eternity and now he is not predestined, nor can it be true simultaneously
that he is predestined and he is not predestined; but yet it could be true
from eternity that he was not predestined, and he could have been not
predestined from eternity. And as from eternity God was able not to pre-
destine him, so it is granted by some that even now God is able not to have
predestined him from eternity. But if he had not been predestined, he
would not be predestined; and so he is able now not to be predestined.162
Tr. silano, ibid., p. 222
161 Sententiae, i, d. 39, c. 1 [Lombard 1971, p. 28, 1 ll. 1619]: Et tamen conceditur posse
scire quod non scit, et posse non scire quod scit; quia posset aliquid esse subiectum eius
scientiae quod non est, et posset non esse subiectum aliquid quod est, sine permutatione
ipsius scientiae.
162 Sententiae, i, d. 40, c. 1 [Lombard 1971, p. 285, l. 34p. 286, l. 5]: Non enim potest esse
enim et coniunctim et disiunctim intelligi potest. Non enim potest esse ut ab aeterno sit
praedestinatus et modo non sit praedestinatus, nec potest esse simul ut sit praedestinatus
et non sit praedestinatus; sed tamen potuit esse ab aeterno quod non esset praedestina-
tus, et potuit ab aeterno non esse praedestinatus. Et sicut ab aeterno Deus potuit eum non
praedestinare, ita conceditur a quibusdam quod et modo potest Deus eum non praedes-
tinasse ab aeterno. Ergo potest Deus non praedestinasse eum; ergo potest iste non fuisse
praedestinatus.
86 chapter 1
Such passages seem to suggest a strong sense in which God never forfeits
modal alternativesso strong, indeed, that it spills over into creaturely modal-
ity: an entity known to God or predestined by God has some real modal power
over Gods knowledge or act of predestining, albeit one not involving change
of any kind. However, in a later discussion of divine power (d. 44 c. 2), Lom-
bard clarifies the sense in which he is willing to concede that God never forfeits
any modal alternatives: the complement clauses of modal verbs are to be con-
strued as eternal, temporally specified propositions. Just as God once knew that
He would rise again, so He now knows (and can know) that He has risen again,
and the phrases He would rise again and He has risen again refer to the same
fact. Likewise, just as God once willed to rise again, so He now wills (and can
will) to have risen again, and the objects of the divine will in these two cases
are one and the same.163 In other words, in knowing and willing events in time,
God does not forfeit the ability to connect modally with those events. But there
are severe limits to the kind of modal connection God is allowed under the
Lombardian regime; God cannot, apparently, repeat temporally unique events
or cancel, ex post facto, decisions that He has already made.164 Hence there is
rather little substance to Gods ostensibly immutable and inalienable modal
potency. The apparently strong counterfactual power on view in the material
from dd. 3940 can be reconciled with the modest scope of divine modal-
ity in the passages from d. 44 simply by assuming that the strength of the
former is illusory. The predestined one can fail to be predestined only in the
most modally exiguous sense of can: there are unreal alternatives available to
163 Sententiae, i, d. 44, c. 2 [Lombard 1971, p. 305, ll. 2629]: Ut enim olim scivit se resurrec-
turum, et modo scit se resurrexisse; nec est alia scientia illud olim scivisse, et hoc modo
scire, sed eadem omnino. Et sicut voluit olim resurgere, et modo resurrexisse; in quo unius
rei voluntas exprimitur.
164 This is my interpretation of the following passage:
Fateamur igitur Deum semper posse et quidquid semel potuit, id est habere omnem illam
potentiam quam semel habuit, et illius omnis rei potentiam cuius semel habuit; sed non
semper posse facere omne illud quod aliquando potuit facere: potest quidem facere aut
fecisse quod aliquando potuit.
Sententiae, i, d. 44, c. 2 [lombard 1971, p. 306, ll. 1014]
And so let us profess that God is always able to do whatever he once could, that is, to have
all that power which He once had, and the power over that entire thing which He once
had; but He is not always able to do all that which He was at some time able to do; yet He
can do or have done that which He could at some time do.
Tr. silano, in lombard 2007, p. 240, slightly altered
him which stand as truth-makers for the claim that he has reprobation among
his licit alternatives. Such an approach practically reduces the divine modal
pleroma to the status of a notational variant of Boethian logical compatibil-
ism.
For three snapshots representing a more robust development of the plero-
matic tradition during the thirteenth century, we shall turn first to Robert
Grosseteste, then to William of Auvergne, and finally, briefly, back to Thomas
Aquinas. As we shall see, within this tradition, each thinker has his own angle
of approach to the problem of how to reconcile divine and creaturely freedom
with stability of fact and knowledge.
5.1.1 The Analysis of Robert Grosseteste

Grosseteste (c. 11701253) builds not directly on Damians work but on the
Neoplatonic tradition; in Grossetestes case, this tradition includes Augustine,
Pseudo-Dionysius, John of Damascus, and John Scotus Eriugena, as well as Avi-
cenna and Averroes.165 Grossetestes solution to the problem of future contin-
gents (and associated problems) places him firmly in the pleromatic tradition.
In De libero arbitrio, a treatise appearing in two versions,166 he formulates the
relation between God and created reality in a way that allows him to explain
how God can be both immutable and free, and to do so without resorting to
scope disambiguation.
As Neil Lewis has pointed out (1991: 11; 2010a: 9), an important feature
of Grossetestes analysis is his commitment to what in current usage goes
under the name of liberty of indifference. For Grosseteste, this liberty
i.e., the potency either to or not to is a benchmark of real freedom,
both for God and for creature. After disposing, to his own satisfaction, of the
equivocation problems that beset any attempt to attach predicates to God,
Grosseteste arrives at a general definition of libertas arbitrii:
Freedom of choice, then, is that natural and spontaneous flexibility of the

will to will either of two bare opposites considered in themselves.167
165 See Lewis 2010a 3 for Grossetestes intellectual background.

166 I use the earlier rescension; the two do not differ doctrinally in important respects.
N. Lewis 1991: 2526 tentatively dates both versions to the mid-to-late 1220s.
167 Grosseteste, De libero arbitrio 18.23 [N. Lewis 1991, p. 87, ll. 15451547]: Est itaque arbitrii
libertas ipsa naturalis et spontanea voluntatis vertibilitas ad volendum utrumlibet oppos-
itorum nude consideratorum. The translation bare opposites considered in themselves
is due to N. Lewis 2010a: 9.
88 chapter 1
This commitment to flexibility, to the availability of alternative options,

can obviously be satisfied in many ways. In Grossetestes work, alternative
options for humans are adequately provided for by the Boethian framework.
In Chapter 3 of the first rescension of De libero arbitrio, he provides a lucid
review of the Boethian distinction between simple and conditional necessity
(which he assimilates to Anselms precedent / sequent necessity distinction),
and of the various scope-disambiguation techniques associated with that dis-
tinction.168 There is no indication that he rejects any of this analysis, although
he does not give it his full-throated endorsement.169
The problem lies not with mans freedom but with Gods. Unlike Anselm
of Canterbury, who redefined freedom of choice in such a way that it did
not essentially involve liberty of indifference, Grosseteste sets a high value
on that liberty; and by simply omitting a capacity for evil actions from the
definition of freedom and considering only morally neutral alternatives, he
finds a way of both affirming Anselms redefinition of freedom as a capac-
ity of conserving uprightness of the will for its own sake and establishing
liberty of indifference for God.170 But having done this, he is still faced with
the old Neoplatonist conundrum: how can God, who is immutable, neces-
sary, and maximally simple, be lord and creator of a creation that is mutable,
contingent, and complicated? More narrowly, how can God know or will cre-
ated reality in a truly immutable way without forfeiting the ad utrumque free-
dom that seems to be an essential component of any freedom worthy of the
name?
Grosseteste prefaces his solution by presenting the problem as a straightfor-
ward contradiction: Gods knowledge is assumed to be immutable and there-
fore necessary (ch. 1).171 However, assuming that Antichrist will be is con-
tingent, and making the reasonable assumption that Gods knowledge tracks
168 For Grossetestes Anselmian interpretation of Boethius modal distinction, see footnote
75.
169 Indeed, as N. Lewis points out [1991: 41 n. 47], Grosseteste stumbles toward the end, making
the unnecessary and probably confused suggestion that sequent necessity is not closed
under entailment [ibid., 3.12, p. 41, ll. 264266].
170 As N. Lewis 1991: 1011 observes, Grosseteste reconciles the Anselmian and ad utrumque
models of freedom of choice with this move (see Grossetestes De libero arbitrio 18.7 and
18.23). For Anselms discussion, see De libertate arbitrii ch. 3 [Anselmi opera omnia vol. 1,
pp. 210213]; the redefinition of freedom of choice (illa libertas arbitrii est potestas servandi
rectitudinem voluntatis propter ipsam rectitudinem) comes at p. 212, ll. 1920.
171 All parenthetical references in this section are to N. Lewis 1991 unless otherwise indi-
cated.
reality, it is possible for God not to know that Antichrist will be; therefore
Gods knowledge is not necessary (4.1).172 A possible escape clause based on
the idea that Gods knowledge is necessary after the fact, by past-necessitation,
produces the obvious problems of divine vilification and mutability (4.24.3).
What to do?
Grossetestes solution consists in redefining simple necessity as an essential
metafeature of ad utrumque contingency for God. This works as follows. There
are, according to Grosseteste, two kinds of simple necessity: (a) strong meta-
physical necessity, the kind that pertains to absolute truths such as mathemat-
ical equations, and (b) an inability to (temporally) become false (7.27.4). Now,
all timed truths are, by the truth-value links, true ab aeterno; so are all time-
less facts of the form God knows (5.55.6). Hence, they can never become
false in the sense of being one way at time (t0) and another way at (t+1) within a
single history: they are true without beginning (sine initio) (7.4). They are there-
fore, in sense (b), necessary. God, however, has the ability to select this or that
history for actualization; hence, for any timed , God has the ability to know,
172 The status of Antichrist will be as a standard example of a future contingent requires
some comment. It seems oddly inappropriate for two reasons: (1) We have prophetic assur-
ances that Antichrists advent will take place (e.g., Daniel 11:3637 and assorted passages
in the New Testament). (2) Even if the coming of Antichrist can be looked on as con-
tingent in some ultimate sense (it is not logically necessary, it is dependent on the Fall
of Man, etc.), it seems different in kind from the other examples that routinely occur
in this context, which normally involve future actions freely undertaken (sitting, read-
ing, lecturing, setting a sea-battle in motion, etc.). The answer to objection (1) is sim-
ply that prophecy need not cancel contingency, either in a logical-compatibilist or in
a pleromatic model (see, e.g., 10.2 below). The answer to objection (2) is provided by
Simo Knuuttila (1981: 193195): In the earliest discussions in which the example occurs,
it is statistical contingency that is assumed, and the temporally indefinite Antichrist
will be, construed as the soul of Antichrist will begin to exist, is contingent because,
of course, there will come a time when it is strictly false on account of its indexical
(temporally indefinite) character. This is the interpretation that underlies the composi-
tio/divisio analysis of the sentence in the twelfth-century Dialectica Monacensis [De Rijk
19621967, vol. 2, part 2, p. 571, ll. 913]. Later onby Grossetestes time, for example
modal ideas have become more complex, and the statistical interpretation of modal-
ity has receded into the (relative) background, but the example remains and is used in
contexts in which it makes little sense. Thus Peter Auriol, for example, uses Antichris-
tus erit and Sortes sedebit interchangeably in contexts in which it is quite clear that
liberty of indifference, and therefore a right-branching model of time with alternative
futures, is under discussion (see 6.2.26.2.4 below). Hence the example should be
read simply as a semantically neutral counter for some future contingent proposition
.
90 chapter 1
and have always known, , or not to know, and never to have known, . So what
is contingent for Him, in the sense of being ad utrumque selectable, is in the
relevant sense necessary, since, having forever been thus, it cannot become oth-
erwise.173
The formulations in the previous paragraph, employing as they do a mixture
of modalities, suggest that Grossetestes analysis has something in common
with the sophismatic tradition (see 3.1 above). But, as with Damians anal-
ysis and as with the whole tradition of divine modal pleroma, there is more
to it than this. Grosseteste, for example, does not merely assume (as does the
sophismatic approach) that metaphysical modality can be used as a proxy for
conative or agentic modality; he provides an account of how a timeless God can
relate causally to the actualized Boethian tree, and that account rests on a time-
less analysis of causality. Just as light timelessly causes things to be illumined,
so does Gods potency to know one side or the other of a pair of contradicto-
ries timelessly precede His choice to know this or that side (9.1). Furthermore,
Grosseteste emphasizes the perspectival, though ontologically solid, nature of
questions of necessity and contingency. If we hold time constant, the same
event, considered as an act of God, can be viewed either as necessary or as con-
tingent, depending on whether we look at the event from the point of view of
Gods potency of that of Gods act:
When I say God could have not-known A, what is intimated is freedom

of choice and a single rational power to naturally do something whose
opposite is in act. Therefore in the case of the proposition God can ,
such a proposition can be referred to (redire super) this natural potency;
and thus it is true that He can do both of a pair of opposites. Thus what
Anselm said is true: God can not-will what He wills Or this proposi-
tion can be referred to the same [thing, event, or state of affairs] consid-
ered with respect to (ratione) someone doing one of the two opposites,
and thus it is impossible for this agent to not-will what he wills or not-
know what he knows. For in Gods nature there is a potency for both (ad
utrumque), since [this potency] causally precedes either; but with respect
173 De libero arbitrio 7.5 [N. Lewis 1991, p. 49, ll. 471473]: Deus potuit nulla creasse et ita nulla
creata praescivisse vel scivisse. Habet ergo potentiam ut numquam creasset et numquam
scivisset multa quae creavit et scivit. In 7.6, the two modes are brought together [ibid.,
p. 49, ll. 474477]: Ex hoc utique posse quod est ad utrumque oppositorum, scilicet
verum et falsum sine initio et scisse et non scisse sine initio, sequitur rerum contingen-
tia. Et e contrario, ex contingentia rerum sequitur hoc posse sic ad utrumque sine ini-
tio.
to Him [considered as] doing one of the two, since He is immutable, there
is no potency toward the opposite of that which is in act.174
Grosseteste, then, pulls off a nice balancing act that recalls the Principle of
Subject-Relativized Knowledge: Gods knowledge is (in Grossetestes special
sense) necessary, but the objects of his knowledge are, or can be, contingent,
and, since the causal arrow works only in one direction, neither His knowledge
nor His will are in any danger of depending on creations contingency. What
goes largely unmentioned in Grossetestes account (except insofar as it is held
to be secured by the precedent / sequent necessity distinction) is human
freedom. The timeless medium of causality between God and creation is not
for general, but only for divine, use; thus Grosseteste lays himself open to the
charge of ignoring the problem of creaturely freedom (or at least relegating
it to an ontologically trivializing area of his model). This will change in Duns
Scotus much more complex account of the interplay of divine and human free
choice.
5.1.2 William of Auvergnes Response to Avicennian Necessitarianism

William of Auvergne (c. 1180/901249) develops his ideas about the modality
of divine action in reaction to what he sees as the necessitarian threat implied
by Avicennian ideas about Gods creative activity. In De universo, which dates
from the 1230s,175 he takes two passes at the question of Gods counterfactual
power. In ia-iae ch. 2123, he establishes Gods plenary modal power by direct
conceptual analysis; in iia-iae ch. 9, he derives it from the divine property
of immutability. Both of these accounts build on Peter Lombards remarks
on divine immutability and counterfactual power in Sententiae i, dd. 3940
174 De libero arbitrio 9.2 [N. Lewis 1991, p. 56, ll. 5871]: Cum dico: Deus potuit non scivisse
A et cum dicitur: Deus posset non scivisse A, insinuatur libertas arbitrii et potestas
rationalis una ad hoc naturaliter, quae est in actu ad suum oppositum. Potest itaque
haec praedicatio, cum dico: Deus potest, redire super ipsam naturam potentem; et sic
verum est quod potest utrumque oppositorum. Sic verum est quod dicit Anselmus: Deus
potest non velle quod vult et constat quod potest velle quod vult, et ita potest opposita.
Et sic etiam de vi sermonis propter prioritatem insinuatam per hoc verbum potuit, redit
eiusdem verbi praedicatio; similiter huius verbi posset. Vel potest haec praedicatio redire
super ipsum consideratum in ratione agentis unum oppositorum, et sic est impossibile
ipsum non velle quod vult vel non scire quod scit. Est enim in Dei natura posse ad
utrumque, quia causaliter praecedit utrumque, sed super ipsum agentem alterum, cum
sit immutabilis, non est posse ad oppositum eius quod in actu est.
175 For Williams dates I follow N. Lewis 2010b.
92 chapter 1
(see 5.1 above), but they imply a metaphysics far more radical than that of
Lombard. Both accounts are treated below.
5.1.2.1 Gods Unlimited Creative Power

According to William, the ideas of the Peripatetics (i.e., Avicenna and his
followers) impose undue limits on Gods creative power:
And they imposed not only necessity, but natural servitude upon the
creator, supposing that he operates in the manner of nature. This manner
is the manner of one who serves and is a servile manner. For they
thought that the universe proceeds from the creator like brightness from
the sun or like heat from fire. In that way [they thought that] from his
goodness there proceeded the goodness of the universe, and from his life
the life which is in the universe, and so on in the same way with other
things. And for this reason they were brought of necessity to that awkward
point that they were forced to suppose that the creator could not have
made something else or acted otherwise than we find in the previous
examples of the sun and of fire.176
Tr. teske, in william of auvergne 1998: 72
The complaint here lodged against the followers of Avicenna could just as easily
be directed at the system of someone like Peter Abelard, who, as we have seen,
endorses an unapologetic divine actualism. Williams complex response to this
kind of actualism is rooted in his vision of the divine essence as both maximally
simple and, somehow, directly connected to every possible object and possible
state of affairs via an immediate and, so to say, unprejudiced link. Unlike
creaturely performative and referential power, which takes matters piecemeal
and must decide in every given instance whether to enact or refer to this object
rather than that, the divine art and word refers to, and in a sense enacts, all
possible individuals and states of affairs. Furthermore, creaturely utterances
176 William of Auvergne, De universo ia-iae, ch. 21 [Opera omnia, Orleans and Paris 1674:
614bG]: Et non solum necessitate, immo naturalem servitutem imposuerunt creatori,
existimantes ipsum operari ad modum naturae, qui modus est, ut jam saepe praedixi tibi,
modus servientis, et modus servilis: sic enim arbitrari sunt universum exire a creatore,
sicut splendorem a sole, vel calorem ab igne: sic ex bonitate ejus bonitatem universi, et
ex vita ejus vitam, quae est in universo, et ad hunc modum de aliis, et propter hoc ex
necessitate inducti fuerunt in illud inconveniens, ut opinari cogerentur creatorem neque
aliud nec aliter facere potuisse, quemadmodum se habet in praescriptis exemplis de sole
et igne.
are ontologically dependent on what they refer to, a fact which explains their
multiplicity. Divine utterances, by contrast, are the ontological ground of the
things they refer to, and so can attach to the many without sacrificing their
essential unity. The special one-to-many quality of divine utterances is taken
as providing a way in which God can refer to many possible and mutually
exclusive actualities:
[F]rom the same form or seal, [the divine art] imprints one form on one
matter and on another a contrary form or a form of another kind. This is
due to His most lofty amplitude by which it is not only possible for Him,
but equally easy for Him to give one form or any other form to any receiver
whatever, just as a power which extends over both contraries, that is, over
both doing and not doing, is free to do both of them, that is, both of the
contraries, and is not confined to one, though it is itself one, but turns
itself to what it wills through choice. So it is with the divine art in terms
of its freedom and amplitude.177
Tr. teske, ibid. p. 77, slightly altered
From Gods plenary power to enact either contrary, William proceeds to the
issue of future counterfactuals as though by a natural conceptual progression:
And if the things to come had been other than they were and of other
kinds, if that were possible, they would all have been said by the same
word equally and similarly in every respect. It has already been explained
to you by this that, just as other things would have been said by the
same word, if he had willed to make other things, so too, by the same art
other things would have been made, and the word would not have been
changed in any way.178
Tr. teske, ibid. p. 78, slightly altered
177 Opera omnia, Orleans and Paris 1674: 616bH: [E]x eadem enim forma, seu sigillo imprimit
uni materiae unam formam, et alteri contrariam vel alterius generis, et hoc est propter
altissimam amplitudinem suam, qua ei non solum possibile, sed aeque facile est unam
formam, aut quamcunque aliam dare cuicunque receptibili: quemadmodum potentiae,
quae est super utrunque oppositum, id est super facere et non facere, liberum est utrum-
libet quod est, utrumque oppositorum, cum sit una, nec arctatur ad alterum, sed per
electionem ad quod voluerit, se inclinat. Sic est de arte divina quantum ad libertatem et
amplitudinem suam.
178 Opera omnia, Orleans and Paris 1674: 617aB: [E]t si alias fuissent res future, quam fuerint,
94 chapter 1
William is aware of the counterintuitive character of this doctrine: given a

state of affairs A obtaining at time (t0), it seems strange that some comple-
mentary state of affairs B, not compossible with A, should remain a live option
for God at and after time (t0), and that its realization should entail no mutabil-
ity in God; but it is so.179
5.1.2.2 Gods Unchanging Counterfactual Power

In responding to Avicennas arguments supporting the eternity of the world,
William finds another way into the problem of divine counterfactual power.
One of these arguments, which appears in Avicennas Metaphysics 9.1315, runs
as follows. Any pure and uncorrupted mind must admit the following claim:
if the divine essence remained in all respects unchanged from instant a to
instant b, then nothing would come into existence (i.e., be promoted from
merely possible to existent) between a and b. Contrapositively, if something
indeed came into existence, then there was change in the divine essence. There
cannot be change in the divine essence; therefore, nothing (in the relevant
sense) comes into existence; yet the world exists; therefore the world is eternal,
though ontologically dependent upon God.180
In his refutation of Avicennas argument, William first reminds the reader
that all logically possible states of affairs are equally possible objects of Gods
creative power.181 Next he attacks the presupposition of Avicennas argument,
namely that no productive force can produce its intended object without
undergoing some dispositional change. This presupposition, William argues,
creates an infinite regress. If a causal entity A undergoes change in causing its
object A, there must be a new element or respect B that embodies this change;
this new element, in coming into existence, forces us to posit a further element
C to explain its production, and so on. Since an infinite regress implies an actual
infinite, Avicennas presupposition must be rejected. There can be generation
of new entities without any change, dispositional or otherwise, on the part of
the generating or productive force.182 While productive voluntary activity on
et aliorum generum si possibile esset, eodem verbo per omnia aequaliter, atque similiter
dictae fuissent. Jam ergo declaratum est per hoc, quoniam sicut eodem verbo alia dicta
fuissent, si alia facere voluisset, sic et eadem arte alia facta fuissent, nec verbo ullo
modorum in aliquo immutato.
179 Opera omnia, Orleans and Paris 1674: 618aH.
180 See [Avicenna 2005 (Marmura), pp. 302304] or [Avicenna 1980 (Van Reit), pp. 440441].
181 William of Auvergne, De universo iia-iae, ch. 9 [Opera omnia, Orleans and Paris 1674:
693aD-bA].
182 Opera omnia, Orleans and Paris 1674: 693bCD.
the part of creatures does involve dispositional change,183 the divine will, in
virtue of its absolutely free character, is able to will a given side of a temporally
definite disjunction (i.e., a contradiction) without undergoing change of any
kind. Now that William has established that God can create without undergo-
ing changeindeed that such creation is a conceptual necessity184he (once
again) draws the crucial corollary: God, in creating or bringing into being a
given state of affairs A, does not thereby forfeit His absolute freedom to cre-
ate or bring into being an alternative state B, not compossible with A.185
5.1.2.3 William as Modal Realist

The distinctive character of Williams vision is clarified by comparing it to that
of Robert Grosseteste. Recall that Grosseteste had an ultimately stable and
ontologically limited view of the universe: Gods actions were contingent in
the first modal moment, from the perspective of divine potency, but they are
necessary (in Grossetestes special sense) in the second moment, that of divine
action. By contrast, William often gives the impression of being an out-and-out
modal realist. No state of affairs is privileged from Gods perspective, since such
a privilege would amount to a limitation on Gods plenary power; hence, any
claims to the effect that things could have been otherwise amount, in Williams
treatment, to claims that, given alternative assumptions about the divine will,
things are otherwise. On such an admittedly speculative and radical reading
of Williams doctrine, he sees actuality as perspectival and illusory; movement
through modal space is merely conceptual and imposes just as little change on
the deity as does the passage of time from one instant to the next.
183 Opera omnia, Orleans and Paris 1674: 694aG. There is a problem here that William does not
apparently clear up. His infinite-regress argument constitutes a quite general refutation
of the idea of dispositional change in any will, creaturely or divine, that brings forth
its object; yet he applies it only to the divine will. He still owes us an an acceptable
(non-infinite-regress-triggering) explanation of dispositional change in creaturely wills,
a phenomenon which, if introspection is anything to go by, is certainly per se notum, and
which in any case he freely concedes.
184 Opera omnia, Orleans and Paris 1674: 693aAB: Manifestum igitur est tibi ex hoc exemplo,
quod scilicet cum creat hanc intelligentiam, ex omnibus suis modis est sicut erat prius,
quando non creabat eam: quare contrarium hujus est falsum, et propter hoc non est veri
et puri intellectus testimonium; et haec est radix ex qua intendebat elicere probationem
validissimum super aeternitatem vel antiquitatem mundi.
185 Opera omnia, Orleans and Paris 1674: 694aH694bA.
96 chapter 1
5.1.3 Once More, Aquinas

The divine-pleroma approach becomes widely shared by the mid-thirteenth
century in one or another form, and it affords thinkers of many different per-
suasions a way to have Gods counterfactual knowledge keep pace with crea-
turely conative power. As remarked in 4.6.2, even a thinker like Aquinas,
whose vision of the world and of the future is certainly stable, nevertheless has
a robust-sounding account of Gods cognizance of the counterfactuals of divine
choice. In book i, Distinction 39 of his Sentences commentary, Aquinas gives
an analysis of divine potency for alternatives that is similar to Grossetestes.
The acts of God, unlike those of creatures, are always emerging from the divine
will, and do not pass into the future; thus there is a sense in which God, at
any point in time, can will (and thus know) things other than He wills (and
knows).186 Aquinas does cite Peter Lombards use of the conjunctim / divisim
distinction (a standard scope disambiguator), which might lead one to suppose
that his understanding of Gods potency for alternatives was merely formal;
however, in a passage later in Distinction 39, he at least suggests a stronger
reading. Using the distinction between Gods knowledge of vision (scientia
visionis), whereby God knows all actual things and events (including the real
future), and His knowledge of simple understanding (scientia simplicis intel-
ligentiae), whereby He knows all things actual or possible, Aquinas explicitly
raises the possibility of counterfactual actuality, andfollowing but also build-
ing on Peter Lombarddraws the conclusion that God has the capacity, in
some sense, to know the counterfactual as real. First he notes that Gods total
knowledge, considered as the union of His knowledge of vision and of simple
understanding, can in a sense not be other than what it is; after all, nothing
can be other than those things which are and which can be. But:
Speaking, however, of the knowledge of vision about which the Master

[Lombard] speaks, God can see something other than the things He sees,
in the sense that He can give proper, natural existence to that which has
only potential existence. If, however, He were to produce this in being, it
would be known by Him from eternity.187
186 i S., d. 39, q. 1, a. 1, co. [aoo vol. 1, p. 103]: Cum igitur actus divinae voluntatis semper sit in
actu, et non pertransiens in futurum, semper est quasi in egrediendo a voluntate; et ideo
manet libertas divinae voluntatis respectu ipsius. Unde potest dici, quod Deus potest non
velle hoc; non tamen potest ut simul velit et non velit, vel ut nunc velit et postmodum non
velit, accipiendo post et nunc ex parte voluntatis, quae mutabilis esse non potest.
187 i S., d. 39, q. 1, a. 2, co. [aoo vol. 1, p. 103]: De hac igitur loquendo, Deus non potest scire
aliquid aliud ab his quae scit; quia nihil potest esse aliud ab his quae sunt et quae possunt
According to Aquinas, God wills into actuality the contents of His scientia
visionis by means of a third cognitive function, namely His knowledge of assent
(scientia approbationis).188 Alternative actualities, then, would imply the pos-
sibility of alternative divine assent.
The problem is that it is hard to know how much ontological weight we
should give to Aquinas counterfactual actualities. Although the passages
adduced above suggest that the possible is, even if foregone, still somehow
actualizablestill open to Gods sovereign powernevertheless Aquinas does
seem to admit far more asymmetry between the actual and the merely possible
than does William of Auvergne. Indeed, Harm Goris has forcefully argued for a
low-caliber, a posteriori interpretation of Aquinas modalities, specifically con-
trasting them with Duns Scotus possibilist approach.189 To the extent that he
views counterfactuals as more than a merely formal expedient for conceptual
analysis, however, Aquinas can be said to have a place both in the Boethian
tradition of logical compatibilism (in virtue of his treatment of divine timeless
eternity, influenced as it is by the Principle of Subject-Relativized Knowledge)
and in the tradition of divine modal pleroma (in virtue of hisarguably
realist account of counterfactuals). The same could be said of Grosseteste and,
as we shall now see, of Duns Scotus.
5.2 The System of Duns Scotus

John Duns Scotus (c. 12651308) occupies a crucial position in the development
of the idea of counterfactual actualities. As his model is a prime target of
Walter Chatton as well as an inspiration for many of the latters ideas, an
exposition is appropriate here. Developing some ideas of Henry of Ghent,
esse. Loquendo autem de scientia visionis de qua hic Magister loquitur, sic potest aliquid
aliud videre ab his quae videt, secundum quod potest ei quod habet esse in potentia sua
tantum, dare esse in propria natura. Si tamen hoc in esse produceret, ab aeterno ab eo
esset praescitum.
188 For scientia approbationis, see st i, q. 14, a. 8, co. [aoo vol. 2, p. 208] as well as De veritate
q. 2, a. 13, arg. 9 [aoo vol. 3, p. 18] and q. 7, a. 8, co. [aoo vol. 3, p. 43]. The tripartite
division is common scholastic property: see Alexander of Hales, Glossa in quatuor libros
Sententiarum i d. 39, n. 8, p. 398, as well as Bonaventures Sentences commentary (i d. 39,
a. 1, q. 3, co. [Opera omnia p. 690]).
189 Goris 1996: 272274. Goris view of Aquinas doctrine of future contingents is complex.
He argues that a careful reading of Aquinas doctrines of time, truth, and the distinctions
between human, angelic, and divine cognition reveals a genuine ontological split between
the world as experienced by creatures and the world as cognized by God; this split
corresponds to a genuine and apparently unbridgeable truth-value gap with respect to
future contingents. See especially chapters 3, 5, and 6.
98 chapter 1
Scotus assumes a God whose relationship to created being exists as a sequence

of three or four non-temporal but logically ordered steps which he calls signa or
instantia.190 They are usually referred to (following Ockhams use of the term
instantia naturae in his critique of the idea) as instants of nature.191 These
instants of nature are, in keeping with the tradition inaugurated by Damian,
orthogonal to the temporal order. By appealing to the interactions of the divine
will and the divine intellect in this atemporal or extratemporal medium, Scotus
is able to articulate a model which saves divine foreknowledge, contingency,
determinate truth, and divine and human freedom, albeit in a problematic way.
An exposition of this model reveals a set of ideas and approaches to these issues
that have a large influence on later scholastic philosophers, including Walter
Chatton and his immediate precursors and successors.
5.2.1 The Instants of Nature as Vehicle for Divine and Creaturely

Action and Cognition
In all three extant treatments of this topic, Scotus has two accounts of the
mechanics of the instants of nature model. I shall restrict myself to the
first account, which Scotus apparently regards as the more accessible of the
two.192 In the first instant of nature, Gods will and intellect exist, but have as
190 Three or four is not meant as rough estimate; it reflects genuine uncertainty. Scotus does
not go into much detail about the mechanics of the model in this context, while elsewhere
(e.g., in his discussion of predestination in d. 41, q. u., n. 65 [r i-a vol. 2, p. 505]) the four
instants do not correspond exactly to the four instants in Fig. 5. In the secondary literature,
accounts of his doctrine differ. I follow Normore 1996: 167168, who opts for four, rather
than, e.g., Craig 1988: 136137, who posits three.
191 For Scotus own expositions of this doctrine, see Ordinatio i, d. 38, q. un. [Vat. vol. 6, p. 307,
ll. 515], Ordinatio i, d. 38, pt. 2d. 39, qq. 15 [ibid., p. 428, l. 11p. 429, l. 5], and Reportatio
I-A d. 38, q. 12 nn. 3545 [r i-a vol. 2, pp. 457460].
192 For the second, relatively esoteric account, see Lectura i, d. 39, qq. 15, n. 65 [Vat. vol. 17,
p. 501] and Reportatio I-A, d. 38, qq. 12, nn. 4243 [r i-a vol. 2, pp. 459460], as well as
the illuminating discussion in Sder 1999: 177183. Essentially, the second account differs
from the first in representing the structural role of the divine intellect in less discursive
terms. The divine intellect does not enter into a different state when it becomes aware
of the choice of the divine will; rather, it undergoes mere Cambridge change from an
intellect associated with the neutrality of an as yet undifferentiated contingent to an
intellect associated with a differentiated one. However, one might well ask the following
question: if the difference between the divine intellect in the second and fourth instants
of nature (as rendered in Fig. 5 below) is extrinsic to the intellect itself, in what sense
does the intellect really know (in some pretheoretical sense) the goings-on in the divine
being? An analogous problem has troubled us in connection with the conjunctive analysis
yet no objects except intelligible being. In the second instant, the intellect
produces possible being, i.e., possible objects and states of affairs that subsist
as a real but temporally unordered ensemble.193 Some of these objects, such
as Socrates, are contingent; others, such as all first principles, are necessary.
(Impossible objects do not obtain in any way in any of the instants.194) In the
third instant, the divine will freely chooses, from the array offered it by the
intellect, a set of compossible objects and propositions (or states of affairs,
or what you will) for actualization. This involves deciding which member of
various propositional pairs {, } to actualize (thus granting that member
determinate truth), and affixing a time-index to that member. In the fourth
and final instant, the divine intellect intuits the choice of the divine will, and
predicts correctly that that choice will be195 infallibly instantiated in created
reality. The result is that the divine intellect, in the fourth instant of nature,
of divine foreknowledge (cf. 4.6.4.1) and will return when we come to Walter Chattons
account of divine cognition.
193 That the ensemble is temporally unordered is clear from the following passage, in which
Scotus is criticizing the theory, espoused by Henry of Ghent, that future contingents are
knowable by God directly as ideas in His mind:
[I]deae futurorum non magis ostendunt futuritionem in hoc instanti quam in alio, quia
si voluntas Dei vellet pro alio instanti quod illud futurum esset, eodem modo idea repre-
sentaret illud, sicut in primo instanti.
Reportatio I-A, d. 38, qq. 12, n. 34 [r i-a vol. 2, p. 456]
[I]deas of future [things or states of affairs] do not display their futurition in any one
instant more than any other, since if the divine will were to will that the [aforementioned
thing or state of affairs] would be for some other instant than that originally willed, the
idea [of that thing or state of affairs] would represent it in just the same way.
The point is that in the absence of action taken by the divine will, the idea of a given
contingent state of affairs, say Socrates sits, is not associated with any specific temporal
index. This stands in direct contradiction to Aquinas doctrine, discussed above (4.6.2),
of direct divine cognition of all accidents associated with individuals and states of affairs,
including time. Whether or not Scotus prohibition makes sense, it is clear that, given their
absence from the inventory of divine ideas, the time-indices cannot obtain in the second
instant of nature, on pain of a substantive limitation on divine omniscience. See Sder
1999: 136137 for discussion.
194 Cf. the Paris Reportatio, d. 43, q. 1, n. 25 [r i-a vol. 2, p. 528]: [E]ns fictum distinctum
contra ens ratumut chimaera vel homo irrationalis, et huiusmodi includens contradic-
tionemnon est aliquod unum conceptibile nisi ab intellectu errante, et quod est con-
ceptibile ab intellectu errante ut errans est, nihil est.
195 Here and throughout the following discussion of instants of nature, scare-quotes sur-
100 chapter 1
has complete knowledge of the created world, from beginning to notional

end, without being causally dependent on creation for that knowledge. All
the interactions hitherto discussed have been interactions between faculties
internal to the divine being; hence that being is not vilified in any way by its
creative and cognitive interaction with the created world.196 As for that created
world itself, in its actualized form it clearly fits into the A(a) corner of Fig. 3; this
much is implied by Scotus critique of Aquinas eternal present solution, in the
course of which Scotus argues that Aquinas idea is incoherent, since eternity
would coexist only with a single moving nunc at any given time.197
rounding expressions of time and aspect indicate relations obtaining along the atemporal
medium.
196 The vilification of the divine being by knowledge of contingent reality, a constant worry
in medieval philosophy inherited from Neoplatonism, is explicitly adduced by Scotus at
(e.g.) Ordinatio i, d. 38, pt. 2d. 39, qq. 15 (Vat. vol. 6, p. 411, ll. 35): [Q]uia intellectus
divinus nullam certitudinem accipit ab aliquo obiecto, alio ab essentia sua; tunc enim
vilescerit.
197 Aquinas image of sequential time as a circle surrounding eternity (figured as a point)
appears in Summa contra gentiles i, ch. 66, n. 8 [aoo vol. 2, p. 17]. Scotus criticism of it
runs as follows:
Quia si imaginemur lineam rectam habentem duo puncta terminantia a et b, sit a punc-
tus immobilis et b circumducatur (sicut est de pede circini, uno immobili et alio mobili),
b circumductum causat circumferentiam secundum imaginationem geometrarum, qui
imaginantur punctum fluens causare lineam; hoc posito, si nihil remaneat de circum-
ferentia per fluxum ipsius b, sed tantum in circumferentia sit punctus iste (ita quod
quandocumque punctus ille desinet esse alicubi, tunc nihil circumferentiae est ibi), tunc
nunquam circumferentia est simul praesens centro, sed tantum aliquis punctus circum-
ferentiae esset praesens centro.
Ordinatio i, d. 38, pt. 239, qq. 15 [Vat. vol. 6, p. 441, l. 15p. 442, l. 3]
If we imagine a straight line with two terminal points, A and B, and let A be held fixed while
B is moved around (just as with a compass one point is held fixed and the other moved),
B as it is moved around causes a circumference according to the geometers imagination,
who imagine the flowing point to cause a line. Given this, if nothing were to remain of the
circumference by Bs flow, but rather in the circumference there is only that point (in such
a way that whenever that point ceases to be somewhere nothing of that circumference is
then there), then the circumference is never present at the same time to the center, but
rather only some point of the circumference is present to the center.
Tr. tweedale, in bosley and tweedale 1997: 299
The implications of this passage are at least presentist, and the most natural interpretation
is, I maintain, A(a).
figure 5 A schematization of Scotus instants of nature, for a specific time (tn) and two
contingent propositions and , one () decided by the divine will and one () by a
creaturely will.
Where do creaturely choices fit in? Scotus does not often discuss such
choices in the context of his instants-of-nature model, but his doctrines of
divine permission and co-causality allow us to assume that there are pairs of
propositions of the form {, }that is, contradictions in the special futura
contingentia sensewhose members are not assigned determinate truth by
the divine will but rather by creaturely wills. The instants-of-nature account
can accommodate creaturely wills in the following way: God wills to permit
a certain range of possible worlds which are then further winnowed, with
Gods co-causing but (in the case of sinful creaturely volition) not culpable
consent, by the actions of created wills.198 A small piece of the resulting model,
including all actions of the divine will (DW) and intellect along with the actions
of creaturely wills (CW), can be represented as in Fig. 5 (see above).
198 For co-causality, see Ordinatio 2.37.2, in Opera Omnia (ed. L. Wadding), as reprinted in
26 vols. (Paris: Vives, 18911895) at 13: 368393, cited in Frank 1992: 143; for discussion,
see Frank (op. cit.) and Cross 1999: 5355. For discussion of Scotus doctrine of divine
permission, see Frost 2010. Frost 2010: 20 adduces Scotus discussions of divine permission
in Book i, dd. 4647 of the Ordinatio and the Paris Reportatio.
The idea of a delegation of free choice to creatures is of course not new with Scotus:
it is consonant with Anselms doctrine at De concordia i (3) [Anselmi opera omnia vol. 2,
p. 251, ll. 319] and more generally with the traditional distinction between Gods will of
sign (His voluntas signi, according to which He prefers certain outcomes to others) and
His will of good pleasure (His voluntas beneplaciti consequens, by which He authorizes
the carrying out of creaturely wills, even if they violate the voluntas signi). For standard
expositions see Lombards Sententiae i, d. 45, cc. 57 [Lombard 1971, pp. 309312], Aquinas,
st i, q. 19, a. 12, arg 2 et ad 2 [aoo vol. 2, p. 218], and Ockham, Ordinatio i, d. 46, q. 1 [OTh
vol. 4, pp. 671676]. The distinction will be further developed by Peter Auriol (see 6.2.5.2.1
and 6.2.6 below).
102 chapter 1
In the first instant, the divine intellect (DI) contains only objects with intel-
ligible being (esse intelligibile); I have rather crudely represented this by the
tautology sign (). In the second instant, the divine intellect produces things,
propositions, and states of affairs with possible being (esse possibile); it is here
that the temporally unordered pairs of the form (, ) are first made avail-
able.199 In the third instant, the divine will chooses exactly one side of some
contradictions to actualize and assign to time (tn), while delegating other
contradictions to creaturely wills. In the same instant of nature, the creaturely
will decides between (tn) and (tn).200 In the fourth instant of nature, the
divine intellect infallibly intuits the choices made both by divine and by human
wills in the third instant of nature. The ordered set of times (tn) for the fourth
instant constitutes the actualized world, in which God knows all true proposi-
tions for all times (tn), whether past, present, or future.
There are certain difficulties involving the interactions of created wills and
divine intellect, but they need not detain us here.201 What is important in
this context is that the model, which maps out an atemporal sequence, can
according to a principle affirmed by Scotus himself be conceptualized as a
temporal sequence. The principle in question is Scotus propositio famosa, so
designated by Walter Chatton.202 Articulated in the Paris Reportatio, it runs as
follows:
The type of real order that obtains between things that are really distinct
is the sort of conceptual order that obtains between these things when
they are conceptually distinct. This is proved: for the order of things
conceptually distinct is only inferred from the order they would be suited
by nature to have as real things if they were really distinct.203
Tr. wolter and bychkov
199 The assignment of esse intelligibile and esse possibile to the first and second instants
respectively is made clear in Ordinatio i d. 43, q. u., n. 14 [Vat. vol. 6, pp. 358359].
200 Scotus specifically claims that the cooperation between divine and creaturely wills hap-
pens in the same instant of nature (Lectura ii, dd. 3437, qq. 15 [Vat. vol. 19, p. 364,
ll. 1622]).
201 How, for example, can the divine intellect become aware of sins without being vilified
or, alternatively, being responsible for such sins? Frost 2010 claims plausibly that Scotus
never found a satisfactory answer to this question. In fact, the question can be broadened
to embrace creaturely choices in general.
202 Chatton refers to and defends the doctrine in Reportatio et Lectura prol., q. 3, a. 1 [rel
p. 146, ll. 2627] and a. 2 [ibid., pp. 183188]. See also Chattons Reportatio super Sententias
i, d. 4, q. 3, a. 2, 4351 [rss vol. 1, pp. 365367].
203 Reportatio I-A, prol., q. 1, a. 4, n. 112 [r i-a vol. 1, p. 42]: Qualis ordo realis esset inter
Scotus develops the principle in the course of defending the status of theol-
ogy as a science. Essentially, it is a license to reason about arbitrarily abstract
conceptual structures and dependency relations in terms of spatially or tempo-
rally ordered events or things.204 If, so the reasoning goes, certain dependency
relations obtaining among formally distinct aspects of the divine being were
per impossibile arranged spatially or temporally, they would have such-and-
such an order; hence we wayfarers can conclude that they have that order in
a (to us strictly unimaginable) reality.
Following Normore 2003: 134, we can apply this principle to the instants
of nature themselves, and reason about them per impossibile as temporally
or spatially ordered. Figuring the instants temporally, we can ask the ques-
tion: what corner of Fig. 3 does this model of time belong to? Are there
facts at instant 1 about truth-values at instants 3 or 4? Clearly, there cannot
be; if there were, there would be trans-instantaneous facts about the instant-
3 and instant-4 worlds not known to the divine intellect at instants 1 and
2, violating the principle of divine omniscience. But there are unambiguous
states of affairs at instants 3 and 4; hence there is a sequence of ontological
disambiguation at work. Instant-of-nature time, therefore, is A(mr) time: the
breaks between instants of nature are strongly ontological, not merely perspec-
tival.
At instant 2, then, there are as yet no facts on the ground regarding
as opposed to (or any other contingentspast, present, or future). This
aspect of the model is the warrant for one of the most distinctive of Scotus
doctrines, namely the grounding of ontologically strong contingency in the
divine will.205 On the other hand, at instant 4, there are trans-temporally true
time-indexed facts on the ground corresponding to all true propositions ;
indeed, instant 4 contains all such and only such facts. How does Scotus theory
of truth accommodate itself to this situation? In a way which, while radical, is
nevertheless in keeping with the Correspondence Assumption expounded in
2.2: for the purposes of the atemporal medium, Scotus adopts T3, while for the
aliqua si essent distincta realiter, talis est ordo eorum secundum rationem, ubi sunt
distincta secundum rationem. Ista probatur. Quia ordo distinctorum secundum rationem
non concluditur nisi ex ordine qui natus esset competere illis secundum rem si essent
distincta realiter.
204 The principle is also our license to use diagrams like Fig. 5 as explanatory props.
205 See, e.g., Lectura i, d. 39, n. 51 [Vat. vol. 17, p. 495, ll. 1620]: [V]oluntas in illo instanti in quo
elicit actum volendi, praecedit natura volitionem suam et libere habet se ad eam; unde in
illo instanti in quo elicit volitionem, contingenter se habet ad volendum et contingentem
habet habitudinem ad nolendum.
104 chapter 1
temporal medium, he adopts T2. The first is easy to establish. In the discussion
of instants of nature in the Paris Reportatio we read the following:
I say that every act of intellect which, in God, precedes the act of [His] will
is merely natural and not formally free; and in consequence, whatever is
understood before the act of the [divine] will is merely natural. Therefore
the divine intellect, in apprehending merely naturally the terms of some
future contingent proposition, is indifferent or, in itself, neutral, since it
does not conceive the truth of any proposition except [those] whose truth
is included in the ideas of its terms or follows necessarily from the truth
of already known propositions.206
It follows from this via divine omniscience that the truth-value of future con-
tingents (indeed of all contingents, though the focus here is on the temporal
future) is in fact neutral before the action of the divine will, but in any case
Scotus spells it out for us:
But when the [divine] intellect offers propositions of this kind to the
[divine] will, the will can freely choose or refrain from choosing to unite
its terms, and can choose to conjoin those terms or to divide them,
[uniting] Socrates or Peter and is blessed, but [uniting] Judas and
is reprobated, and not conjoining the latter with, but rather dividing it
from, blessedness. And it is in the same instant in which the divine will
wills Peter and blessedness to be conjoined that the [proposition] Peter
will be blessed is true, and not before [that instant]. And therefore any
such contingent is true because its truth is first caused by an act of the
divine will, -- and it is not because it is [already] true that the will wills it
to be true, but vice versa.207
206 Reportatio I-A, d. 38, qq. 12, n. 37 [r i-a vol. 2, p. 457]: Dico quod omnis actus intellectus
qui in Deo praecedit actum voluntatis, est mere naturalis et non formaliter liber; et
per consequens quicquid intelligitur ante omnem actum voluntatis est mere naturale.
Ergo intellectus divinus mere naturaliter apprehendens terminos alicuius complexionis
futurae contingentis est indifferens sive est de se neuter, quia non concipit veritatem
alicuius complexionis nisi cuius veritas includitur in rationibus terminorum vel sequitur
necessario ex veritate notitiae complexae.
207 Reportatio I-A, d. 38, qq. 12, n. 38 [r i-a vol. 2, p. 458]: Offerente autem intellectu huius-
modi complexiones voluntati, potest voluntas libere eligere unionem istorum termino-
rum vel non eligere, et coniunctionem istorum terminorum contingentium vel divisionem
illorum, ut Socratem vel Petrum beatificari, Iudam autem reprobari et ipsum ad beati-
Nowhere is the qualifier determinate mentioned in this context; the issue

is simple truth, and contingents lack such truth before the instant of nature
in which the divine will makes its decision.
In the final instant of nature, by contrast, it is clear that all truthspast,
present, and futureare determinate verum. This result, which is the one we
should expect given the A(a) model of time obtaining in the last instant,
emerges most clearly from a passage in dd. 3839 of the Ordinatio:
I say that truth in future matters is not similar to truth in present or past
matters. In present and past matters, truth is determinate in such a way
that one of the sides [of the contradiction] is posited. In this sense of
posited it is not in the power of the cause that it be posited or not
posited, because, although it is in the power of a cause as it is naturally
prior to its effect to posit or not to posit the effect, it is not as the effect is
now understood to be posited in being. But for the future, determination
is not of this sort, because although for some intellect one side is determi-
nately true, and one side is even true in itself, determinately, even though
no intellect apprehends it, still it is determinate in such a way that it is in
the power of the cause to posit the opposite for that instant. This indeter-
minacy suffices for deliberation and taking trouble. If neither side were
future it would not be necessary either to take trouble or to deliberate.
Therefore, that one side is future while the other can come about does
not prevent deliberation and taking trouble.208
tudinem non coniungi sed dividi. Et in eodem instanti quo voluntas divina vult Petrum
et beatitudinem coniungi, est haec primo vera, et non ante Petrus beatificabitur. Et ita
quaelibet talis contingens est vera quia veritas eius est primo causata per actum volun-
tatis divinae, -- et non quia vera, ideo voluntas vult eam esse veram, sed e converso.
208 Ordinatio, d. 38, pars 2, et d. 39, qq. 15 [Vat. vol. 6, p. 431, l. 19p. 432, l. 12]: [D]ico quod non
est similis veritas in illis de futuro, sicut in illis de praesenti et praeterito. In praesentibus
quidem et praeteritis est veritas determinata, ita quod alterum extremum est positum, -- et
ut intelligitur positum, non est in potestate causae ut ponatur vel non ponatur, quia licet
in potestate causae ut prior naturaliter est effectu sit ponere effectum vel non ponere,
non tamen ut effectus intelligitur iam positus in esse. Talis autem non est determinatio ex
parte futuri, quia licet alicui intellectui sit una pars vera determinate (et etiam una pars sit
vera in se, determinate, licet eam nullus intellectus apprehenderet), non tamen ita quin
in potestate causae est pro illo instanti ponere oppositum. Et ista indeterminatio sufficit
ad consiliandum et negotiandum; si neutra pars esset futura, non oporteret negotiari
nec consiliari, -- ergo quod altera pars sit futura, dum tamen reliqua possit evenire, non
prohibet consiliationem et negotiationem.
106 chapter 1
Past and future are asymmetrical, but futures are subject to bivalence, even
determinate bivalencealthough there is a further qualifier placed on deter-
minately true futures, namely that they are determinate non ita quin in
potestate causae est pro illo instanti ponere oppositum. The special determinacy
in questioncall it negotiable determinacyis the warrant for consiliatio
et negotiatio. It can sustain this role because the associated things or states
of affairs have not yet been posited in being, as opposed to things and states
of affairs in the present and past, which have been so posited.209 The as yet
unposited things and states of affairs are, nevertheless, fit objects for the des-
ignation verum, even determinate verum. We have, then, a version of T2 for
the last instant. Scotus gives us a split theory of truth for an ontologically split
world.
5.2.2 The Role of Synchronic Contingency

The passage quoted above is puzzling from at least one perspective. The role
here played by negotiable determinacy is precisely the same as that played
by the contingency of the future as interpreted according to the principle of
Boethian modality (as in Fig. 4), while non-negotiable determinacy, which
characterizes things and states of affairs falling outside the remit of consiliatio
et negotiatio, corresponds to Boethian conditional necessity under interpreta-
tion 1, i.e., the necessity of the present and past. What about one of Scotus
most celebrated doctrines, namely the contingency of the present? In affirming
negotiable determinacy, has Scotus contradicted himself? The question affords
the opportunity for a brief excursus into the doctrine of synchronic contin-
gency, both to clear up Scotus conception of the relation among truth, time,
and modality and simply on the grounds of the importance and influence of
that doctrine.
Scotus doctrine of synchronic contingency, which applies both to the divine
and the created wills, presents a frustrating ambiguity of expression. On its
face, it is a simple denial of the temporal interpretation of the principle enun-
ciated at De Interpretatione chapter 9 (19a23), namely omne quod est, quando
est, necesse est esse. And indeed, Scotus explicitly rejects this interpretation in
favor of the scope-disambiguation or sophismatic interpretation.210 The pos-
itive expression of the synchronic-contingency principle appears thus in the
Lectura: In the same instant in which the will has one act of willing, it can
have, in the same [instant] and for the same [instant], the opposite act of will-
209 For Scotus use of the phrase posited in being, see 8.1 and 8.4 below.
210 See the Paris Reportatio, dd. 3940, qq. 13, n. 4950 [r i-a vol. 2, pp. 478479].
figure 6 The polarity-switch interpretation of Scotus synchronic contingency. Modality is

interpreted conatively: 3A and 3B represent two instants or subinstants in the
natural or atemporal order, and some agent, having initially opted to actualize
node C (), thinks better of it and switches to C ()
ing.211 Such a statement makes it sound as if the will could second-guess its
own acts of willing, almost as though it could hit a pause button and rearrange
some aspects of settled reality. More formally, it suggests that Scotus has in
mind an ability, at any given time (tn), to proceed along the atemporal medium
from one willed choice to its opposite, as though what one might call the
wills basic actions could be revoked after having been committed. I shall
call this the polarity-switch interpretation of synchronic contingency. This
interpretation can be shown as in Fig. 6, in which the switch is supposed to
be taking place within instant 3.
Support for the polarity-switch interpretation is suggested by two circum-
stances. First of all, there is a sense of synchronic contingency which is not at
all new, which indeed goes back at least to late antiquity, namely the sense in
which the present moment domiciles events and states of affairs that (in some
ontologically exiguous sense) could have been otherwise. Such a tame brand of
synchronic contingency is already built into the Boethian logical-compatibilist
model. Recall the contingent pedestrian in Boethius Consolation of Philosophy
(discussed in 4.3 above). It is certainly not statistical contingency that is under
discussion in Boethius text; the idea is that the pedestrian might have chosen,
in the immediate past, to be acting otherwise at this very moment. The idea of
a transmodal instant is not spelled out, but is clearly implied. Given that Sco-
tus presents his doctrine as an innovation, it seems as though his theory must
mean something more than this.
211 Lectura i, d. 39, qq. 15, n. 50 [Vat. vol. 17, p. 495, ll. 24]: [I]n eodem instanti in quo
voluntas habet unum actum volendi, in eodem et pro eodem potest habere oppositum
actum volendi.
108 chapter 1
The second consideration militating in favor of the polarity-switch inter-

pretation is the intellectual pedigree of synchronic contingency. As Dumont
1992b has shown, Scotus instants-of-nature doctrine, which provides the atem-
poral medium underlying the notion of synchronic contingency, emerges in
part from earlier discussions by Henry of Ghent attempting to reconcile vol-
untarism and intellectualism. In those discussions, instantaneous change from
one opposite to another is precisely what is being argued for.212 If there, why
not here?
The response to both considerations is simple: Scotus theory, while intro-
ducing features going beyond mere Boethian synchrony, draws on antecedents
other than Henry of Ghent. Specifically, just as in his development of the
idea of instants of nature in general, Scotus is situating divine and human
action within what I have called the pleromatic tradition inaugurated by Peter
Damian. For example, his celebrated thought experiment about the possibil-
ity of an instantaneous will, which must be assumed to be able to act freely
even though lacking any past or future, is drawn from Grosseteste and Peter
John Olivi, and neither of these thinkers is advocating polarity-switch.213 Nor
is Scotus. Instead, somewhat like Grossetestes God, the Scotistic creaturely
agent engages at every moment in ontological disambiguation, exercising his
real power of action by resolving indeterminate contradictions of the form
(, ) into the determinate form either of or of . This process fits into the
third instant of nature as represented in Fig. 7. Here the divine will, though
operating according to the same principle of ontological disambiguation as
the created will, must be sharply distinguished from the latter. The divine will,
while it can be thought of as divided up into instants of nature, operates in a
single temporal instant of eternity.214 The created will, however, while oper-
ating in tandem with God during the third instant of nature, is also enmeshed
in temporality: discursive considerations of consolitio et negotiatio pertain to
212 Specifically, in Henrys theory a corrupt will both is and is not accompanied by an upright
intellect. The intellect is correct in one signum naturae (appeasing the voluntarists in
the audience), erroneous in the next (making intellectualists happy)both in the same
temporal instant. See Dumont 1992b: 581591 and Mller 2009: 602605 for discussion.
213 Scotus longest treatment of this is in Lectura i, d. 39, n. 50 [Vat. vol. 17, p. 495, ll. 114]. For
Grossetestes thought experiment, see N. Lewis 1991: 5758 [9.5, ll. 700716] and N. Lewis
1996 for discussion. For the source in Olivi, see citations and discussion in Dumont 1995:
160166.
214 Paris Reportatio, dd. 3940, qq. 13, n. 43 [r i-a vol. 2, p. 477]: Deus enim nihil potest velle
nisi in aeternitate sive in instanti uno aeternitatis, et mediante unico velle in illo unico
instanti contingenter est causa ipsius a.
figure 7 The progress of a Scotistic creaturely agent through time
it, and must be dealt with by reference to negotiably and non-negotiably deter-
minate truth. Bringing the two media of action together, we can imagine Sco-
tus account of creaturely action in time as a kind of saw-tooth movement
between the sub-instants A and B of the third instant of nature in Fig. 6.
Using the same time-structure as in Fig. 4, this can be represented as in Fig.
7.
As the creaturely agent moves through time, he operates at every tem-
poral instant (tn) on two levels: one, corresponding to instant-of-nature 3A,
during which his act is not yet posited in being but remains indeterminate,
and instant-of-nature 3B, in which it is so posited. Once a given act for a
given temporal instant has been posited in being, the agent may be imag-
ined as being moved to the next iteration, once more in instant 3A, and
so on. The act of choosing one side or another of a contradiction is tem-
porally irrevocable from the point of view of action theory, but not of fac-
ultative modality. This is because, in a move that is once more reminiscent
of Grossetestes analysis, Scotus draws a distinction between will-as-potency
and will-as-act.215 In the Ordinatio passage, we are viewing things from the
perspective of the will-as-act. In consequence, with respect to the traditional
criterion of consiliatio et negotiatio, we are in the realm of negotiable deter-
minacy. As indicated above, this operates like Boethian modality: facts on
the ground include present, already-posited facts, and, like past facts, they are
non-negotiable. Hence, just as for the Boethian tradition, it makes no sense
to take trouble or make plans about past or present states of affairs. In Sco-
tus discussions of synchronic contingency, however, we are taking the per-
spective of the will-as-potency. Modal language as applied to the Scotistic fac-
ultative will is thus calculated from the perspective of instant-of-nature 3A,
before the act has been posited. For temporal creatures, 3A contains indeter-
minate facts both about the present and the future (though not, of course,
about the past).216 In this model, although there is a fixed atemporal real-
215 See Scotus Lectura i, d. 39, n. 51 [Vat. vol. 17, pp. 495496]; cf. the analysis of Sder 1999:
94100 and of Perler 1988: 189, both of which I have found very helpful.
216 A simple way to relate these two kinds of Scotistic modalitythat is, the modality charac-
110 chapter 1
ity at the last instant of nature, Scotus has at his disposal two formal tools
with which to parry the threat of logical determinism: first, the distinction
between negotiably and non-negotiably determinate truth, which constitutes
the warrant for consilatio et negotiatio; and second, the accessibility-relation
portrayed in Fig. 7, which, if interpreted conatively, maps present agents in the
determinate, 3B instant onto future temporal nodes in the indeterminate, 3A
instant.
5.2.3 Assessment of Scotus System

How does Scotus system fare with the pattern arguments, i.e., with Divine
Foreknowledge Necessitates, God Can Be Wrong, and the John Can Be Wrong?
For expository reasons I shall take them in reverse order.
John Can Be Wrong, though only fleetingly touched on by Scotus,217 is easy
to accommodate. The accessibility relation of negotiable determinacy is the
same as that of Boethian conative modality. All we need to do is retain the anal-
ysis from the Boethian model: creaturely belief clauses govern open sentences,
so there are certainly accessible branches in which creatures can have wrong
beliefs about a future contingent.
God Can Be Wrong is actually a showcase piece for Scotus: he devotes a great
deal of space to it in the Ordinatio, and his approach is an interesting extension
of the sophismatic solution. Scotus presents the argument in two versions, one
of which he resolves by a reanalysis of Aristotelian modal syllogistic, and the
second of which he resolves by clearing up the semantics of ponere in esse.
I shall have more to say about ponere in esse (alternatively, ponere in actu,
positing in act, or just ponere) in 88.5; here, suffice it to say that is a
scholastic term used in a wide variety of contexts involving logic and action
theory, and its correct interpretation is always a matter of some doubt. In the
passages under discussion, its status is chiefly that of a tool in modal logic. Here
Scotus second version of GCBW:
[I]f God knows that I am going to sit tomorrow, and it is possible for
me not to sit tomorrow, let it be posited in being that I will not sit
tomorrow; it follows that God is deceived. But from the positing-in-being
terized by negotiable determinacy and the strong modality associated with the normal
terms contingent, necessary, etc.is to say that the former branches forward from the
present node (a dominance relation, in the language of generative syntax), while the lat-
ter branches forward from an arbitrary previous node dominating the present node and
at least one sister of the present node (a c-command relation).
217 See 3.2.2.
of something possible, the impossible does not follow. Therefore, it will

not be impossible for God to be deceived.218
As discussed above (3.13.2), a standard but ultimately inadequate reply to

this chestnut consists in treating it as a modal scope fallacy. Although Scotus
response is in fact in the main line of this tradition, his analysis is subtler than
most: instead of invoking the sensus compositus / sensus divisus distinction, an
expedient which he is happy to use elsewhere,219 he focuses on the relative
positions in formal space of the two propositions God knows that I will sit
(logically interchangeable with the bare proposition I will sit) and the posited
counterfactual I will not sit.220 As is clear from his analysis, these relative
positions are identical only on the assumption that ponere in esse simply adds
the counterfactual to the given premise set in the same time (which latter we
can construe as a single derivational frame or possible world). Such a procedure
reads ponere in esse as a formal move akin to the making of an assumption in
a Fitch-style deduction calculus for classical propositional (nonmodal) logic.
If, on the other hand, we pay attention to the modal markers de inesse and
de possibili, then the application of ponere in esse to the counterfactual I
218 Scotus, Ordinatio i, d. 38, pt. 2d. 39, qq. 15, n. 4 [Vat. vol. 6, p. 403, ll. 14]: Praeterea,
si Deus scit me sessurum cras, et possibile est me non sedere cras,ponatur in esse non
sedebo cras, sequitur quod Deus decipitur; sed ex positione possibilis in esse non sequitur
impossibile; ergo ista Deum decipi non erit impossibilis.
219 E.g., in Ordinatio i, d. 38, pt. 2d. 39, qq. 15, n. 17 [Vat. vol. 6, p. 419, l. 5p. 420, l. 9]. See
Sder 1999: 100103 for further references to Scotus use of the distinction.
220 The crucial passage is at Ordinatio i, d. 38, pt. 2d. 39, qq. 15, n. 28 [Vat vol. 6, p. 435, l. 10
p. 436, l. 4]: Dico tunc quod posita ista in esse possibile est me non sedere, ex ista sola
nihil impossibile sequitur, sed ex ista et aliascilicet Deus scit me sessurumsequitur
impossibile, scilicet Deum falli; et illud impossibile non sequitur ex impossibilitate eius
quae ponitur in esse, nec etiam ex imcompossibilitate aliqua quae est absolute in ea, sed
ex ipsa et quodam alio simul, quod est impossibile. Nec hoc est inconveniens quod illud
quod est impossibile, sequatur ex aliqua de inesse, in quantum ponitur aliqua de possibili
et aliqua de inesse,quia cum ista ego sedeo stat ista possibile est me stare; illa tamen
de inesse, in quantum ponitur ista, repugnant illi alteri de inesse,et ex illis duabus de
inesse sequitur incompossibile, scilicet stans est sedens. Nec tamen sequitur ergo illa
quae ponebatur de possibili in esse, fuit falsa, sed vel illa fuit falsa, vel alia (cum qua sua
de inesse accipitur) est incompossibilis suae de inesse.
In this passage, Scotus reference to a proposition de inesse means de inesse ut nunc
rather than de inesse simpliciter; the latter (which plays a role elsewhere in his analysis)
means roughly omnitemporal, therefore (for the purpose of this discussion) necessary.
112 chapter 1
will not sit will take us to a different time or derivational frame altogether,
a frame in which something else is the real future, and no contradiction or
impossibility will follow. On this interpretation, ponere in esse resembles the
setting up of accessibility relations between possible worlds, as in tree diagrams
for propositional modal logic.221
Scotus distinguishes, then, between two ways we can formally posit some-
thing in being, i.e., imagine something to be the case: we can add it to the sum
of what is already actual and see what follows, a procedure which will auto-
matically produce a contradiction in the case of any imagined counterfactual,
including anything true but possibly not the case (i.e., anything contingent);
or we can move to a different time, instantiate the counterfactual in that
time, and see what follows, a procedure which both allows us to give contin-
gent counterfactuals a fighting chance at nonabsurdity and incurs no danger
of falsifying Gods knowledge in retrospect. For the purposes of evaluating the
sophism in question, claims Scotus, the second meaning is the only relevant
one. In addition to avoiding contradiction, this approach to GCBW gives Scotus
a natural way of affirming the principle proposed in 5 above as a desidera-
tum of any theologically sound theory of future contingents, namely if we can
do it, God can know it. In Scotus strong, modal-realist conception of multi-
ple actualities available to agents both divine and created, Gods knowledge
tracks created choices. As for the charges of vilification to which such an anal-
ysis might be vulnerable, Scotus makes sure to preemptively defend himself
against them by tapping into the ancient tradition that characterizes the rela-
tion between created choices and divine knowledge as not causal:
Although the divine intellect does not follow reality as an effect follows
its cause, there is still a concomitance there, since as the thing is able not
221 For Fitch-style natural deduction calculi, see almost any introductory logic textbook, e.g.,
Bergmann et al. 2008; for a good introduction to the use of tree diagrams in modal logic,
see Garson 2006.
Hester Gelbers discussion of this passage (Gelber 2004: 157158) focuses on Sco-
tus reformulation of the Aristotelian rule defining the possible as that which can be
posited in being without yielding an impossibility, and refers to Scotus explicit emen-
dation in Lectura i d. 39 q. 15 [Vat. vol. 17, p. 504, ll. 57]: Et hoc est quod solet dici,
quod posito aliquot possibili in esse, non sequitur impossibile nisi quando resultat ali-
qua incompossibilitas. The difference between my analysis and hers is nuancal: where
she sees Scotus adding an exceptional incompossibility clause to an otherwise glob-
ally applicable rule, I see a distinction being drawn between two kinds of positing-in-
being.
to be so the divine intellect is able not to know, and thus it never follows
that the divine intellect apprehends a thing otherwise than it is.222
Tr. tweedale, in bosley and tweedale 1997: 296
God, then, cannot be wrong; and if we can refrain from doing it, God can refrain
from knowing it.223
Despite its sophistication, this approach is vulnerable to the charge that it
misses the point. To see this, note that in his treatment of this sophism, all of
Scotus analyses of counterfactuality reduce, basically, to scope disambigua-
tion. The fallacious inference {BGFP, FutP} ()(BG ) can be exposed
in a number of superficially different ways: by deploying the sensus compositus
/ divisus distinction, as in Ordinatio i, dd. 3839, n. 17;224 by drawing attention
to the de inesse status of the first premise, as in ibid., n. 27;225 oras hereby
pointing out that the positing-in-being of a counterfactual takes us to a differ-
ent formal space than does the mere addition of a member to our premise set.
But these methods are close conceptual variants of each other.226 The only way
to read the last analysis as anything more than an extended riff on the sophis-
matic solution is to interpret ponere in esse as something more than a merely
formal expedientas something that agents can do in time. Does positing-in-
being merely explore formal space, however conceptualized, or does it rep-
222 Ordinatio i d. 38 pt. 2d. 39 qq. 15, n. 27 [Vat. vol. 6, p. 434, ll. 1421]: Licet intellectus
divinus non sequatur res sicut effectus causam, tamen concomitantia est ibi, quia sicut
res potest non esse, ita intellectus divinus potest non scire,et ideo numquam sequitur
quod intellectus divinus cognoscat rem aliter quam est. Cf. Boethius, Consolation v. iii,
p. 394 and Lombard, Sententiae, i, d. 38, c. 1, nn. 68 [Lombard 1971, p. 277].
Strictly speaking, this passage appears in the response to the first version of GCBW, in
which Scotus is using his refinement of Aristotelian modal syllogistic, not in the second,
in which the status of ponere in esse is at issue. But the analysis works equally well with
the latter.
223 Scotus negative phrasing (sicut res potest non esse, ita intellectus divinus potest non
scire) echoes Lombards Sententiae, i, d. 38, c. 2 [Lombard 1971, p. 279, ll. 13]. Potest
equidem non fieri aliquid, et illud tamen praescitum est fieri; non ideo tamen potest falli
Dei praescientia, quia si illud non fieret, nec a Deo praescitum esset fieri.
224 Vat. vol. 6, p. 419, l. 5p. 420, l. 9. The issue discussed in this passage is not the validity of
GCBW, but the status of the (clearly related) sentence voluntas volens a, potest non velle
a.
225 Vat vol. 6, p. 433, l. 11p. 434, l. 20.
226 For example, in drawing a tree diagram of the invalid inference {BGFP, FP} ()(BG
), we diagrammatically enact Scotus ponere in esse analysis and thereby expose the
scope issue.
114 chapter 1
resent the kind of real agentic influence on the temporal world that Scotus
discussions of instants of nature and synchronic contingency seem to imply?
Can I, as an agent in time, replace (t+1) R (the current future, known by God
from eternity) with (t+1) R? If not, am I really free? If so, what happens to the sta-
bility of divine knowledge of futures? These questions, which constitute what
Marenbon 2005: 93 rightly characterizes as the essential aspect of the prob-
lem, namely its temporal aspect, are left unanswered in Scotus treatment. The
omission is all the more striking because Scotus has taken such trouble to con-
struct the complex temporal-modal apparatus outlined in 5.2.15.2.2, only
to make no use of it in his solution to this standard sophism.
On the other hand, given Scotus solution to Divine Foreknowledge Necessi-
tates, perhaps the omission was an intentional one. For the problems inherent
in ignoring the temporal aspect of the problem are even more obvious in his
treatment of DFN than in his scope-disambiguation solution(s) to GCBW. Sco-
tus, who is clearly borrowing DFN from Aquinas, presents it very brusquely.227
It appears as follows:
[The following inference] is valid:

God knows a; therefore, [a] will necessarily happen.
The antecedent is necessary.228
The antecedent has been past-necessitated; hence the future-tense consequent

is necessary. Scotus responds by denying, without further explanation, that the
antecedent is necessarium simpliciter.229 Given his grounding of contingency
in the divine will, this is not surprising. But he spends no more time with the
mechanism of the argument. Can a coherent (and negative) Scotist response to
DFN be recovered? An attempt might go as follows. God acts and knows from
eternity, not from within time (this much doctrine, of course, Scotus shares
with some of his targets, such as Aquinas). Therefore, any attempt to locate
divine knowledge of a fact about (t+1), say (t+1)R, at a previous time, such as
(t-1), in order to past-necessitate that fact from a creaturely, conative perspec-
227 Scotus defends the validity of the inference by criticizing what he regards as an Aquinate
cognitive-content escape clause. The evidence that the antecedent has been past-neces-
sitated comes from the source in Aquinas: see st i, q. 14, a. 13, ad 2 [aoo vol. 2, p. 209].
228 Scotus, Ordinatio i, d. 38, pt. 2d. 39, qq. 15, n. 6 [Vat. vol. 6, p. 404, ll. 2223]:
[S]equitur Deus scit a, ergo necessario erit.

Antecedens est necessarium.
229 Ordinatio i, d. 38, pt. 2d. 39, qq. 15, n. 33 [Vat. vol. 6, p. 440, l. 10].
tive, say in terms of negotiable determinacy modality, is not going to work: the
accessibility-relation of such a modality must, as it were, ride the rising arrow
to node 3A in the atemporal medium, a point at which the pair (R, R) has yet
to be disambiguated. Since the referential tendrils of a would-be necessitating
expression such as (t-1) BG (t+1[TRL]) R (God knew yesterday that R will not be
the case) fail to find purchase on actualized reality, the necessitating cannot
take place. Apart from the impressionistic character of this analysis, there is a
more fundamental problem here. If the radical contingency of Gods will is to
be used in this way in order to head off past-necessitation arguments, it must
do so at a cost, and that cost is the stability of the future. The immediately fore-
going analysis amounts, effectively, to the claim that there are some states of
affairs at (tn+1) about which there are no fixed facts of the matter at (tn). You
cant get there from here, Scotus model implies; you have to wait and see. But
this amounts to an A(mr) model along the temporal medium of agency; and
as we have seen, Scotus subscribes to an A(a) model along this medium, and
with it a T2 theory of truth in the actualized world, the world of the last instant
of nature. This is, inescapably, a contradiction. Note that it is a contradiction
that was not obvious in Grossetestes (in many ways similar) model precisely
because Grosseteste elided or trivialized problems associated with creaturely
wills and focused his attention on divine freedom. By building human freedom
into his theoretical apparatus, Scotus has rendered it problematic and perhaps
unworkable.
Nevertheless, the model that Scotus develops in his engagement with the
various problems associated with future contingents is in many respects an
impressive one. It can be said without distortion to contain the following fea-
tures: a timeless eternity from which God acts, an ontologically robust theory of
counterfactuals, a very strong libertarian account both of divine and creaturely
free will, and a theory of truth which, with respect to the actual (i.e., actual-
ized) world, respects bivalence. To the degree that it forges all these disparate
elements into a satisfactory whole, it can be said to have succeeded. However,
the model is complicated and easily misinterpreted. One such misinterpreta-
tion, namely the polarity-switch interpretation of synchronic contingency,
will have an influential career. Moreover, there is a tension in all these anal-
yses that Scotus (along with everyone else) has failed to resolve, namely the
old tug-of-war between the determinate truth of future statements and gen-
uine contingency of action for God and creatures. This tension is clearly visible
in (a) the failure of Scotus treatment of GCBW to provide a firm basis for strong
temporal agency, and in (b) the necessity, in his treatment of DFN, of de-linking
divine belief statements from the 3B instant of nature, thus eroding his own
commitment to a stable actual world unfolding through time. The attempt to
116 chapter 1
fuse a temporally A(a) world, the world we live in, with an atemporally A(mr)
world, the world from which we act as metaphysical agents, is not fully success-
ful.
6 The (Re)Turn to the Formal: Thomas Wylton, Peter Auriol, and the
Rejection of the Correspondence Assumption
Scotus represents the culmination of the tradition of divine modal pleroma

up to the early fourteenth century. His followers, to be sure, developed even
greater refinements of the instants-of-nature model, and successors such as
Luis Molina and Francisco Suarez developed modal theories of divine action
and knowledge that arguably show even greater sophistication than those of
the Subtle Doctor; but of those thinkers who clearly influenced Chatton, Scotus
is the most advanced exemplar of a tendency to emphasize the metaphysical
importance of alternative realities for God and man. By contrast, the next two
writers to be discussed here represent a return to a formalism that is, in the last
analysis, akin to that of Boethius. With these writers, technical issues having
to do with theory of truth and propositional theory come to the fore; a correct
understanding of such matters, in their opinion, suffices to dissolve the threats
to freedom posed by future contingents and Gods knowledge thereof. As we
shall see, their formalism, while superficially radical and unstable, rests on an
ultimately stable picture of the world.
6.1 The Wylton Scope Analysis

Thomas Wylton (d. 1323) was a secular theologian active at Oxford from c. 1288
until 1304, when he left for Paris. He was thus in a position to influence, first,
the intellectual milieu of Ockham and Chatton, though direct contact with the
latter is unlikely; and second, that of Peter Auriol.230 The text discussed here,
Wyltons Quaestio ordinaria utrum praedestinatus possit damnari, was written
in Paris ca. 13121316.231
Wyltons special importance in the context of this study lies in his will-
ingness to endorse a third truth-value for future contingents, and to do so
in a form that would be taken over by Walter Chatton. His basic strategy is
to assume that the truth-to-necessity argument is sound, and to weaken or
230 For a brief summary of Wyltons life, see Trifogli 2003: 666667; for Wyltons probable
influence on Auriol, see Schabel 2000: 5263 and 2011b: 426433.
231 All references to Wyltons Quaestio in this section are to Schabel 2011b: 443469.
qualify claims about the present truth of future-tense propositions so as to

take the sting out of any necessitation they might licitly be subject to. Wylton
rejects Aquinas analysis of Divine Foreknowledge Necessitates by reading it as
an attempt to wiggle out of necessitation by an illegitimate cognitive-content
escape clause.232 More importantly for our purposes, he rejects Duns Scotus
carefully worked-out solution in its entirety. Invoking the authority of Aristo-
tles De Interpretatione chapter 9 according to the traditional interpretation,
Wylton recruits the Philosophers support for his own adherence to truth-to-
necessity: if a tensed proposition is true now, it is necessary for the moment
specified by the tense of the proposition (pro tunc). No matter how its contin-
gency is conceptualized, explains Wylton, the future event, provided that [it]
is posited in being, for the instant for which it is posited in being, cannot not
be by any real potential, but only by a logical one, i.e., by the non-repugnance of
terms.233 Since, as the Philosopher says, propositions are true in a way corre-
sponding to things, the truth of the relevant propositions (conceded by Scotus)
implies that the corresponding things or states of affairs are already posited in
being, and so are necessary.234 Scotus attempt to secure a warrant for consilia-
tio et negotiatio by distinguishing between different kinds of determinacy in the
truth operator, then, is doomed from the start. Moreover, his idea of synchronic
contingency is incoherent: genuine contingency requires the real possibility of
the positing-in-being of either side of the contradiction, and Scotus, on Wyl-
tons reading, denies just this.235 Finally, the mechanism of instants or signs
of nature is unworkable. The instant-of-nature medium is a disguised tempo-
ral medium, albeit one that is orthogonal to the plain old temporal medium,
and, on pain of contradiction, truth-to-necessity applies to it as well: if any
act be posited in being in the last sign of nature, it is necessary that it be in
the first [as well], else in the same instant of time it would both be and not
be.236
As indicated above, Wyltons own solution (hereafter the Wylton Scope Anal-
ysis, abbreviated WSA) involves the introduction of a third truth-value that
232 Wylton, Quaestio, n. 21, p. 446, l. 92p. 447, l. 103. As we have seen, this is probably a
misinterpretation of Aquinas, albeit an understandable one.
233 Wylton, Quaestio, n. 38, p. 450, l. 197p. 451, l. 207. The quoted passage occurs at ll. 204207:
[D]ummodo effectus sit positus in esse, pro instanti pro quo ponitur in esse non potest
non esse aliqua potentia reali, sed solum logica, quae est non-repugnantia terminorum.
234 Wylton, Quaestio, n. 40, p. 452, ll. 228229.
236 Wylton, Quaestio, n. 42, ll. 245247: [S]i aliquis actus ponatur esse in ultimo signo, necesse
est quod sit in primo, vel in eodem instanti temporis simul esset et non esset.
118 chapter 1
applies specifically to future contingents. I use the word involves deliber-

ately: although Wylton explicitly countenances the new, neutral truth-value,
his emphasis is not on this new value, but rather on the formally correct mode
of affixing the old-fashioned truth-values of True and False to their future-tense
complements. Early in the quaestio, he reviews Boethius solution: the latter,
Wylton correctly reports, had said that he who says this will be is lying, not
because of the outcome itself, but because of the way of speaking.237 Wyl-
ton, too, focuses on the form of the expression, and as we shall see, his world,
too, is an A(a) world. Boethius, he thinks, was essentially correct, but a slight
adjustment of his approach is needed. Instead of revoking the privileges of cer-
tain kinds of future-tense statements, as Boethius dida revocation which I
have expressed in 4.5.3 by the addition of a special operator A that permits
the truth-value indeterminately true-or-falseWylton lets discourse retain
those privileges while locating truth-makers at the precise juncture in which
the insertion of a conditional-necessity operator would be appropriate. Here is
his analysis:
When Boethius says that to speak thus is dishonest, I say that the [propo-
sition] this will be does not mean the same as the [proposition] that
this will be is true, but rather signifies that that this is will be true;
nor are these [last] two [propositions] identical, but rather the first is the
cause of the truth of the second, and the first is determinately false. And
Boethius talks about this. The second is neither true nor false, but will
be true or false, for propositions are true to the degree that [correspond-
ing] things [exist], as is clear from the end of De Interpretatione [ch. 9,
19a33]. And therefore, since future contingents are not now determined
to one side, a proposition asserting that they are now true is [itself] deter-
minately false. But the [proposition] this will be, which signifies that
this is will be true, is as yet neither true nor false.238
237 Wylton, Quaestio, n. 8, p. 444, ll. 3334: [Boethius] dicit quod dicens hoc erit mendax est,
non propter rei eventum, sed propter enuntiandi modum.
238 Wylton, Quaestio, n. 66, p. 459, l. 432p. 460, l. 441: [C]um dicit Boethius quod sic
dicens mendax est, dico quod haec: hoc erit, non significat idem quod haec: hoc fore
est verum, sed significat quod hoc esse erit verum; nec istae duae sunt eaedem, sed
prima est causa veritatis secundae et prima est determinate falsa. Et de illa loquitur
Boethius. Secunda nec est vera nec falsa, sed erit vera vel falsa, orationes enim sunt verae
quemadmodum et res, ut patet primo Perihermeneias in fine. Et ideo, quia contingentia
futura non sunt modo determinata ad unam partem, ideo propositio asserens ea modo
Clarifying the point, Wylton then comments on the Boethian objection,

raised earlier in the text, that all propositions of the form this will be referring
to future contingents should be classified as determinately false on the grounds
that they do not correspond to reality, which is ex hypothesi modally indeter-
minate.239 Boethius, Wylton writes, should be understood as having insisted on
the proper construction of the truth-declaration240 of such predictions:
When it is said: a proposition signifying in way other than things are in

fact [is determinately false], I say that this means that the proposition
that this will be is true is false, since it asserts in a way opposed to the
facts. But the other [interpretation of this will be] does not signify in a
way opposed to the facts, but it asserts something for the future which
can happen and can not-happen. But since what it asserts can indeed
happen, it [viz., the original sentence and its correct truth-declaration] is
not determinately false; since, however, its opposite/negation can [also]
happen, it is therefore not determinately true.241
Expressing Wyltons analysis in the notation used for the systems deriving from
Boethius, the weak or modest prediction P will be can be formulated as the
present assertion, for some future moment (tf), of the modally open sentence
(tf) P,242 though for notational reasons it makes more sense to attribute to
Wylton the bare assertion of this open sentence, without the special operator
A used in 4.5.3.243 To illustrate the points Wylton makes in the texts cited,
esse vera est determinate falsa. Sed haec: hoc erit, ut significat hoc esse erit verum, nec
est adhuc vera, nec falsa.
240 I take the term truth-declaration from Wolfgang Knne to indicate sentences whose
surface grammar suggests that they are ascriptions of truth (Knne 2003: 52 note 67).
241 Wylton, Quaestio, n. 67, p. 460, ll. 442447: [C]um dicitur: propositio significans aliter
quam se habet in re, etc., dico quod hoc concludit quod haec sit falsa: hoc fore est
verum, quia asserit opposito modo rei. Sed alia non aliter significat quia asserit opposito
modo rei, sed asserit aliquid pro futuro quod potest contingere et non contingere. Sed
quia potest contingere quod asserit, ideo non est determinate falsa; quia autem potest
oppositum contingere, ideo non est determinate vera.
Note that, for Wylton, the qualifier determinate plays the basically epiphenomenal role
we have observed with Aquinas and Ockham.
242 Cf., once more, Belnap and Green 1994.
243 These notational reasons are simply that Wylton, unlike Boethius, relies on a scope
distinction of tense vs. truth operators to do all the work of avoiding necessitation; see
the iterated argument below.
120 chapter 1
let us suppose that (tf) P is contingent from (t0[TRL]), i.e., that (t0[TRL]) (tf)
P. We may consider this the casus or assumed state of affairs in an obligational
dispute.244 We must here assume (the text is silent on these matters, as was the
case with Boethius as well) the existence of some kind of practical assertability
conditions entitling us to the use of future-tense, modally open expressions
committing us as speakers to one side or other of the contradiction. These
conditions are presumably connected, epistemically and/or ontologically, to
the fact that both sides of the contradiction are live options from (t0[TRL]). We
have, under such conditions, the right to assert that P will be at (tf), i.e., we can
say (t0[TRL]) (tf) P. This assertion does not commit us to precedent necessitation;
we can arrive at this false conclusion only by wrongly assuming an equivalence
of this will be and that this will be is true, i.e., of (t0[TRL]) (tf) P and (t0[TRL]) T
(tf) P. Given truth-to-necessity, this last equates to (t0[TRL]) (tf) P, which, given
the casus, is determinately false. But, in fact, the right way to declare the truth of
(t0[TRL]) (tf) P is to embed the truth operator after the future-tense operator, i.e.,
to say that this is will be true, formally (t0[TRL]) (tf) T (tf) P. In this way, another
open sentence is produced, which can necessitate harmlessly as (t0[TRL]) (tf)
(tf) P. Wyltons point is that both the assertion (t0[TRL]) (tf) P and the assertion
(t0[TRL]) (tf) T (tf) P are, given (t0[TRL]) (tf) P, satisfiable by some history and
(avoiding precedent necessitation) also falsifiable by some history. They are, we
may say, neither Wylton-true nor Wylton-false. The conceptual point is by no
means new, and goes back, like so much else in the entire futura contingentia
debate, to Boethius simple / conditional necessity distinction and to Aristotle
before him.
We can sum up the truth-values of Wyltons predictions and their truth-
declarations as follows:
Casus (given): (t0[TRL]) (tf) P
Proposition: Formalization: Truth-value:
1. P will be (t0[TRL]) (tf) P Neither true nor false

2. That P will be is true (t0[TRL]) T (tf) P False
3. That P is will be true (t0[TRL]) (tf) T (tf) P Neither true nor false
244 A short description of the ars obligatoria is given below in 8.2.

If we change the casus to (t0[TRL]) (tf) P, the truth-values of all three

sentences change to true, which is what Wylton is getting at in his claim, in
the first of the Wyltonian texts quoted above, that the first [i.e., sentence 2 in
the above schema] is the cause of the truth of the second [i.e., of the truth of
sentence 3 in the schema].
Among the objections Wylton considers, one in particular is worth a close
look, as it will be adopted by Walter Chatton in an essentially unchanged
though textually obscure form.245 It would seem, so goes the objection, that
Wyltons embedding move is useless. After all, this will be, open sentence
or not, is an assertion of some state of affairs, and if the state of affairs it
represents in fact obtains, then in virtue of Aristotles principle of correspon-
dence the proposition this will be is now true.246 If Wylton retorts that this
truth-declaration is wrongly formed, and replaces TFutP (it is now true that
P will be) with FutTP (it will be true that P is), then surely we can simply
say that FutTP also represents a state of affairs that holds now, and correspon-
dence yields T(FutTP). Since, by Wyltons own admission, FutP and FutTP are
mutually convertible, we thus have the right to assert TFutP, and thus FutP,
after all.247 Wyltons reaction is to insist that, at each iteration, the truth oper-
ator be embedded. No matter how often the objectors try to impose a wide-
scope truth operator on some truth-declaration, Wylton restructures the ill-
formed proposition into a well-formed narrow-scope version of itself. As he
puts it:
[The following inference] is invalid: This will be necessary, therefore it

is true to say that it will be necessary; rather, [one must conclude] that
it will be true to say that this is necessary, in such a way that if such
assertions are multiplied to infinity the proposition [as a whole] will
always be about the future, not about the present.248
245 See rss i, d. 38 [22][23] and commentary. See also Keele 2013 for a somewhat different
analysis of the corresponding passage in Chatton.
247 Wylton, Quaestio, n. 79, p. 463, ll. 518522. The objectors actually skip the true part and
go straight to erit necessarium.
248 Wylton, Quaestio, n. 82, p. 463, l. 540p. 464, l. 543: Ad quartam dicendum quod non
sequitur: hoc erit necessarium, ergo verum est dicere quod erit necessarium, sed quod
verum erit dicere quod hoc est necessarium, ita quod in infinitum semper, si multipli-
centur tales propositiones, semper compositio erit de futuro, non de praesenti.
122 chapter 1
Treating the necessity operator as a truth operator, since they are convertible
for Wylton, we have the following rather unproductive exchange 8:249
1. Initial proposition: FutP (t0[TRL]) (tf) P

2. Wyltonian truth-declaration of (1): FutTP (t0[TRL]) (tf) T (tf) P
3. Objectors truth-declaration of (2): T(FutTP) (t0[TRL]) T (tf) T (tf) P
4. Wyltonian emendation of (3): Fut(TTP) (t0[TRL]) (tf) T (tf) T (tf) P
5. Objectors truth-declaration of (4): T(Fut(TTP)) (t0[TRL]) T (tf) T (tf) T (tf) P
6. Wyltonian emendation of (5): Fut(T(TTP)) (t0[TRL]) (tf) T (tf) T (tf) T (tf) P
Etc., in infinitum. At each iteration, the patient Wyltonian must correct the
stubborn would-be prefixer of precedent truth, replacing the latters closed
(and necessitation-prone) sentence with an open version thereof. It should be
noted that any sequence (tf) T (tf) P or (tf) (tf) P reduces to (tf) P. The last
recorded attempts of the would-be prefixer and the patient Wyltonian thus
amount, respectively, to (t0[TRL]) T (tf) P, i.e., (t0[TRL]) (tf) P (precedent/simple
necessitation) and the original Wyltonian (t0[TRL]) (tf) P (no necessitation, or
merely sequent/ conditional necessitation). Interesting as this analysis is, it
must be stressed that Wylton gives no compelling reason why we should prefer
the even-numbered formulations to the odd-numbered formulations; he seems
to think that the merits of his scope analysis are self-evident and merely require
pointing out.
There is a good deal more to be said of Wyltons solution, particularly regard-
ing his approach to the pattern arguments, but a lengthy analysis is perhaps
best undertaken in some other context. Briefly put, Wyltons open-sentence
approach to future-tense claims allows him simple formal responses to all three
conundra. As for John Can Be Wrong, which Wylton does not even indirectly
discuss, his system allows the falsification of predictions both of the form P will
be and of the form That P is will be true, as both are asserted open sentences.
With respect to Divine Foreknowledge Necessitates, Wylton ignores (as did
Boethius as well, for the most part) the questions of past-necessitation that are
so salient in other thinkers treatments of the problem, instead concentrating
on the distinction between the different forms taken by the truth-declarations
of present-tense and future-tense claims. These pattern along the familiar
lines of Boethian (temporal) simple / conditional necessity: the present-tense
249 In the notation used in the rightmost column, which is consistent with that used else-
where in this study, the Fut operator is dispensed with, and explicit claims about futurity
are handled simply by setting two time indices (tn) and (tm>n) side by side.
antecedent God knows that this will be can be declared to be true in the form
It is true, now, that God knows that this will be, while the future-tense conse-
quent this will be is treated, as in the foregoing analysis, as that this is will
be true. The necessitation entailed by these asymmetrical truth-declarations
is of the innocuous kind in both cases.250 As for God Can Be Wrong, Wylton
does not explicitly treat the problem, but he does remark that although [the
proposition] God knows now that I will sit tomorrow is true, nevertheless it is
in my power whether I shall sit or not, since as I shall freely choose one side [or
the other], so that side which I choose is now known to God.251 This is obscure
and somewhat problematic. Either Wylton is proffering a Boethian interpreta-
tion of divine knowledge as modally closed (as in 4.5.2), or he is tapping into
the Lombardian tradition of retrospective truth-value revision which Ockham
would develop shortly afterwards. However we interpret the passage, the gen-
eral drift seems to be as follows: despite the neutrality of future-tense propo-
sitions, the corresponding assertions of divine-foreknowledge are not neutral
but true. In any case, though Wyltons theory of truth may be radical, his world-
picture is familiar. For him, the following statements both hold:
(1) God now knows what I will freely choose;

(2) He knows it as a contingent and free choice.
Proposition (1) implies an ontologically stable future, i.e., an A(a) model of

time; we thus have our first model explicitly combining T3 and A(a) along a
single agentic medium. With Wylton, then, we have moved decisively away
from the Correspondence Assumption; world-picture and theory of truth have
been separated. Proposition (2) is the echo of an ancient compatibilist solution
that Wylton inherits from Aquinas and Boethius and, further back, from the
Neoplatonist tradition: God necessarily foreknows our contingent and free
choices. This is a solution which he will bequeath to William Ockham and
Walter Chatton, but emphatically not to Peter Auriol, to whose theory we now
turn.
250 See esp. Wylton, Quaestio, n. 73 and n. 80.

251 Wylton, Quaestio, n. 74, p. 462, ll. 493497: Sed cum hoc quod Deus scit modo quod me
cras sedere est verum, stat quod in potestate mea sit quod cras curram vel non curram,
quia cum libere eligam alteram partem, ideo modo est nota Deo pars illa quam eligo. Et
ideo cum scientia Dei huiusmodi futurorum stat ita quod nihil minus indigemus consilio
et negotiatione quam si Deus de futuris nihil sciret. Note the fudging on tense in the first
sentence: eligam eligo.
124 chapter 1
6.2 The Position of Peter Auriol: A Closed-Future Model in Open-Future

Guise
The theory of Peter Auriol (c. 12801322), a French Franciscan whose impor-
tance for middle to late scholasticism has received much attention in recent
years,252 is of crucial significance in the context of this study because of its
deep and direct influence on Walter Chatton. Auriol, while developing some
ideas of Wyltons, incorporates them into the vast and systematic edifice of his
philosophical vision; the result, though subtly and powerfully novel, is not as
radical as it first appears.
6.2.1 Auriols Radical-Sounding Claims

The apparently radical qualities of Auriols theory can be simply expressed: he
seems both to deny a fixed future and to draw the obvious limitative conclu-
sions about divine foreknowledge and the reliability of prophecy. Taking his
cue from Aristotle, whose doctrine in De Interpretatione ch. 9 he interprets in
the traditional manner, he claims the following:
[N]o singular proposition about a future contingent, either affirmative

or negative, is determinately253 true, but is completely indeterminate.
Hence, no [proposition] can be formed about which it could be conceded
that it is true or false, contrary to the common opinion.254
As goes truth, so goes divine foreknowledge: [D]ivine knowledge, comparing

the actuality [corresponding to a future contingent] to this now, does not
determinately know whether [that actuality] will be or will not be, since in
252 See Friedman 2009 for a general introduction and Schabel 2000 for a systematic and histor-
ically contextuallized presentation of Auriols thoughts on future contingents. The Peter
Auriol Homepage (www.peterauriol.net), maintained by Friedman, contains a descrip-
tion of the Auriol editing project, bibliographies, and texts.
253 Throughout Distinctions 38 and 39, in line (more or less) with Aquinas and Ockham and
in contrast with Abelard, Auriol uses determinate as an emphatic qualifier meaning pos-
sessing a unique truth-value, while indeterminate similarly emphasizes a propositions
status as neither true nor false; see Thakkar 2010: 102105 for discussion.
254 Auriol, Scriptum i, d. 38, a. 3 [Schabel 1995, p. 126, ll. 823828]: Quid dicendum secun-
dum veritatem. Et primo quod nulla proposition singularis de futuro contingenti est
determinate vera, nec affirmativa nec negativa, sed penitus indeterminata. Unde nulla
potest formari de qua possit concedi quod sit vera vel falsa, contra opinionem com-
munem. The remaining references to Auriols Scriptum in this section are to Schabel
1995.
itself it is indifferent.255 As for genuine prophecies, they of course must per

fidem be believed, but as they are normally formulated as predictions, they
too are, strictly speaking, neither true nor false.256 As indicated in 2.2, these
doctrines, so presented, seem like an invitation to charges of heresy: Gods
omniscience, immutability, and even credibility as a source of true prophecy
seem impugned.
In fact, as Auriols modern interpreters have made abundantly clear, he has
no intention of impugning any of the above.257 Leaving aside prophecy as a
genuinely problematic feature of the Auriolian model, and postponing divine
immutability to section 6.2.4 below, let us turn to Gods knowledge of con-
tingents which are, to us, future. Auriol proposes a model of Gods cognitive
relation to His creation which bears some resemblance to that of Thomas
Aquinas.258 Auriols God, like Aquinas, views creation from a kind of timeless
eternity. However, there are some crucial differences. These differences are best
viewed from perspective of the traditional interpretation of Aquinas, criticized
in 4.6.2 above, according to which the essence of Aquinas response to these
problems consists in an appeal to the presentiality of Gods cognition, since
Auriol clearly interprets Aquinas in just this way. (1) Aquinas, in the tradition
of Augustine and Boethius, claims that Creation is eternally present to God;
Auriol considers this a conceptual solecism.259 Instead, Gods knowledge of
255 Auriol, Scriptum i, d. 38, a. 3 [Schabel 1995, p. 146, ll. 12511252]: [D]ivina notitia comparans
actualitatem ad istud nunc non novit determinate si erit vel non erit, quia ut sic ad
utrumlibet est.
256 Auriol, Scriptum i, d. 38, a. 3 [Schabel 1995, p. 143, ll. 11841186]: Quod [propheta] dicitur,
si evenerit, quod est propheta Domini, si vero non, quod est propheta falsus, dicendum
quod sive evenerit sive non, propheta non dixit falsum, quia propositio de futuro nec est
vera nec est falsa.
257 See once more Schabel 2000, esp. ch. 4 and ch. 5; Friedman 2009, sections 2.3 and 2.4.
258 Schabel 2000: 9394 notes the resemblance between Aquinas model and Auriols.
259 For Aquinas review and endorsement of Boethius doctrine, see, e.g., i S., d. 38, a. 5, co.
[aoo vol. 1, p. 102], st i, q. 14, a. 13, co. [ibid., vol. 2, p. 209], and De veritate q. 2, a. 12,
co. [ibid., vol. 3, p. 17]. Auriol gives various reasons for his rejection of the doctrine. He
claims, for example, that figuring Gods relation to events in time as one of presentness,
i.e., actuality, commits us either to a God who experiences an actually infinite number
of moments (prohibited on Aristotelian grounds) or an actually finite number (ruled out
on the grounds that there are an infinite number of future times that God would need
to know as present); igitur poni non potest quod divinus intuitus feratur in res futuras
tamquam in presentialiter existentes (Scriptum, d. 38, a. 2 [Schabel 1995, p. 119, ll. 678
679]). In general, Auriols rejection of Aquinas theory resembles that of Geach 1977: 57
and Kenny 1979: 5455.
126 chapter 1
timed events, to which Auriol gives the term indistant, abstracts from preteri-
tion, futurity, and simultaneity.260 (2) Aquinas allows his God (though atem-
poral) to have a kind of time-bound knowledge of future contingents, whereas
Auriol more rigorously blocks any attempt to encapsulate divine knowledge
in a given moment.261 (3) Aquinas makes a careful distinction between Gods
timeless knowledge of real past-tense or future-tense events, which He knows
by scientia visionis, and His timeless knowledge of counterfactuals, which He
knows by scientia simplicis intelligentiae; in Auriol this difference essentially
disappears along with the counterfactuals themselves.262 (4) Finally, Aquinas
believes that God knows particulars through divine ideas which are actu-
ally identical to, but distinct in reason from, the divine essence.263 Auriols
God knows particulars, to include the actuality of future contingent things,
events, and states of affairs, through a more direct relation, namely that of an
eminent similitude obtaining between Gods essence and all created singu-
lars.264
Though Auriol introduces new conceptual apparatus and some new termi-
nology, it is fairly clear what is going on here: while denying that God knows
the future as future, Auriol provides Him with a (relatively) direct route to
the contents of that future. Thus Auriol can claim that in the relevant, non-
expectative sense, God has foreknowledge after all, and His omniscience is not
impugned.265 A stance of this kind requires one of two strategies: either we play
260 Auriol, Scriptum i, d. 38, a. 2 [Schabel 1995, p. 121, ll. 717720]: [N]ec intercidit in hac
linea [successionis] Deitas quasi dividat eam in antea et post; ergo similiter abstrahit in
cognoscendo, ut scilicet nichil aspiciat ut futurum nec ut preteritum nec ut simultaneum,
sed abstrahendo ab omnibus, aspiciat ut indistans.
261 Aquinas can be taken as endorsing a time-bound cognition on the part of God insofar as
he accepts that Gods cognition of the future can fall under the scope of past-necessitation
(see De veritate, q. 2, a. 12, arg 7 [aoo vol. 3, p. 17], whose presuppositionthat Gods
knowledge of the future can be past-necessitatedAquinas does not question). Auriols
own response is that future contingents, qua future, are not fit objects of divine cognition
in any case (Scriptum i, d. 39, a. 1 [Schabel 1995, p. 159, l. 211p. 160, l. 223]).
262 For scientia visionis and scientia simplicis intelligentiae, see st i, q. 14, a. 9, co. [aoo, vol. 2.,
p. 208]. For Auriols alternative model, see the discussion following.
263 See st i, q. 15, a. 2, ad 4 [aoo vol. 2, p. 211].
264 The term is eminens similitudo: see Auriol, Scriptum i, d. 38, a. 1 [Schabel 1995, pp. 107112].
The relation of Auriols God to particulars is still indirect, since He directly intuits nothing
outside Himself [ibid., p. 104, ll. 359371]. The distinction between Aquinas and Auriols
doctrines on this point may seem like hair-splitting, but see Schabel 2000 ch. 4 and Conti
2000: 111115.
265 Auriol, Scriptum i, d. 38, a. 1 [Schabel 1995, p. 94, ll. 147148]: [C]atholice concedere
down the ontological weight associated with denials of future truth, reducing
the Fut operator to the status of a necessity operator, which is the Boethian
approach; or we concede a certain ontological weight to such denials, but claim
that in some superior sense God knows everything worth knowing anyway. A
careful reading of Auriols theory shows that he opts for the second approach,
but in doing so produces a system which can, ultimately, be regarded as a func-
tional equivalent of the first approach.
6.2.2 Auriols Linear Truth-to-Necessity Argument

As a first step toward clarifying the relationship, in Auriols system, between
predictions, truth-value, and divine knowledge, I shall review a crucial argu-
ment by which Auriol establishes his most striking result, namely truth-value
gaps for future contingents.266 The proposition to be demonstrated: If the
proposition Antichrist will be is true, it is immutably and inevitably true.267
Auriol provides what he clearly sees as an exhaustive, case-by-case analysis,
which goes as follows. Let the proposition be Socrates will be in future instant
, represented as (t)S.268 This proposition is assumed to be currently true, i.e.,
(t0)[(t)S]. If the proposition can change from T to F, it is subject to change
either (1) in the current instant, (2) in some previous instant, (3) in some instant
between the current instant and Socrates actual existence, or (4) at the instant
of Socrates actual existence. These possibilities can all be ruled out:
(1) The proposition cannot change to falsity in the current instant, claims
Auriol, because this would involve the propositions being true and false in
the same instant, which is absurd: (t0)[(t)S] and (t0)[(t)S] cannot both be
true.269 As Thakkar 2010: 66 notes, this move presupposes a summary dismissal
of Scotistic synchronic contingency.
oportet quod omnia futura, quantumcumque sint contingentia, Deus determinate pren-
ovit.
266 For other discussions of this argument, see Schabel 2000: 108111 and Thakkar 2010: 6468.
267 Scriptum i, d. 38, a. 3 [Schabel 1995, p. 127, ll. 845846]: Si hec propositio vera est:
Antichristus erit, immutabiliter et inevitabiliter est vera. Auriol begins the argument
with Antichrist and shifts immediately to Socrates; subsequently [ll. 921949] Antichrist
resurfaces. The shift has no significance (cf. footnote 172).
268 For this stage of Auriols theory it makes sense to present timed propositions without a
history subscript; as should become clear, the argument as presented in the text assumes
linear, non-branching time.
269 Scriptum i, d. 38, a. 3 [Schabel 1995, p. 127, ll. 849850]: Sed manifestum est quod non
potest mutari in illo instanti quo est vera, quia pro eodem instanti esset vera et non vera,
quod impossibile est.
128 chapter 1
(2) The proposition cannot have changed to falsity in any previous instant. Here
the footwork turns a bit fancy:
Nor [can it change] in the preceding instant, because: (a) if in a given

instant it is true, [then] in every preceding instant it was also true, since
if it is true today that Socrates will be tomorrow, [then] yesterday it was
also true that Socrates would be tomorrow, and thus if it could then
change to falsity, it would change in that same then in which it was
true, and consequently it would be simultaneously true and not true;
and (b) if in the preceding instant it were to change [with respect to] its
truth, it would follow that it would lose its truth before it had it, which is
absurd.270
Leaving (b) aside, we can note that (a) involves two moves. First, something
like the alethic universal relation is invoked to take us from the current truth
of (t)S to its truth in all previous moments: if (t0)[(t)S], then for all values of
n, (tn<0)[(t)S]. Second, having secured (tn<0)[(t)S], Auriol repeats the move of
(1) above: (tn<0)[(t)S] and (tn<0)[(t)S] cannot both be true.
(3) The proposition cannot change to falsity in any instant intervening between
now and the time of Socrates actual sitting. Here the rationale is different.
Having dismissed possibilities (1) and (2) by reference to the impossibility of
synchronic change, Auriol now considers whether a future contingent propo-
sition can undergo legitimate change, i.e., change in a subject from one time to
a later time. In a move echoed by Ockham (see 7.2.2 below), Auriol reasons
that this is impossible. Truth-values supervene on res (however we conceptu-
alize these latter, as things, events, or states of affairs), and absent the relevant
res, legitimate change cannot have taken place:
[I]f in any instant, e.g., tomorrow, the proposition Socrates will be is

false, it is impossible that it will have been true yesterday; for let us assume
the opposite, i.e., that it was true yesterday and false today: this will be
because of some change made in the thing; but no change has been made,
270 Scriptum i, d. 38, a. 3 [Schabel 1995, p. 127, ll. 850856]: Nec in instanti precedenti, tum
quia si in instanti dato est vera, et in omni precedenti fuit vera, quia si hodie verum est
quod Sortes erit cras, et heri verum fuit quod Sortes esset cras, et ita si tunc poterat mutari
in falsitatem, mutaretur in illo eodem tunc quo esset vera, et per consequens simul esset
vera et non vera; tum quia si in instanti precedenti suam veritatem mutaretur, sequeretur
quod ante amitteret veritatem quam haberet, quod nichil est dictu.
since no thing yet exists which could be subject to any potency in act, and
consequently, since nothing can change with respect to the thing, nothing
will change with respect to the proposition.271
(4) Finally, the proposition cannot change to falsity in the moment when the
thing will be or not be. As in (2), two reasons are given:
Nor can it be said that that truth will change in the instant in which
the thing will be or will not be, because: (a) [in that instant,] that truth
proceeds into the past, since up until that instant it was true that Socrates
will be; but what has proceeded into the past is immutable and (b)
if it changes in the instant in which the thing comes into being, then
either that which [the proposition] signifies will be posited in being, and
then [the proposition] will not change but will rather be confirmed in
its truth, or the opposite of what it signifies will be posited, and then [the
proposition] will not change, since [on this assumption] it was never true,
but always false.272
Reason (a) is a straightforward appeal to (temporal) conditional necessity

which tacitly relies on an assumption made more openly in (1) and (2), namely
that change within a single instant is incoherent. Reason (b) is a reminder that
the mere logical possibility of two outcomes does not mean that any change
in truth-value can take place: on the assumption that Socrates will be, there
clearly will have been no change, while on the assumption of his nonexistence,
(t)S will clearly always have been false.273 Having eliminated all candidates
for a change from truth to falsity, Auriol concludes that a future-tense proposi-
271 Scriptum i, d. 38, a. 3 [Schabel 1995, p. 127, l. 858p. 128, l. 863]: [S]i in aliquo instanti,
utpote cras, falsa sit hec propositio: Sortes erit, impossibile est quod fuerit heri vera;
detur enim oppositum, scilicet quod heri fuit vera et hodie falsa, hoc erit propter aliquam
mutationem factam in re; nulla autem mutatio facta est, quia nondum res est nec subest
alicui potentie in actu, et per consequens, cum nichil mutetur circa rem, nichil mutabitur
circa propositionem.
272 Scriptum i, d. 38, a. 3 [Schabel 1995, p. 128, ll. 864871]: Nec potest dici quod in illo
instanti in quo res fiet vel non fiet mutabitur illa veritas, tum quia veritas illa transit in
preteritum, nam usque ad istud instans verum fuit quod Sortes erit, quod autem transit
in preteritum immutabile est tum quia si mutetur in instanti factionis rei, aut hoc erit
quia significatum eius ponetur in esse, et tunc non mutabitur sed potius confirmabitur in
sua veritate, aut oppositum sui significati ponetur, et tunc non mutabitur, quia numquam
fuit vera, sed semper falsa.
273 It should be emphasized that Auriol is not appealing to the possibility, developed by
130 chapter 1
tion, if it is at any time posited as true, will necessarily be immutably true.274

After presenting a correspondence argument tying true statements to states
of affairs, he concludes that if fixed truth-values can be established for all
future contingent propositions, it follows that all future events will come about
inevitably.275
Auriols argument is curiously heterogeneous and oddly structured; the dif-
ferent types of reasoning seem arbitrarily assigned to different portions of
the timeline. It also runs the risk of triviality. Auriols tendency to equate
immutability and necessity276 leads him to present a truth-to-necessity argu-
ment in the form of a truth-to-omnitemporality argument. Thus Auriols real
intended demonstrandum is the principle that expectative truth implies
omnitemporal truth, i.e., (n)() [(m<n) (tm)[(tn)] (m)(tm)[(tn)]]. This
is, however, an immediate consequence of the more general principle of modal
stability enshrined in the truth-value links, i.e., in the alethic universal rela-
tion in the form (tn) (tm)[(tn)]. And Auriol appeals directly to these very
links at (2) (a) step 1 and at (4) (b), making his argument a petitio principii to
the extent that it depends on these moves.277 Fortunately the appeal at (2) (a)
step 1 is superfluous, and that at (4) (b) is inessential. (3) makes no use of (tn)
(tm)[(tn)]; it stands by itself as an appeal to an Aristotelian conception of
change. (3), then, combined with the prohibition on change within a single
instant evident at (1) and (2) and implied at (4) (b), can stand as the founda-
tion of Auriols support of the truth-to-omnitemporality claim, and therefore
(given Auriols ideas on modality) of the expectative truthconative necessity
claim.
Ockham (see 7.2.1 below) of the revision of extrinsic (future-dependent) facts about the
past; he is simply weighing alternatives. His approach is thus generally in line with the
interpretation of ponere in esse which I categorize as i(3)(a), although his use of the actual
term suggests interpretation ii (see 8.3 and 8.4 below).
274 Scriptum i, d. 38, a. 3 [Schabel 1995, p. 128, ll. 871873]: Ergo, cum non inveniatur instans in
quo possit mutari propositio de futuro a veritate in falsitatem, necessario immutabiliter
erit vera, si aliquo modo ponatur vera.
275 Scriptum i, d. 38, a. 3 [Schabel 1995, p. 130, ll. 914915]: Ex hiis ergo demonstrative sequitur
quod omnia futura immutabiliter evenient, si propositio de futuro determinate sit vera.
276 Auriol goes so far as to argue that necessity and immutability are conceptually indis-
tinguishable. The arguments he brings to bear in support of this surprising thesis are,
however, little more than bare assertions tricked out with scholastic terminological arma-
ture; see, e.g., Scriptum i d. 8, q. 2, a. 1 [ed. Buytaert, vol. 2, pp. 934935].
277 For a similar objection to the Hellenistic Master Argument, see Appendix, A1.21.
6.2.3 A Linear Model for Auriols System

The argument reviewed in the previous section is of course intended as a reduc-
tio. Auriol is not genuinely arguing for determinism, but for a form of libertar-
ianism. Since it is insane (dementissimum) to concede that all future events
are inevitable, expectative truth must yield: Hence, neither the [proposition]
Antichrist will be nor the [proposition] Antichrist will not be is true, although
the disjunction Antichrist will be or will not be [is true].278 Auriol expands
on the insanity of universal inevitability in d. 39, a. 2 [Schabel 1995, p. 171,
l. 485p. 173, l. 527], making the claim that conative contingency is per se notum.
We thus have a system with truth-value gaps. How best to represent this? In
the Wylton Scope Analysis, the truth operator could be treated as equivalent
to a necessity operator; but Auriol, who was influenced by Wylton,279 seems
to be arguing for a more radical break than Wylton had countenanced. Recall
for example that Wylton, though denying what Auriol would call expectative
truth, nevertheless found a (perhaps standardly Boethian) way to secure divine
foreknowledge, while Auriol denies it. Nevertheless, Auriols God has indis-
tant epistemic access to all future contingents; hence there is a sense in which
such contingents timelessly obtain. Auriol, in fact, seems to want it somehow
not to be the case at any (tn) that any future contingent (tm>n) obtains, although
for all (tm<n), (tn)[(tm<n)] obtains. He expresses this idea while explaining the
causal relationship between the actuality of a future contingent (roughly, its
truth-maker) and its determination (roughly, its truth):
The actuality, which gives determination to the contingent, can be re-

ferred to every preceding instant which is distant from that actuality in
a prior [direction], or to every succeeding instant which is distant in
a posterior [direction]. The actuality therefore gives determination to
the contingent in any instant following the actuality, although it is not in
those instants; hence, it is always determinately true that this actuality
was. However, it does not give [the contingent] determination for any
preceding instant; hence, it is never determinately true that it will be.
For the determination given by the actuality to the contingent is carried
forward to subsequent instants, but not to preceding instants; the reason
278 Scriptum i, d. 38, a. 3 [Schabel 1995, p. 130, l. 925p. 131, l. 930]: Unde immutabiliter ita
eveniet et idem potest concludi de omni futuro; igitur omnia futura immutabilia sunt et
evitari non possunt. Hoc autem dicere dementissimum est, ergo et illud unde sequitur,
scilicet quod aliqua propositio de futuro sit vera. Unde ista non est vera: Antichristus erit,
nec etiam ista: Antichristus non erit, sed bene disiunctiva: Antichristus erit vel non erit.
279 See Schabel 2000: 63, 7374.
132 chapter 1
is that the actuality, with respect to future [instants] that follow, places
the contingent beyond its own causes, and hence it does not remain
within [the power of] anythings causality, nor can an active potency
affect it. Conversely, however, in all instants preceding [the actuality], the
actuality leaves the contingent under the causality and potency of its own
principal causes (principiorum); these latter, however, are ad utrumlibet
and indeterminate, and thus the determination, having its origin from the
actuality, cannot be transferred to the instants preceding [it].280
A first try at representing Auriols model might therefore be a non-branching

timeline in which Dummetts truth-value links can be established only in
one direction. That is, the alethic universal relation has been replaced by a
relation in which there is, at any point in time, a complete inventory of facts
about prior times, but in which there are no facts about subsequent times.
Syntactically, (tn) (tm)[(tn)] has been replaced by (tn) (tmn)[(tn)].281
This does not disallow expressions of the form (t0)[(tn>0)], but it means they
cannot be deduced from the mere fact, indistantly available to God, that (tn>0).
This may be problematic for various logical purposes, but it at least establishes
that, while there are matters of fact about all past contingents, there are no
automatic matters of fact about future contingents. Combined with Auriols
theory of divine indistant knowledge of futures, the new rule yields a model
that looks like Fig. 8:
280 Scriptum i, d. 38, a. 3 [Schabel 1995, p. 132, l. 966p. 133, l. 980]: Actualitas autem, que dat
contingenti determinationem, potest referri ad omne instans precedens et distans in ante,
vel ad omne instans succedens et distans per posterius ab illa actualitate. Dat ergo actu-
alitas determinationem contingenti in quolibet instanti sequente actualitatem, quamvis
non sit in illis instantibus; unde semper est determinate verum quod talis actualitas fuit.
Non dat autem sibi determinationem pro aliquo instanti precedente; unde numquam est
determinate verum quod erit. Trahitur enim determinatio quam dat actualitas contin-
genti ad instantia subsequentia, non autem ad instantia precedentia, cuius ratio est quia
actualitas respectu futurorum sequentium ponit contingens extra suas causas; unde non
remanet infra causalitatem alicuius, nec cadere potest super ipsum activa potentia. Econ-
verso autem, in omnibus instantibus que precedent, relinquit actualitas contingens infra
causalitatem et potentiam suorum principiorum; illa autem sunt ad utrumlibet et inde-
terminata, et per consequens determinatio, ortum habens ab actualitate, trahi non potest
ad instantia que precedunt.
281 Note the lack of history subscripts; cf. the formula corresponding to the universal rela-
tion in the right-branching system, (tn[]) (tm[]) [(tn[])] (see 4.5 above). The for-
mula here is a modified form of the non-branching or Diodorean axiom discussed in
Appendix, A1.02.
figure 8 An initial model of Auriols world-picture. Conative and alethic modality run in
opposite directions.
The model seems to function as advertised. The dotted gray lines coming
in at an angle represent the spooky, indistant knowledge God has of events
which are, for us, timed. The actuality of a state of affairs (tn) licenses the
present-tense proposition, made at (tn), that , and any past-tense proposi-
tions asserted at any (tmn) asserting that (tn) (i.e., any propositions of the
form (tmn)[(tn)]), but does not license expectative propositions of the form
(tm<n)[(tn)]. Thus although the actuality of Socrates sitting at (t)/(t+2) is
known indistantly to God, nevertheless (t0)[(t)S] cannot be deduced from it;
such a proposition is neither true nor false. Consequently, Socrates is still free at
(t)/(t0) to keep standing at (t)/(t+2). By contrast, [(t)S] is a fact epistemically
available to God and creature from (t0); hence (t0)[(t)S] can be assigned the
truth-value of T. Auriols explicit exception to the general prohibition of expec-
tative truth, namely tautological disjunctions of the form ( ),282 must be
accommodated on an ad hoc basis, i.e., by the addition to the system of some
such axiom as (tn) (tm) plus whatever special derivational rules are required
to ensure that no contradictions are conatively (or otherwise) possible. The
diagram also represents the flat, actualist relationship of God to creation (on
which more below): no counterfactual sets of events are represented, as there
is only a single timeline.
In evaluating this model for its adequacy as a representation of Auriols
ideas, it is important to remember what the denial of expectative truth is sup-
posed to accomplish: by stipulating that there is alethic accessibility only to
present- and past-tense states of affairs, we (somehow) guarantee creaturely
conative freedom going forward. The mere formal inaccessibility of (t) to (t) is
282 See Scriptum i, d. 38, a. 3 [Schabel 1995, p. 131, l. 930, and p. 133, ll. 987988].
134 chapter 1
supposed to grant Socrates the current freedom to keep standing at (t) if he so

chooses. Alternative futures, as represented in the standard Boethian forward-
branching model, are thus avoided here: the approach to the representation of
conative contingency is formal and minimalist, with a formal lack of truth act-
ing as the guarantor of the intuitive or pretheoretical presence of alternatives.
Whether or not this kind of approach is formally viable, it sits rather uneasily
with the language Auriol uses when describing contingency, which he does at
some length in the process of establishing its status as per se notum in Distinc-
tion 39. In this discussion, the traditional Peripatetic litany of moral disaster
plays a prominent role: if there is no contingency, then all counsel, efforts,
punishments, and persuasions to do good, and almost all political activities,
would be superfluous. Auriol reminds us that all effort and counsel assumes
that [the thing or event] can happen either way; moreover, he notes, pun-
ishing and rewarding assumes that [the thing or event] could have turned out
otherwise.283 He denies that these considerations can play a role in proving the
existence of contingency, which is epistemically primitive and thus stands in no
need of proof, but he clearly regards them as the sort of thing for which con-
tingency is legitimately taken as a foundation. Given this salient concern with
liberty of indifference, it might be advisable to articulate a somewhat more
complex model for Auriols system, one which displays the conceptual space
these alternatives inhabit, thus bringing Auriols vision in harmony with the
broad outlines of the Boethian tradition out of which it develops and to which
it is a response. Such a model is developed in the next section.
6.2.4 A Multiple-Time-Structure Model for Auriols System

In order to do better justice to the complexity of Auriols vision, we can assume
a simplified version of the supervaluation model developed by Thomason
(see Fig. 9, next page).284 This alternative construal of Auriols model can be
visualized as a rather complex version of an A(mr) world that has been allowed
to run to its completion. It consists of multiple time-structures, each of which
283 Scriptum i, d. 39, a. 2 [Schabel 1995, p. 173, ll. 511516]: Preterea, si a posteriori probaretur
contingentia actuum humanorum, hoc esset quia superflueret consilium, sollicitudo,
pene, et persuasio ad bonum, et pene totum negotium politicum; istud autem est minus
notum quam contingentia ipsa, omnis enim sollicitus et consilians supponit quod potest
contingere ad utrumlibet, hoc vel illud; puniens quoque et premians supponunt quod
potuit aliter evenire
284 For supervaluation semantics, see van Fraassen 1966; for its use as a tool in analyzing
the truth-status of future contingents, see Thomason 1970; for a particular application of
Thomasons analysis to the theory of Peter Auriol, see Normore 1985: 1113.
figure 9 The world according to Auriol. The diagrams are shown rising from earlier to later, to
remain faithful to the stack metaphor in the text. Truth is time-structure-
dependent. While time-structure : (t)S is neither true nor false, time-structure :
(t)S is true; the same disambiguation pertains to (t)S at time-structure and time-
structure respectively. God has indistant knowledge of each time-structure, but
there are no truths in about the disambiguation that takes place in ; likewise for
and ; and so (according to Auriol) there is no threat of determinism
136 chapter 1
distinguishes between real and unreal histories; each time-structure privileges

a single history up to a specific point and all histories leading from that point.
In each time-structure, branch attrition has reduced some ontologically live
options of the previous time-structures to counterfactual status. Each time-
structure has a unique and distinct real branching point; in Fig. 9, I give each
time-structure the same Greek index as its real branching point. The set of
time-structures is an ordered stack of instants constituting, as a whole, the
real and unique history of the world.285 Note that Fig. 9 represents, along the
bottom of each time-structure, the moving nunc. That is, the diagram rep-
resents a spatialization of a temporal process: in the bottom time-structure,
now is (t); in the middle, it has moved to (t); at the top, to (t). Nevertheless
the entire set of time-structures is timelessly available for God to know indis-
tantly, prescinding from past, present, and future.286
Each time-structure is as modally complex as in the Boethian model; but,
as in the Wylton Scope Analysis, modality is used to calculate truth-value.
Necessity maps to T, impossibility to F, and contingency to U (where U means
neither true nor false):
V[Time-structure N: (tm) ] = T just in case V[Time-structure N: (tn) (tm) ] = T

V[Time-structure N: (tm) ] = F just in case V[Time-structure N: (tn) (tm) ] = T
V[Time-structure N: (tm) ] = U just in case V[Time-structure N: (tn) (tm) ] = T
285 J.J.C. Smart, in an amusing paraphrase of what he imagines to be Storrs McCalls theory of
time, produces a similar image:
We must suppose a vast multiplicity of universes, one for each value of t. Think of
a universe with branches after t but none before t as a card with a shrub drawn on it.
Then McCalls picture suggests to me that there is a super-universe which is like a pack of
continuum-many cards, one above the other, cards higher in the pack portraying a longer
unbranched trunk than those lower in the pack.
smart 1980: 7
286 Like all models that present divine cognition as somehow atemporal, Auriols model
seems to lend itself to an interpretation according to the B-series. But Auriol does not
endorse such an approach: rather, as so often, we find a B-series for God / A-series for
creatures approach, with a movable now proceeding through the spatialized model. For
example, in describing Gods indistant knowledge, Auriol often uses language suggesting
some more than indexical distinction between the actual and the modally or temporally
distal. Specifically, he makes frequent use of the concept of positing-in-being in sense ii
(see 8.4): God, Auriol insists, knows things quo posito in actu or in esse. (Both in esse and
in actu appear throughout dd. 3839; in actu is used slightly more often than in esse. See,
N, m, and n are metavariables standing for Greek (B-/C-series) indices. Cru-

cially, while all the alethic and conative relations obtaining in the Boethian
model obtain within every time-structure in this model, the relation linking
different time-structures is analogous to the limited alethic relation in the non-
branching model: there are facts of the matter in time-structure N about all
time-structures MN, but not about any subsequent ones. The latter clause pre-
cludes expectative truth; the former allows the result, insisted upon by Auriol,
that past predictions about future contingents are not rendered true in ret-
rospect by being confirmed in actual fact, but remain neither true nor false.
Consider the prediction, made at (t) (that is, from within time-structure ) that
Socrates will sit at (t). The truth-value of this prediction is U. One might assume
that this prediction has become true when now is time-structure ; after all,
in the latter time-structure, all live paths leading from (t) lead to world-states
in which Socrates is sitting at (t). But if we insist that all propositions be eval-
uated from within their own proper time-structures, we note that nothing has
changed or could change with respect to the truth-value of [Time-structure :
(t)S]; hence the truth-value of [Time-structure : [Time-structure : (t)S]] is
U, neither true nor false, as well.
Note that this model accords with Auriols formulation of the relation of
actuality to present, future, and past truth. In each time-structure, we sim-
ply assign official truth-values according to the scheme above. The assignment
to a given proposition of a determinate truth-value, as opposed to the status
neither true nor false, depends on whether or not both sides of the contra-
diction are represented in the live branches conatively accessible to the real
branching point, irrespective of whether they predate or postdate the time
of utterance (i.e., the real branching point). For example, at instant (t), any
state-descriptions pertaining to (t) correspond to actualities in the sense that
the moving nunc has already disposed of modal alternatives through branch
attrition; hence the facts on the ground at (t) stand as truth-makers for any
accurate claims made at (t) about (t). The actuality of Socrates sitting, how-
ever, does not obtain until instant (t); the global fact that Socrates sits in instant
(t) is unavailable to instant (t), and so cannot stand as truth-maker for the
prediction Socrates will sit in instant (t) made from within time-structure
. On the other hand, even at instant (t), (t)(S S) is true; it is necessary,
so already actual, so true. (Of course no state of affairs at (t) is strictly actual
before that instant; but the principia of tautologies can be supposed to be glob-
e.g., Scriptum, d. 38, a. 1 [Schabel 1995, p. 108, ll. 438, 447], in which the term is used to
explain Gods status as the eminens similitudo [ futuri] actualitatis.)
138 chapter 1
ally and timelessly in effect, and so available at any instant with respect to any
other instant.) Indeed, a minor but distinct advantage of this model over the
non-branching model is that no ad hoc provision need be made for Auriols
exemption of tautologies from his otherwise general prohibition of expecta-
tive truth.
Gods indistant knowledge of each instant, including future instants, is rep-
resented by His direct knowledge of each time-structure. Supposing once more
that now is time-structure , with real branching point (t[AD]), and that
Socrates will sit tomorrow is (t)S or (t+1)S; God does not know this is true,
since it is not currently (Auriol-)true. Indeed, He does not know whether or not
Socrates will sit tomorrow, since knowing this would entail that there was, in
time-structure , a fixed fact of the matter on this subject, and there is no such
fact; hence, as Schabel 2000: 123 points out, the proposition God knows that
Socrates will sit tomorrow is actually false rather than merely indeterminate.
God does, however, indistantly know that Socrates sits at the time in which he
in fact sits, since He has indistant knowledge of time-structure and all its con-
tents.287
6.2.5 Positioning Auriols System Vis--Vis the Boethian and Damianic

Traditions
Auriols system can be seen, like Aquinas and Scotus, as a synthesis of the tradi-
tions of Boethian logical compatibilism and Damianic divine modal pleroma.
Neither half of this formula is obvious; I discuss each in turn.
6.2.5.1 The Boethian Turn

As we have seen, Auriol (along with the entire scholastic tradition) accepts
the existence of creaturely conative contingency. Indeed, the high value he
places on this kind of contingency motivates his reductio truth-to-necessity
argument, which in turn motivates his denial of expectative truth. We crea-
tures, therefore, operate according to an incompatibilist libertarian framework:
strong contingency is a necessary (and existent) prerequisite of our free and
morally responsible action. Looked at more closely, however, Auriols creaturely
incompatibilism is less impressive than it seems. After all, in his model there
are ultimately matters of fact about what is, to us, the future. To be sure, there
is no access to these facts infra lineam successionis, either for us or for God. But
the future is nevertheless objectively fixed, and God knows everything about
287 This feature of Auriols model is seriously misrepresented by Walter Chatton; see 10.1.4.1
and 10.1.4.5.
it; all we need do is find logically careful ways of saying this, ways that reflect
both the limits of creaturely understanding and the fragmented structure of
timed reality. Hence, despite the considerations aired in 6.2.36.2.4 above,
a jaundiced eye might view the model as a conceptually top-heavy, unneces-
sarily complex version of a closed-future, A(a) model, not essentially different
from that of Boethius.
6.2.5.2 The Damianic Aspect

The second, Damianic component emerges from a consideration of the devices
Auriol constructs in order to bridge the gulf separating divine perfection and
necessity from creaturely fallibility and contingency. The two expedients that
are relevant in this context are, first, Auriols distinction between Gods intrinsic
and extrinsic willing, and second, his multi-stage account of predestination
and reprobation.
6.2.5.2.1 Intrinsic and Extrinsic Willing

Simplifying and modifying Scotus distinction between Gods complacent and
efficacious will, Auriol distinguishes between two kinds of willing in God:
intrinsic willing, a function which is essential to God, and extrinsic willing, a
function by which God connects to created being.288 As Auriol adheres to the
Avicennian conception of God as necesse esse, he thinks that everything that is
possibly in God is necessarily in God.289 It follows, in order to avoid a pernicious
(because restrictive) kind of divine necessitarianism, that the kind of willing
that pertains strictly to God must be an all-embracing (but non-contradictory)
affirmation of both sides of every contradiction. Indeed, God intrinsically wills,
from eternity, merely either to create or not to create the world.290 Nonetheless
contingency, which as we have seen is per se notum for Auriol, enters the world
through Gods extrinsic willing. Although he is anything but clear about the
288 See Halverson 1998: 6263 for the relationship between Scotus and Auriol on this point.
On Auriols doctrine of divine extrinsic and intrinsic willing in general, see Schabel 2000:
124132.
289 Scriptum i, d. 39, a. 2 [Schabel 1995, p. 175, ll. 568570]: [Q]uicquid est possibile in Deo est
de necessitate in Eo, nam in necesse esse, quicquid est possibile est necessarium.
290 Scriptum i, d. 39, a. 2 [Schabel 1995, p. 175, ll. 570572]: [C]onstat autem quod Deus potest
complacere et velle non entitatem mundi, saltem potuit ab eterno, alioquin de necessitate
mundum fecisset.
The idea that Gods intrinsic will embraces both sides of every contradiction has an
obvious affinity to Scotus addition of disjunctive attributes to the transcendentals; see
Scotus, Ordinatio i d. 38 pt. 2d. 39 qq. 15, n. 13 [Vat. vol. 6, pp. 414415].
140 chapter 1
details of this process, Auriol presents it as resulting from the modal indiffer-
ence of Gods intrinsic willing:
Contingency thus arises, because since Gods will is indeterminate toward

both sides of a contradiction, His operation, by which He comes into
contact with creatures, is wholly contingent, because there is nothing in
God by which He is determined toward doing or not doing. But it is in
His power either to do or not to do, except that He may not intrinsically
determine Himself, because no such intrinsic determination is possible
without it being necessary, because it is the same as God.291
Tr. schabel, in schabel 2000: 126, slightly altered
Crudely put, there is a kind of movement from inside to outside God: in God, all
modal alternatives are embraced, while outside of Him disambiguation takes
place. The proper intrinsic object of the divine will is the modal pleroma; the
proper extrinsic objects of the divine will are particulars, including specific
realized halves of every contradiction. Whatever the merits of this idea, its
harmony with the entire Damianic tradition is obvious. The resemblance to
Scotus instants-of-nature theory is particularly striking; hence it should come
as no surprise that in one account of this doctrine Auriol specifically invokes
signs (i.e., Scotistic instants) in which to domicile the distinct kinds of divine
willing.292
6.2.5.2.2 General Election

Auriol introduces an innovative account of predestination and reprobation
known as General Election.293 It consists of five or six distinct stages. In the
291 Scriptum i, d. 39, a. 2 [Schabel 1995, p. 180, ll. 672678]: Oritur autem tunc contingentia,
quia cum indeterminata sit voluntas Dei ad utramque partem contradictionis, operatio
Dei per quam attingit creaturas omnino contingens est, quia non est aliquid in Deo per
quod determinetur ad operandum vel non operandum. Sed est in Sua potestate utrumque
et operatur vel non operatur, absque hoc: Quod intrinsece determinet Se, quia nulla
talis intrinseca determinatio est possibilis quin esset necessaria, quia id ipsum quod
Deus.
292 See Petrus Aureoli, Reportatio Parisiensis i, d. 39, q. 1, a. 3 [ed. Nielsen-Schabel, Borghese
123, f. 170vb, quoted and translated in Schabel 2000: 126127].
293 Auriols treatment of this subject (Scriptum i dd. 4041) is edited in Halverson 1993: 295
334; see in particular d. 40, a. 1 [pp. 300301] and d. 41, a. 1 [pp. 324325]. I follow Halverson
1993 and 1998 on the interpretation of this doctrine. The summary of predestination /
reprobation is adapted from Halverson 1993: 21.
first stage, God conditionally wills to save all rational creatures provided that
they do not resist His grace. In the second, a human falls into sin. In the third,
God offers grace to that human. The fourth stage is crucial: if at this point the
human does not offer an obstacle (obex) to grace, then he goes on to perform
meritorious actions (stage five) and God saves him (sixth and final stage). If at
stage four the human does offer an obstacle to grace, God damns him (fifth and
final stage). Auriols intent, similar to Scotus, is to avoid divine necessitation of
predestination or reprobation by constructing a model in which God recog-
nizes, ab aeterno, behavior which can legitimately be attributed to the human
himself. The predestined and the reprobate were not specifically preselected, so
to say, but fall into their respective categories because of their crucial spiritual
behavior at stage four, which constitutes a partial cause of their ultimate fate
(though not a meritorious cause: Auriol is careful to protect himself against
charges of Pelagianism).
6.2.5.3 Auriols Orthogonal Actualism

Both Auriols account of divine willing and his theory of predestination and
reprobation imply an orthogonal, atemporal medium in which God acts and
knows. As with Scotus model, the question arises: does Auriols medium of
divine action operate according to a modal-realist or to an actualist model? In
other words, are there or are there not facts at the first sign, the stage of modal
indeterminacy, about the second sign, the stage of disambiguation? In contrast
to Scotus, the answer seems to be that there are such facts. Gods knowledge of
particular future contingents works through an eminent similitude to Gods
essence of those things, events, or states of affairs. This relation abstracts from
past, present, and future, attaching directly to the phenomena in question.
Unlike divine willing, then, divine knowledge is undivided: from eternity, God
knows directly what (tenselessly) happens at any moment. Even in the modally
indeterminate first sign of nature, then, Auriols God has no genuine epistemic
alternatives with respect to what happens in the second sign, although, in
virtue of His cognition of both halves of every contradiction, He has cognitive
or speculative alternatives. What He knows, He in a sense must know. Thus in
contrast to the entire Damian line, and in a way reminiscent of Boethius and
Abelard, Auriol treats the divine modal pleroma as merely formal in character.
God is described as radically free, but His freedom does not extend to an
epistemic liberty of indifference except in a way that implies no ontological
weight to alternative ways the world can be.
142 chapter 1
6.2.6 Auriols Compatibilism

The analysis in the immediately preceding section, according to which Auriol
can be read as a kind of logical compatibilist, is fully in harmony with other
aspects of Auriols analysis of divine action. For example, Russell Friedman has
shown that Auriol has what might today count as a compatibilist definition of
divine freedom with respect to the specific question of whether God is free to
emanate the Holy Spirit.294 Auriols basic approach to this matter is that God is
free to emanate the Spirit, even though that emanation is metaphysically (i.e.,
in the strongest sense) necessary. Auriol establishes this result by stipulating
that the criterion of freedom, in this context, is not the existence of live alterna-
tives for divine action but rather the good pleasure and delight (complacentia
et delectatio) which He takes in acting.295 Auriol also stresses that what ensures
294 Friedman presented his account of Auriols compatibilist stance on this issue in a talk
given at the SIEPM conference in Freising, Germany, on August 21, 2012.
295 Auriol actually makes a case for treating complacentia as the criterion of freedom in
general, i.e., not just for divine action:
In illo consistit formaliter ratio libertatis, quo solo posito et omni alio dempto, manet
libertas, et quo dempto et omni alio posito, removetur libertas. Sed ita est de compla-
centia. Remota enim contingentia potentiae circa actum, utpote quia non possit actum
suspendere, adhuc remanet libertas si adsit complacentia, ut patet quod Deus liberrime
diligit se, quia complacenter quamvis immutabiliter; et Spiritus Sanctus emanat liber-
rime quia per modum complacentiae, quamvis emanet necessitate naturae. Posita autem
contingentia et remota complacentia, nullo modo est libertas, ut patet in agentibus nat-
uralibus, in quibus est contingentia absque libertate. Igitur ratio libertatis consistit in
complacentia.
Scriptum i, d. 1, sect. 8, a. 3, ed. buytaert, vol. 1, pp. 450451
The definition of freedom consists formally in that which, if it alone is posited and
everything else excluded, freedom remains, and which, if it is excluded and anything
else is posited, freedom is removed. But this is how matters stand with good pleasure
(complacentia). For, if the contingency of a power with respect to its act is removed, e.g.,
because it cannot refrain from the act, freedom still remains if good pleasure is present. It
is obvious, for example, that God freely loves Himself, since He does so with good pleasure
though immutably; and the Holy Spirit emanates most freely because He does so by way
of good pleasure, although He emanates by necessity of nature. If, however, contingency
is posited and good pleasure is removed, freedom is in no way present, as is obvious in
natural agents, in which there is contingency without freedom. Therefore the definition
of freedom consists in good pleasure.
It is unclear how this apparently quite general definition of freedom is to be reconciled

with Auriols evident concern, throughout dd. 3839, with ad utrumlibet contingency as
divine freedom is not the presence of real alternatives but the condition that
the divine act is performed for its own sake (gratia sui), a condition that is
always fulfilled; moreover, the two criteria are really one.296 Thus for Auriol,
Gods freedom of action is clearly not associated with alternative possibilities
or with anything like a liberty-of-indifference model: the emanation of the Holy
Spirit is a necessary but free act on Gods part.
The difference between divine and creaturely modality can be easily ex-
pressed in terms of the second (multiple-time-structure) model. While there
is a multiplicity of alternative paths into the futurethese are the guaran-
tors of creaturely freedomthere is no alternative stack of time-structures.
The four-dimensional history of the world, created by God, is the only world
God has or can (though freely) will into existence. Auriol draws a contrast here
between his model and that of Duns Scotus: the Subtle Doctor, claims Auriol,
construes God as knowing things only as future rather than, as Auriol himself
argues, as indistant to past, present, and future.297 In a sense this is a miscon-
strual of Scotus, who despite his strictures of Aquinas eternal-present model
allowed for the existence of an atemporal instant of eternity in which God
acts and knows. Still, it must be admitted that Scotus model sets up an A(mr)
model along the orthogonal medium of divine and creaturely action, and Gods
knowledge of creaturely choices must in a sense await the choice of any given
creature from what I have termed instants-of-nature 3A and 3B. In that sense,
Auriols characterization is accurate.
Thus Auriols model may be viewed superficially as a combination of divine
compatibilism and creaturely incompatibilism, orconsidering that the
apparently libertarian character of creaturely agency entails no genuine onto-
logical openness of the futureas a fusion of two types of compatibilist vision,
namely the Boethian brand and a new Auriolian divine compatibilism. In terms
of his combination of model type and theory of truth, then, Auriol, has an
(ultimately) T3A(a) pairing, like Thomas Wylton. As does Wyltons, Auriols
theory of future contingents thus violates the Correspondence Assumption of
2.2and this despite Auriols own explicit reliance on correspondence (see
6.2.2 (4) above).
the touchstone of human freedom. Perhaps creaturely freedom could simply be construed
as needing something over and above the basics, i.e., complacentia plus live alternative
possibilities.
296 Scriptum i, d. 1., sect. 8, a. 3 [ed. Bruyaert, vol. 1, p. 450, ll. 1014]: Liberum enim dicitur
quode est gratia sui Sed solus actus complacentiae est gratia sui; quod patet, quia ultimo
reducitur pro causa omnis actus.
297 See Scriptum i, d. 38, a. 2 [Schabel 1995, p. 115, l. 605p. 116, l. 606].
144 chapter 1
6.2.7 Auriol and the Pattern Arguments

How does Auriols model fare with the pattern arguments? John Can Be Wrong
goes through in a manner analogous to that of the standard Boethian right-
branching model: creaturely beliefs have an effectively open-sentence struc-
ture, as in the Wylton Scope Analysis, and it is thus unproblematically possible
for such a belief to turn out to have been wrong. In terms of the stack model as
it is shown in Fig. 9, a prediction such as [Time-structure : (t)S]] could easily
turn out to be wrong, as is verified in time-structure .
Both Divine Foreknowledge Necessitates and God Can Be Wrong, in their
classic forms, rely on the coherence of the idea that Gods knowledge can be
located in time so as to be past-necessitated. Auriol does not directly address
these arguments in this form, but given his approach to divine foreknowl-
edge, he could easily concede the validity of both arguments while denying
their antecedents: Gods knowledge, after all, is not locatable in time and
thus not subject to past-necessitation. If a different kind of necessity is under
discussionmetaphysical or at any rate non-temporalthen Auriols entire
approach to the problem of future contingents can be taken as a radical, or
at least radical-seeming, solution to both problems. The various mechanisms
Auriol develops to bridge the divide between God and man, described above,
are after all an attempt to reconcile, with dubious success, a necessitarian
and compatibilist conception of divine agency with a (would-be) libertar-
ian and incompatibilist conception of human agency. The net result is that
divine modality and creaturely modality, though perhaps somehow overlap-
ping with respect to issues of predestination and reprobation, are different
in kind and thus subject to different canons of reasoning with respect to the
evaluation of free action. This difference is especially easy to see in the case
of the second, stack model of Auriols system: creaturely free choice is rep-
resented as ontologically strong within every time-structure, and the modal
stability of the entire model is not a fact that can be inscribed within that time-
structure.
7 The System(s) of William Ockham
The response of William Ockham (c. 1288c. 1348) to the problem of fu-
ture contingents represents another major influence on Chatton. As will be-
come clear, Ockhams solution (if indeed it can be characterized as a solu-
tion, properly speaking) places him outside the traditions both of modal ple-
roma and of merely formalist analysis. Both because of Ockhams central im-
portance for Chatton in general and because of the curiously ambiguous
character of the Venerable Inceptors doctrine, Ockham deserves his own full
section in this study.
7.1 Determinate Truth and the Mystery of Gods Mysterious

Foreknowledge
Ockhams doctrine of future contingents develops, in part, out of his resistance
(and partial adherence) to the solution of Duns Scotus. Like Wylton, and for
similar reasons, Ockham rejects both synchronic contingency and the instants-
of-nature model. All contingency requires genuine positability, which in the
case of synchronic alternatives would produce contradiction.298 Moreover, syn-
chronic contingency violates the principle omne quod est, quando est, necesse
est esse, which applies even to God and is commonly accepted by philosophers
and theologians.299 As for instants of nature, they can be neither mind-internal
nor mind-external; if they are mind-internal, then they are mind-dependent,
which is clearly impossible, while if they are mind-external, then they are either
substances or accidents, both of which assumptions lead to various conceptual
absurdities.300
However, despite his rejection of some of Scotus central doctrines, Ock-
hams treatment borrows many ideas from the Subtle Doctor. Like Scotus, Ock-
ham believes that all true future-tense propositions are determinately true and
that some of those determinately true futures are contingent:
I say that one part [of the contradiction] is now determinately true, in
such a way that it is not false, since God wills that one part be true and
that the other be false. Nevertheless He wills contingently, and therefore
He can not will the part [that He in fact wills], and He can will the other
part, just as the other part can take place.301
For Ockham, then, modality, including the kind of contingency that functions
as a guarantor of divine and creaturely freedom, is clearly separate from deter-
minacy: as with Aquinas and Scotus, and in contrast to the Boethian tradition
as continued by Abelard, determinate is a modifier whose function is chiefly
298 Ordinatio i, d. 38, q.u. [OTh vol. 4, p. 578, ll. 1015].

299 Ordinatio i, d. 38, q.u. [OTh vol. 4, p. 578, l. 20p. 579, l. 9].
300 Expositio in librum Praedicamentorum Aristotelis, ch. 18, 5 [OPh vol. 2, p. 328].
301 Tractatus de praedestinatione, q. 1 [OPh vol. 2, p. 518, ll. 295298]: Dico quod una pars
nunc determinate est vera, ita quod non falsa, quia Deus vult unam partem esse veram
et aliam esse falsam. Tamen contingenter vult, et ideo potest non velle illam partem, et
partem aliam potest velle, sicut pars alia potest evenire.
146 chapter 1
emphatic. No future-tense propositions lack a truth-value; Aristotle claimed

otherwise, Ockham maintains, but faith demands that we attribute knowledge,
properly understood, to God, and that knowledge implies determinate truth-
values for all propositions.302 Ockham thus clearly endorses both T2 and the
associated doctrine of determinate, certain, infallible, immutable, and neces-
sary knowledge with respect to one part of a contradiction.303
Under these circumstances it is puzzling that Ockham worries over the
question of how God can possibly have such knowledge. And worry he does:
It must indubitably be held that God knows all future contingents with
certainty, in such a way that He certainly knows which part of any con-
tradiction will be true and which false But it is difficult to see how He
knows these [things], as one part is not more determined to truth than
the other [part].304

Therefore I say that it is impossible to express clearly the way in which
God knows future contingents.305
The context of these passages makes it clear that it is the contingency of these
determinate futures that makes them difficult of epistemic access. But after
all, from Boethius on, we have been shown how future truth, Gods knowledge
of future truth, and the contingency of futures, can all live happily together.
302 See the fifth and sixth assumptions in Tractatus de praedestinatione q. 1 [OPh vol. 2,
p. 516, ll. 229245]. Note that Ockham attributes to Aristotle the belief that God knows
neither side of the contradiction more than the other. Ockham explicitly connects the
requirements for Gods foreknowledge with an insistence on determinate truth-values for
all futures in Tractatus, q. 2 [OPh vol. 2, p. 520, ll. 1617, and p. 521, ll. 2830, 3941].
303 Tractatus, q. 2 [OPh vol. 2, p. 520, ll. 35]: Utrum Deus respectu omnium futurorum con-
tingentium habeat notitiam determinatam, certam, infallibilem, immutabilem et neces-
sariam respectu unius partis contradictionis.
304 Tractatus, q. 1 [OPh vol. 2, p. 516, ll. 239241, 244245]: [Q]uod indubitanter est tenendum
quod Deus certitudinaliter scit omnia futura contingentia, ita quod certitudinaliter scit
quae pars contradictionis erit vera et quae falsa Sed difficile est videre quomodo haec
scit, cum una pars non plus determinetur ad veritatem quam alia.
305 Tractatus, q. 1 [OPh vol. 2, p. 517, ll. 277278]: Ideo dico quod impossibile est clare
exprimere modum quo Deus scit futura contingentia. An even stronger confession of
ignorance can be found in the Ordinatio, d. 38, q. u. [OTh vol. 4, p. 583, l. 21p. 584, l. 2]:
Ideo dico ad quaestionem quod indubitanter est tenendum quod Deus certitudinaliter
et evidenter scit omnia futura contingentia. Sed hoc evidenter declarare et modum quod
scit omnia futura contingentia exprimere est impossibile omni intellectu pro statu isto.
Ockhams model seems to combine a stable future with a strict adherence

to bivalence, and thus to fall squarely in the Boethian tradition of logical
compatibilism. What, then, is the nature of the difficulty?
The question is rendered the more mysterious by the fact that Ockham has
a workable, though patchily presented, theory of tensed truth in the context of
his supposition theory.306 According to Ockhams version of supposition the-
ory, the truth-conditions for singular propositions of the normal S(ubject)
P(redicate) form are in general as follows: such a proposition is true just in case
the S term supposits for the same thing that the P term supposits for.307 In deal-
ing with tensed and modal propositions, in which the referent of one or both
of the terms may not presently exist (as in Socrates was wise, The Antichrist
will be, or Some woman may one day be U.S. President), Ockham adopts an
approach that falls within the traditional context of ampliated supposition.
Such propositions do not lack truth-conditions; supposition is a relation that
can obtain between a term and a past, future, or merely possible object. As Ock-
ham puts it:
[W]here the proposition concerns the past, the assertion is that the prop-
osition in which that predicate (under its proper form) is predicated of
that for which the subject supposits (or of the pronoun referring to that
thing) was once true. If the proposition concerns the future the assertion
is that the relevant proposition will be true. If the proposition concerns
the possible the assertion is that the relevant proposition is possible, and
similarly in the case of propositions that are necessary, impossible, per se,
per accidens and so on for the other modalities.308
Tr. loux, p. 205
306 See Dutilh Novaes 2011 for a good (and fairly short) historical overview of medieval
supposition theory. Spade 2002: 243328 provides a more in-depth discussion.
307 Summa logicae, pars ii, c. 2 [OPh vol. 1, p. 249, l. 8p. 250, l. 17]: [A]d veritatem talis proposi-
tionis singularis quae non aequivalet multis propositionibus sufficit et requiritur quod
subiectum et praedicatum supponant pro eodem. Et ideo si in ista hic est angelus subiec-
tum et praedicatum supponant pro eodem, proposition erit vera.
308 Summa logicae, pars. i, c. 72 [OPh vol. 1, p. 216, ll. 6171]: Quod est sic intelligendum:
non quod supponat pro se vel pro conceptu, sed quod per talem propositionem deno-
tatur quod propositio in qua ipsummet praedicatum sub propria forma, hoc est ipsummet
et non aliud, praedicatur de illo pro quo subiectum supponit, vel de pronomine demon-
strante illud praecise pro quo subiectum supponit, fuit vera, si talis propositio sit de prae-
terito; vel quod erit vera, si talis propositio sit de futuro; vel quod sit possibilis, si prima
propositio sit de possibili; vel necessaria, si prima propositio sit de necessario; vel impos-
sibilis, si prima propositio sit de impossibili; vel per se, si prima propositio sit de per se;
148 chapter 1
This passage commits Ockham to the following truth-clauses (among oth-

ers):
(1) S is possibly P is true just in case S is P is possibly true

(2) S was P is true just in case S is P was true
(3) S will be P is true just in case S is P will be true
There is present truth about propositions containing a future-tense opera-

tor, then, because there is some trans-temporal matter of fact regarding the
co-suppositional relations of (merely future) subject and predicate terms.
Whether or not the availability of such unreal or nonactual objects violates
Ockhams commitment to ontological parsimony (opinions vary on this
point),309 it certainly guarantees that the truth-value links are alive and well
in Ockhams system. The modal field seems stable, and trans-temporal truth,
corresponding to trans-temporal matter of fact, should therefore be guaran-
teed.
7.2 Ockhams Open Future

If the connections between world-times are robust enough to guarantee cross-
temporal truth, why should God have a problem knowing the truth of any
futures at all? The answer is that Ockhamist truth, though determinate, does
not correspond to an ontologically stable world-picture. In order to clarify
this aspect of Ockhams thought, let us examine the role that tense analysis
plays in his exposition. When we do so, the contours of a fascinatingly disin-
genuous argument emerge, an argument which, among other things, clarifies
Ockhams relationship to Scotus, specifically his movement away from Scotus
while retaining much of the conceptual structure and tools of his predeces-
sors model. Furthermore, the argument strongly suggests the influence of Peter
Auriol, though Ockham puts the tools he has inherited from Auriol to a very dif-
ferent use.
vel per accidens, si prima propositio sit de per accidens. Et sic de aliis propositionibus
modalibus.
309 Adams 1987: 400401 devotes some attention to this problem and develops the truth-
clauses presented in (1)(3) in response to parsimony worries; Panaccio 1999: 56 points
out that the unreal entities involved in ampliated supposition are still individuals rather
than abstractions and thus do not constitute a violation of Ockhams nominalism.
7.2.1 Ockhams Use of the Future-Dependency Escape Clause

The first example of tense analysis in the Tractatus is Ockhams famous future-
dependency escape clause, presented in the third and fourth of the nine as-
sumptions (suppositiones) with which Ockham undergirds his analysis in
Question 1. In these early passages, in accordance with a tradition dating back
at least to the twelfth century (see 4.5.4 above), the clause secures a defense
against the past-necessitation of future truth. First comes the general principle
of future-dependent propositions:
Third assumption: that some propositions are about the present both
vocally and really (secundum vocem et secundum rem), and in such [prop-
ositions] it is universally true that every true present-tense proposition
has a [corresponding] necessary past-tense [proposition], such as these:
Socrates is sitting, Socrates is walking, Socrates is just, and so forth.
Other propositions are about the present only vocally, and are equally
about the future, since their truth depends on the truth of propositions
about the future; and in such [propositions] the rule [of corresponding
necessary past-tense propositions] is not true.310
Next, in accordance with his approach throughout the Tractatus, Ockham

treats propositions about predestination and reprobation as unproblematic
instances of future-dependent propositions that are only superficially about
the present:
Fourth assumption: that all propositions in these matters [i.e., predesti-

nation and reprobation], although they may be vocally about the present
or the past, are nevertheless equally about the future, since their truth
depends on the truth of propositions that are formally about the future.
But it follows from the third assumption that such [propositions] do not
have [corresponding] necessary past-tense proposition[s], but only con-
tingent [ones], just as the present-tense [proposition] is contingent.311
310 Tractatus, q. 1 [OPh vol. 2, p. 515, ll. 208216]: Tertia suppositio: quod aliquae sunt propo-
sitiones de praesenti secundum vocem et secundum rem, et in talibus est universaliter
verum quod omnis propositio de praesenti vera habet aliquam de praeterito necessariam,
sicut tales: Sortes sedet, Sortes ambulat, Sortes est iustus, et huiusmodi. Aliquae sunt
propositiones de praesenti tantum secundum vocem et sunt aequivalenter de futuro, quia
earum veritas dependet ex veritate propositionum de futuro; et in talibus non est ista reg-
ula vera quod omnis propositio vera de praesenti habet aliquam de praeterito necessariam
.
311 Tractatus, q. 1 [OPh vol. 2, p. 515, ll. 221228]: Quarta suppositio: quod omnes proposi-
150 chapter 1
This analysis guarantees that the predestined ones ability to commit final
impenitence and the reprobate ones ability to make a good end are on the
same footing as Socrates morally neutral freedom to sit or refrain from sitting
tomorrow.
As we have seen, this use of tense analysis is fully consistent with the
standard right-branching Boethian model that assumes a stable TRL: from
some future-tense proposition (t+1[TRL]), true extrinsically of node (t-1[TRL])
(i.e., (t-1[TRL])[(t+1[TRL])]), we may infer (t0[TRL]) (t-1) [(t+1[TRL])] but not
(t0[TRL]) (t-1) [(t+1)]. This treatment of the future-dependency clause, then,
does not help us to understand how Gods foreknowledge of (t+1[TRL]) might
be incomprehensible to wayfarers.
7.2.2 Ockhams Argument for Strong Counterfactual Capacity: Changing

the Future without Changing God
In Question 2, however, a closely similar piece of tense analysis is put to a
quite different use. The context is Ockhams attempt to parry two apparent
threats to divine immutability posed by two types of contingency. The first type
is statistical contingency. Let us take a proposition such as I am in Rome.
This proposition refers merely to the present; it depends in no way on the
future. Such a proposition may not be true now, but it can be true in the
sense that (assuming I will actually go to Rome next year) it will be true next
year; hence Gods epistemic state can change. Ockham makes short work of
this threat. A temporally indefinite proposition like I am in Rome can be
true at one time and false in another without giving rise to any meaningful
change in a mind cognizing that proposition. An omniscient being can cog-
nize the successive truth and falsity of such a proposition while undergoing
merely extrinsic or Cambridge change; indeed, this is true even of human intel-
lects.312
Ockhams next move is to take note of the fact that propositions like Soc-
rates will sit in instant a have two possible interpretations. In one of them,
the focus is on the temporal operator construed as an indexical: Socrates will
sit in instant a asserts both that instant a is in the real future (hence the
tiones in ista materia, quantumcumque sint vocaliter de praesenti vel de praeterito, sunt
tamen aequivalenter de futuro, quia earum veritas dependet ex veritate propositionum
formaliter de futuro. Sed ex tertia suppositione patet quod tales verae de praesenti non
habent aliquam de praeterito necessariam, sed solum contingentem, sicut illa de prae-
senti est contingens. Ex quibus sequitur quod nulla propositio de praesenti in ista materia
habet aliquam de praeterito necessariam.
312 See Tractatus, q. 2, a. 3 [OPh vol. 2, p. 524, l. 120p. 525, l. 138].
will), and that Socrates timelessly sits in the B-/C-series moment designated
as instant a. Such a proposition, if true, can and will become false at instant
a itself (i.e., when the A-series now coincides with the B-/C-series instant
a) in virtue of the temporal operator. However, this is only a slightly compli-
cated version of the type I am in Rome discussed above: the change from
T(Socrates will sit in instant a) to F(Socrates will sit in instant a) is extrinsic
to, and entails no intrinsic change in, the cognizer.313 The other interpreta-
tion reads Socrates will sit in instant a as a timeless claim about instant a,
i.e., simply as (t[TRL]) S (where instant a is represented by (t)). Such a propo-
sition is fully modally specified and lacks an indexical tense-marker: it is a
timeless truth about instant a, a part of the real future, and cannot undergo
change. Thus far, we have an argument making use of the stability of the
modal field characteristic of the Boethian right-branching model. Crucially,
however, Ockham confuses matters by claiming that such a proposition, so con-
strued, cannot undergo change before instant a (i.e., before what I designate as
(t)):
[With respect to] futures that do not imply anything present or past
it is impossible that God should first know such futures and then not
know them, since it is impossible that, before instant a, God should know
the [proposition] Socrates will sit in a [i.e., the fully specified and non-
indexical (t[TRL]) S] and afterwards not know it. And the reason [for this]
is that, before a, it cannot first be true and afterwards false; but if it be
true before a, it was always true before a, since every proposition that is
simply about the future was always true if it is ever true.314
The emphasis on ante a instans suggests rather surprisingly that there is some
sense in which God can first know the timeless proposition and then not know
it, as long as this alternation happens at instant a or later. But according to the
Boethian right-branching model, the alethic relation is universal: that is, the
contents of instant a are stable not only before but also at and after instant a.315
313 See Tractatus, q. 2, a. 3 [OPh vol. 2, p. 525, ll. 146154].

314 Tractatus q. 2, a. 3 [OPh vol. 2, p. 525, ll. 139146]: [Q]uia quaedam sunt futura quae non
important aliquod praesens vel praeteritum, et in talibus impossibile est quod Deus talia
futura prius sciat et postea non sciat, quia impossibile est quod ante a instans Deus sciat
istam Sortes sedebit in a et postea nesciat eam. Et causa est quia ante a non potest
primo esse vera et postea falsa; sed si sit vera ante a, semper fuit vera ante a, quia omnis
propositio simpliciter de futuro si sit semel vera semper fuit vera.
315 Recall that the inferential rule for universal alethic R is (tn[]) (tm[])(tn[]) (see 4.5
152 chapter 1
Ockham could simply have deleted the ante a phrases and his point would
still have been valid. Why does he include them?
One answer might be that he has taken this principleevery proposition
that is simply about the future was always true if it is ever truefrom Peter
Auriol (see 6.2.2 above for Auriols use of the principle). This suggestion is
speculative, since Ockham does not cite or even allude indirectly to Auriol
in this context; moreover, he could be taking the principle directly from De
Interpretatione ch. 9, 18b911; but it is plausible. As Auriol focuses on the ret-
rospective rather than omnitemporal bestowal of truth by future-tense claims,
so (perhaps) Ockham restricts himself to the same direction. Another possibil-
ity, more interesting and more directly relevant for the structure of Ockhams
argument, is that he is engaging in a curious kind of equivocation. In both
of Ockhams explicit, limitative moves, he is denying that certain instances of
statistical contingency imply real change. As time passes, God can know oth-
erwise with respect to temporally indefinite propositions, but this is merely
Cambridge change; likewise, as time passes and we wayfarers approach (but
do not reach) instant a, the status and propositional contents of instant a do
not thereby change in any sense. But the merely suggested change implied by
the clauses ante a (instans) is, I propose, conative contingency: the implied but
never directly stated ability to change the real contents of some future instant
at the moment when that instant is now.
This ability remains rather obscure, but its general character can be recov-
ered from texts in which its presence is denied. The foregoing quotation is one
example; another comes at the end of the Tractatus in Question 5. In the latter
passage, we are given the warrant for denying the possibility of change in time-
less future contingent propositions before the moment of their instantiation in
the timeline:
[P]ropositions do not change from truth to falsity unless by a change

in things, according to the Philosopher in Categories [ch. 5, 4b911]. But
there is no change in God, nor in Peter, nor in any other thing, because of
which the proposition Peter is predestined is first true and afterwards
false. (I am formulating this as a simple [proposition] about the future,
and [evaluating its status] before blessedness has been conferred.) In like
manner, if the [proposition] you will sit tomorrow is true now, then you
cannot, by any change made in yourself or in anything else, make that
above and Appendix, A2.02). No restriction is placed on n and m; hence the contents of
instant a cannot be changed before, at, or after instant a.
proposition false before tomorrow, in such a way that it would be true to

say: this proposition you will sit tomorrow was formerly true and is now
false. Therefore it is impossible that such propositions should thus change
from truth to falsity.316
This, then, is the reason why timeless propositions about the absolute future
cannot change in truth-value: there is nothing, yet, which can have changed,
either because there is nothing currently for the subject term to supposit for
(e.g., Antichrist will be in a) or because although there is something for the
subject term to supposit for, nothing in that something has changed or can
change in the relevant way before a (e.g., Walter will sit in a). As with the
always true if ever true principle, Peter Auriol is a possible source for this line
of reasoning (see 6.2.2 (3)). In any case, at the moment of actuality, a kind
of strong counterfactual movement isso suggest the ante clausesindeed
possible. Its crucial features are as follows:
(1) Movement along the counterfactual axis is undertaken by the expedient of

positing (ponere). We have seen Scotus use ponere in esse as a conceptual tool
in modal arguments (cf. 5.2.3); for Ockham, at least in the context of the Trac-
tatus, positing some possibility in being seems to involve divine or creaturely
action resulting in the repositioning of the locus of actuality.317 When an agent
posits a counterfactual possibility at and for instant a, that previously coun-
terfactual state of affairs is rendered factual, and the agent finds himself in
instant a of a new time-structure with a new past and new divine fore-
knowledge of the new present lodged in every world-time preceding instant
a. In other words, alternative possibilities are open to us for any t0, and assum-
ing we exercise them, all relevant extrinsic facts about the future that are lodged
in the past, including information about predestination and reprobation, will
retroactively be different under the scope of that assumption:
316 Tractatus q. 5 [OPh vol. 2, p. 538, ll. 2232]: Confirmatur, quia propositiones non mutantur
de veritate in falsitatem nisi propter mutationem rei, secundum Philosophum in Praedica-
mentis. Sed nulla mutatio est in Deo nec in Petro nec in quacumque alia re quare haec
est primo vera Petrus est praedestinatus et postea falsa. Et hoc dico ut sit simpliciter de
futuro et ante beatitudinem collatam. Sicut si haec sit modo vera tu sedebis cras, nulla
mutatione facta in te vel in quocumque alio, non potes facere illam propositionem falsam
ante diem crastinum, ita quod sit verum dicere: haec propositio tu sedebis cras prius fuit
vera et modo est falsa. Igitur impossibile est quod istae propositiones sic mutentur de ver-
itate in falsitatem.
317 Ockham is thus using ponere (in esse) in sense i(3)(b) (see 8.3 below).
154 chapter 1
For, as has often been said: Even if it be posited that God does not know
(non intelligat) P, as it is false and can be true, if it be posited in being that
[P] is true, then the [proposition] God knows P is true, and God knows
P has always been true. And consequently, the [proposition] God does
not know P has always been false; for if one side of the contradiction has
always been true, the other has always been false, and vice versa.318
Ockham reiterates this point at the end of the Tractatus, while connecting it to
statements of predestination and reprobation:
If it be posited that someone predestined commits final impenitence,

then the [proposition] this one is reprobate is true, and has always
been true; and in consequence, its opposite is now false and has always
been false. And in the same way, if you die today, then the proposition
you will sit tomorrow is now false, and has always been false, and its
opposite has always been true.319
(2) Movement along the counterfactual axis does not count as change (hence
the scare-quotes around new and previously in the foregoing section). Be-
sides the arguments reviewed above, Ockham has an implied reductio argu-
ment against change, an argument that confirms the picture sketched in (1)
above:
[I]t is argued as follows: whoever does not know some contingent propo-
sition P and can know P can begin to know P, since it does not seem that its
affirmation [could] be true after it was not true, unless it [could] begin
to be true; therefore if He does not know but can know some proposition
P, He can undergo change. I say that if by P you understand a contingent
318 Tractatus q. 2, a. 3 [OPh vol. 2, p. 529, ll. 248253]: Quia, sicut frequenter dictum est,
quantumcumque ponatur quod Deus non intelligat a, quia est falsa et potest esse vera,
si ponatur in esse quod haec sit vera, haec tunc est vera Deus intelligit a, et semper fuit
vera Deus intelligit a. Et per consequens haec semper fuit falsa Deus non intelligit a;
sicut si una pars contradictionis semper fuit vera, altera semper fuit falsa, et e converso.
319 Tractatus q. 5 [OPh vol. 2, p. 539, ll. 3946]: [S]i ponatur quod aliquis praedestinatus
finaliter peccet, quod tunc haec est vera iste est reprobatus, et haec semper fuit vera
iste est reprobatus, et per consequens sua opposita est nunc falsa et semper fuit falsa.
Et eodem modo, si tu corrumparis hodie, tunc haec propositio tu sedebis cras nunc est
falsa, et semper fuit falsa, et eius opposita semper fuit vera. Et super istam responsionem
quasi stat tota difficultas in ista materia.
proposition about the present, then this proposition is true, and then I
concede the conclusion, namely that God can begin to know P. But it does
not follow that God can undergo change, as has already been established
[by the Cambridge change argument]. If, however, by P you understand a
contingent proposition about the future, in this sense it is not true; since
in order for it to be true, the following two [propositions] would have to
be successively true: God does not know P, God knows P, which cannot
be true simultaneously. For just as nothing is known by God except what
is true, so everything true is known by God; and thus if P is true, it has
always been true, and consequently it has always been known by God.320
Note Ockhams appeal to the Law of Non-Contradiction in this argument:

since a fully specified, timeless future contingent propositionsay (t[TRL])S
has always been true if it will ever be true, such a proposition could not be
successively false and true without being simultaneously false and true, thus
violating the LNC.321
320 Tractatus q. 5 [OPh vol. 2, p. 528, ll. 221234]: Quarto arguitur sic: quicumque non scit a
propositionem contingentemet potest scire a, potest incipere scire a, quia non videtur
quod affirmatio sit vera post negationem postquam non fuit vera nisi incipiat esse vera;
igitur si non scit apropositionemet potest scire a, potest mutari. Dico quod si per
a intelligas propositionem contingentem de praesenti, tunc illa propositio est vera, et
concedo tunc conclusionem, scilicet quod Deus potest incipere scire a. Sed non sequitur
ultra igitur mutatur, patet prius. Si autem per a intelligas propositionem contingentem de
futuro, sic illa non est vera; quia ad hoc quod esset vera, oporteret quod illae duae essent
successive verae Deus non scit a, Deus scit a, quae non possunt simul esse verae. Quia
sicut nihil est scitum a Deo nisi verum, ita omne verum est scitum a Deo; et ideo si a sit
vera, semper fuit vera, et per consequens semper fuit scita a Deo.
321 The contradiction involved in assuming that a timeless proposition can change succes-
sively from false to true can be easily shown by assuming a timelessly true (B-/C-series)
proposition (t[TRL]) and showing what follows from the assumption that such a propo-
sition can be successively true and false:
Instant 1: Instant 2:
A-series: (t0[TRL]) [(t+2[TRL]) ] (t0[TRL]) [(t+1[TRL]) ]
B-/C-series: (t[TRL]) [(t[TRL]) ] (t[TRL]) [(t[TRL]) ]
Temporally indefinite propositions are evaluated according to their A-series status, in

which the contradiction is hidden; the B-/C-series version, however, has successively
(t[TRL]) [(t[TRL]) ] and (t[TRL]) [(t[TRL]) ] in a single time-structure, which imply that
and are true simultaneously at (t[TRL]), and that [(t[TRL]) ] and [(t[TRL]) ] are true
simultaneously at every moment preceding (t[TRL]).
156 chapter 1
(3) Movement along the counterfactual axis cannot be undertaken in advance;

it can be carried out only when instant a in fact comes to pass. This restriction
is implied by the expressions ante a instans and ante beatitudinem collatam in
Ockhams explicit, limitative clauses.
Like the future-dependency escape clause, no part of Ockhams model is strictly

new.322 (1) goes back at least to Peter Lombard. We have seen Lombard endorse
it, Abelard consider and reject it, and Aquinas adopt it. (2) is an analysis which
Ockham takes over, substantially, from Scotus;323 behind Scotus loom William
of Auvergne, Robert Grosseteste, andfurther backonce again Lombard. (3)
follows Auriols argument at 6.2.2 (1)(3). Taken together, however, they form
a whole which, while Scotist (and anti-Scotist) in inspiration, is new at least
in its details. A model for Ockhams vision of time, agency, and contingency
amounts to a variant of A(mr) in which there is a default future that can, when
the moment comes, be changed in a special sense. This model represents a
modification of the polarity-switch interpretation of Scotus (see Fig. 6): unlike
the version of polarity-switch sometimes attributed to Scotus (wrongly, as I
argue), Ockhams version, which I shall call Revocable Default Future (RDF),
has the agent changing an immediate future by some basic action, thereby
making the new future into a new present.324 It can be represented as in
Fig. 10. In time-structure of Fig. 10, it now was always the case that (t[TRL])
; thus the past has been, in a limited and extrinsic way, changed by a change
in the default future. However, since genuine change is defined in narrowly
Aristotelian terms and applies only to individual time-structures, the modal
leap from one time-structure to another does not count as change, and so does
not impugn the immutability of any node in any individual structure, nor that
of any mind, creaturely or divine, cognizing that node. The leap does, however,
seem very much like change, indeed like unpredictable change, to a skeptical
or uncommitted reader; and Ockhams expression of wonderment over Gods
foreknowledge makes perfect sense if we read it as a confession that he does not
know how God foresees that the default future will, in the event, be cancelled
by some free agent.
322 Genest 1992: 37 makes the same point about the communis opinio that develops under
Ockhams influence in the early to mid-fourteenth century (on which more below).
323 See Scotus, Ordinatio i d. 38 pt. 2d. 39 qq. 15 [Vat. vol. 6, p. 436, l. 5p. 438, l. 6].
324 Only thus can Ockham avoid the charge of promulgating the same doctrine he inveighs
against in Ordinatio i, d. 38, q. u. [OTh vol. 4, pp. 579583].
figure 10 The Revocable Default Future (RDF) model. An agent in time-structure B, in which it
is determinately true that (t [TRL]) , decides that he would after all like to arrange
for (t [TRL]) , and, at the moment when (t) becomes the present, does so.
As suggested above, another influence on this entire line of reasoning may be

Peter Auriol. The conceptual progression Ockham undertakes, which examines
and rejects the possibility of change first before and then at instant a, tracks
the structure of Auriols truth-to-necessity argument, which also proceeds from
various times preceding instant a to instant a itself. The principle every propo-
sition that is simply about the future was always true if it is ever true is, as noted
above, perhaps taken from Auriol. The motives of the two thinkers, however,
are subtly and importantly different. Auriol is (at least implicitly) assimilating
conative contingency to the possibility of change, and having disproved the
latter, rejects expectative truth to save creaturely freedom. Ockhams intent is
to free conative contingency from the taint of change entirely, while saving
expectative truth in a defeasible form. A crux in the relation between these
two thinkers comes at the point in their respective arguments when they focus
on instant a itself: while Auriol considers the mere logical possibility of alter-
native outcomes, drawing an anti-change conclusion by invoking the always
true if ever true principle, Ockham reads the alternation as the possibility of
an ontologically strong switch from one outcome to another.
7.2.3 Assessment and Characterization of Ockhams Analysis: The

Pattern Arguments and Ockhams Strategic Ambiguity
Ockhams treatment, even more than that of Scotus and certainly far more than
that of Auriol, puts a premium on contingency; the latter is read as a guar-
antor of an ontologically strong liberty of indifference. In consequence, Ock-
ham would have no problem guaranteeing the validity of John Can Be Wrong,
i.e., the reality of human predictive fallibility (though unlike Scotus, he never
touches on this argument). But with respect to the other main desiderata of a
theory of future contingents, the theory might be uncharitably described as
158 chapter 1
a bait-and-switch maneuver. Divine immutability of a sort is guaranteed by

restricting the use of the term change to individual time-structures, with the
result that no official change in divine knowledge has taken place: within
the new time-structure, it was the case ab aeterno that God knew (t[TRL]).
A tantalizing suggestion of a real change of the future is proffered by means
of the ante a instans clauses, and then implicitly withdrawn by Ockhams
insistence that cashing out the real possibility of modal alternatives does not
involve change. The resulting system relies on the same scope-disambiguation
strategies as does the entire sophismatic traditionhence Ockhams frequent
recourse to just these strategies in his treatment of the arguments God Can
Be Wrong and Divine Foreknowledge Necessitates325but it crucially limits
the operation of these strategies to the moment at which the future event is
posited in being. Ockham thus fashions a system with a little something for
everybody: determinate truth for the preservation of bivalence and for divine
foreknowledge, immutability for Gods dignity, and a suggestion of metaphysi-
cally effective agency for creatures.
As one might expect given the apparently (and really) contradictory com-
mitments it makes, the system leaks here and there. First of all, the idea of
a fixed but defeasible future is obviously problematic; some kind of formal
provision must be made for the fact that the immediate effects of my action
have a very limited and short-lived existence, inasmuch as I am but one agent
among many. Since the range of other agents choices depends only partially on
my own immediate decision, the Ockhamist RDF model given in Fig. 10 leads
immediately to a version of A(mr), in which a large number of live future
branches, representing other agents live options at (t), (t), etc., are pruned
away by my immediate action at (t).
Furthermore, although in general Ockham rejects Scotus appeal to devices
such as instants of nature and synchronic contingency, he is forced at one
point to concede that his ban on the latter must admit of a kind of excep-
tion. Although the model does not directly endorse a switch in default future
within the now (t0), nevertheless Ockhams dynamic model of agency also
requires the concept of synchronic contingency in order to head off contra-
325 For example, in his treatment of GCBW (Tractatus, q. 2, a. 2 [OPh vol. 2, pp. 521524]),
Ockham invokes the de inesse / de possibili distinction, used for scope disambiguation;
the general approach is the same as Scotus, Ordinatio i d. 38 pt. 2d. 39 qq. 15 [Vat.
vol. 6, pp. 433436]. Ockhams take on DFN (or something closely resembling DFN; past-
necessitation is not involved) can be found in Tractatus, q. 2, a. 2 [OPh vol. 2, pp. 529
532]; here the appeal is to the sensus compositionis / divisionis distinction and to multiple
modalities [p. 532, ll. 329338].
dictions involving different futures. In Fig. 10, for example, we have a jump
between time-structure B, which has (t)[(t)], and time-structure , which
has (t)[(t)]. The movement between the two time-structures, however we
characterize it, needs some kind of modal space as a medium; absent this
space, the positing-in-being of counterfactuals produces contradiction, as was
established in 7.2.2 (2) above.326
Another casualty of Ockhams attempt to please everybody, as he himself
realizes, is a coherent account of divine foreknowledge. To show this, I shall
clarify the nature of what I referred to above, rather vaguely, as a bait-and-
switch maneuver. Recall that Scotus found an ingenious way to combine an
open-future model (cf. the ontologically open status of later instants of nature
from the vantage point of earlier instants) with a closed-future model (the
actualized world in the fourth instant of nature); this model allowed him to
articulate divine foreknowledge in a novel though perhaps not ultimately sat-
isfactory way. Though retaining a good deal of Scotus modal analysis and some
of his conceptual tools, Ockham, as noted in 7.1, rejects this solution. The
result is that he finds himself confronted with a more traditional Gordian knot
326 Ockhams direct concession of some form of synchronic contingency reads as follows:
[The proposition God knows that this part of the contradiction will be true] is contingent
insofar as however much [it] is true, nevertheless it is possible that it will never have been
true. And in that case there is the potential for its opposite without any succession, since it
is possible that it will never have been. But matters do not stand thus with the created will,
because after the created will has commited some action, it is not possible that it might
afterwards be true to say that it has never commited that action.
Immo haec est contingens in tantum quod quantumcumque haec sit vera Deus scit quod
haec pars contradictionis erit vera, tamen possibile est quod haec numquam fuerit vera.
Et in isto casu potentia est ad oppositum illius sine omni successione, quia possibile est
quod numquam fuerit. Sed sic non est de voluntate creata, quid postquam voluntas creata
aliquem actum habuerit, non est possibile quod postea sit verum dicere quod numquam
habuit talem actum.
Ordinatio i d. 38 q. u. [OTh vol. 4, p. 586, ll. 111]
To be sure, Ockham distances himself from this view, attributing it to certain artisti;
moreover, this passage limits Ockhamist synchronic contingency to divine agency. But
as for the first point, some kind of synchronic contingency is indeed a consequence of
Ockhams own apparent model as set forth in the Tractatus; and as for the second, the
limitation to divine agency cannot stand in the face of Ockhams repeated use of the
alternative past argument in human agency (implied in Tractatus, q. 5 [OPh vol. 2, p. 538,
ll. 2232], quoted above; explicitly adduced in [ibid., p. 539, ll. 3946]).
160 chapter 1
of analytical problems. By construing agentic contingency as a jump between

time-structures that are isomorphic except for the identity of the Thin Red
Line, and by providing no B-/C-series-style atemporal fact of the matter con-
cerning which line will in the event be privileged, Ockham effectively creates a
complicated version of the traditional Aristotelian model he himself rejects,
i.e.once again (see previous page)an A(mr) model.327 Ockhamist determi-
nate truth about the future is, though determinate, nevertheless defeasible, a
circumstance which not only renders the term determinate essentially empty
(also a feature of previous systems such as those of Aquinas, Scotus, and Auriol)
but, more importantly, threatens to uncouple truth itself from states of affairs.
And with no fact of the matter about the future, there is nothing for God to
foreknow.328
Ockham is thus faced with a peculiar form of an old dilemma: is the future
ultimately open or closed? If the four-dimensional facts on the ground yield
no compelling reason to affirm either side of the contradictionif, that is, the
future is ontologically openthen Ockhams oft-repeated belief that precisely
one side of the contradiction is true, and that God knows which one it is,
involves him either in blatant contradiction (in the common sense of the word)
or in a trivializing of the concept of truth. If, on the other hand, there is a
four-dimensional fact of the matter about the unique futureif the future is
ontologically closedthen Ockhams crucial appeal to Lombardian alternative
pasts is entirely otiose: his system is a needlessly elaborate version of Boethian
A(a), with all the troubling conceptual threats to liberty noted by critics of
this type of position from Aristotle onwards. Seen against this background,
Ockhams claim of necessary ignorance regarding the way in which God knows
the future329 is a rhetorical necessity. Spelling out the mechanism of divine
foreknowledge would require him to disambiguate between the following two
interpretations:
327 Thakkar 2010: 74 makes essentially the same point. In fact, Ockhams model (on my
reading) resembles what Fischer et al. 2009: 263 call OT3, the third Open Theist position.
328 For a different interpretation of Ockhams doctrine, see Perler 1988: 7584, who reads
Ockham as claiming that future-tense propositions get their truth-values directly from
their modal status.
329 Ockham does make an attempt to justify the move by analogizing with his doctrine of intu-
itive cognition as embracing both existents and nonexistents (Tractatus, q. 1 [OPh vol. 2,
p. 518, ll. 280287]). The doctrine seems singularly inapt as an analogy; while Ockhams
creaturely intuitive cognition can be construed as a form of intensional understanding,
thus making it a plausible pendant for other thinkers treatment of divine cognition (e.g.,
for Aquinas scientia simplicis intelligentiae, and Chattons treatment of divine cognition,
First interpretation of Ockhams doctrine:
Model of the world: Theory of truth:

A-series / modal realist future T2
(There is a determinate default (A trivial type of T2 theory: there
future, but it is defeasible, and there is determinate truth about all
is no timeless fact of the matter as to future contingents, but it is limited
the way in which it will or will not be to individual moments or
revoked by some agent or agents.) time-structures.)
Advantage: Agentic freedom is guaranteed.

Disadvantage: Divine foreknowledge is logically impossible.
Second interpretation of Ockhams doctrine:
Model of the world: Theory of truth:

A-series / actualist future T2
(There is a timeless matter of fact not (A standard type of T2 theory:
onlyabout the default future, but there is, in the ordinary
also about the way in which it will or sense, determinate truth
will not be revoked by some agent or about future contingents, and
agents.) such truth corresponds to the four-
dimensional facts on the ground in
the normal way.)
Advantage: Divine foreknowledge is unproblematic: there are facts about the

future, albeit facts epistemically opaque to mere wayfarers, and God knows
these facts in virtue of His omniscience.
Disadvantage: Logical and theological determinism rear their ugly heads.
Ockhams model as discussed in 7.2.2 implies the first interpretation, while

his insistence that God somehow knows the future leaves the door open for
the second. If we take the sum of Ockhams remarks on future contingents
and divine foreknowledge seriously, we can draw from it the probably incoher-
ent idea that future contingents have a reality strong enough to ground divine
for which see 10.1.2.1), the kind of knowledge Ockham is asking God to havethat is,
knowledge of which future will turn out to be truerequires the sort of strongly determi-
nate truth that would, on logical-determinist reasoning, cancel agentic freedom.
162 chapter 1
knowledge but not so strong as to give rise to worries associated with logical or
theological determinism. On the other hand, if we take it as a discursive strat-
egy, we get two coherent but incompatible theories. On this approach, Ockham
is advancing a radical, open-future model (as noted in 2.2, a dangerous under-
taking for any premodern thinker in any of the Abrahamic faiths) under the
color of a quite traditional Boethian closed-future model (a safe, well-trodden
path).
In short, the mystification surrounding Gods epistemic access to the future
functions as a carefully designed cloak thrown over the gap between the first
and second interpretations. Which of the two does Ockham really intend?
Two considerations afford at least a tentative answer. The first is Ockhams
foregrounding of the problematic character of divine foreknowledge, already
discussed in 7.2.2 above; the very intensity of Ockhams engagement with
this issue suggests that he regards the future as unsettled and therefore as
an unsatisfactory foundation for knowledge, divine or otherwise. The second
is Ockhams political situation at the time of writing. Recall that at some
point roughly contemporary with his authorship of the Tractatus, Ockham had
already aroused the hostile curiosity of Church authorities, who would in short
order summon him to Avignon to answer charges of heresy.330 The bill of par-
ticulars, as catalogued in John Lutterells Libellus contra doctrinam Guilelmi
Occam, touches only intermittently on issues of future truth and human free-
dom, but the several references to the error of Pelagius serve to highlight
the considerable dangers involved in giving too much latitude to liberum arbi-
trium.331 On this view, then, if Ockhams real model was an A(mr) model, i.e.,
330 See Spade and Panaccio 2011: 1.1.

331 Here are the five propositions with respect to which Lutterell explicitly accuses Ockham
of the Pelagian heresy:
14. Quod Deus potest acceptare actum tanquam ex condigno meritorium vite eterne,
qui est ex puris naturalibus elicitus, sicud si eliceretur ex caritate.
16. Quod sicud homo potest demereri ex puris naturalibus, ita potest mereri.
18. Quod actus, qui est a caritate elicitus, non excedit totam facultatem nature.
20. Quod meritum dicitur, quia elicitur a libero arbitrio, non quia elicitur a caritate.
35. Quod actus elicitus ex forma supernaturali non est meritorius vite eterne, sed solum
quia Deus contingenter eum acceptat. [Hoffmann 1959, pp. 34]
14. That God can accept an act elicited merely naturally as though it were legitimately
worthy of eternal life [and] as though it were elicited by [divine] love.
16. That just as a human being can be unworthy by merely natural action, so he can be
worthy.
an ontologically open field of action for divine and creaturely agents, he would
have had a strong personal motive to provide that model with protective col-
oration. This reading would thus interpret the Tractatus as an instance of the
kind of writing between the lines which, according to Leo Strauss, often char-
acterizes the work of independent-minded thinkers in ages of ideologically
driven persecution: in the midst of an apparent rejection of a forbidden or dan-
gerous doctrine, a writer slips in material that suggests, to sufficiently clever
and perceptive readers, that he himself advocates the doctrine in question.332
Of course, given Ockhams combative and uncompromising personality, a con-
sideration of his immediate political situation may not be a decisive reason to
disambiguate in favor of an ontologically open model. Nevertheless the pre-
ponderance of evidence suggests that Ockham really intends the first inter-
pretation, and that the second interpretation is a (largely implicit) insurance
policy. If my interpretation of Ockhams system is correct, then, we have yet
another model in which world-picture and theory of truth come apart: an open-
future, A(mr) world-picture is matched with a (trivializing) T2 theory of truth.
7.3 Ockhams Later Influence: The Communis Opinio

Despite the problematic character of Ockhams model, by the middle of the
fourteenth century it seems to have acquired (at least in England) the character
of an ensemble of commonplaces or ides reues, called the communis opinio.
Specifically, it became a kind of point of departure for a group of thinkers
that included Adam Wodeham, Robert Holcot, and Richard FitzRalph. Thomas
Bradwardine, writing circa 1344, prefaces his blistering attack on the communis
opinio with a short but accurate exposition of this Pelagian school (as he
calls it). Adherents of this doctrine, says Bradwardine, believe the following (I
provide letters for easy reference):
[T]hat (a) something has always been going to happen, and is even now
going to happen; but it is in no way necessary that it ever have been going
to happen, or that it now be going to happen; and that (b) something
has never been going to happen, nor is it now going to happen; and it is
18. That an act elicited by [divine] love does not exceed the total [power of the] natural
faculty.
20. That something is called a meriting cause because it is elicited by free choice, not
because it is elicited by [divine] love.
35. That an act is not worthier of eternal life [than is a purely natural act] [because] it
is elicited by a supernatural form, but only because God contingently accepts it.
332 See Strauss 1952: 2237.
164 chapter 1
possible by a possibility which is opposed to all necessity that it always

have been going to happen and is now going to happen; and that (c)
matters stand accordingly with respect to Gods foreknowledge. [This
school] holds, however, that (d) with regards to everything which is past
or present, it is necessary that it have been, and that (e) it is necessary that
God always foreknew that it was going to happen, or that He [now] know
that present things are [as they are].333
Bradwardines complaints about the Pelagians are multifarious.334 What is rele-

vant in this context are his strictures against the break between (a)(c) and (d)
(e). According to Bradwardine, the Pelagians introduce an illicit modal asym-
metry into their model by insisting on the binding character of the necessity of
the past on the one hand and the openness of the future on the other: to God,
on the contrary, all of time is in one sense contingent, and in another sense nec-
essary. The communis opinio, says Bradwardine, falsely impedes divine freedom
vis--vis the past while falsely depriving divine foreknowledge and prophecy of
their basis; a careful consideration of modal terms as well as the divine nature
shows that according to potentia absoluta, all logical possibilities stand open to
God, including those in the human present and past, while according to poten-
tia ordinata, all things are necessary, including those in the human future.335
This approach places Bradwardine squarely in the pleromatic tradition inau-
gurated by Peter Damian and culminating in Duns Scotus account of instantia
naturae; indeed, as Genest 1992: 79 remarks, Bradwardine goes beyond Scotus,
explicitly tying the latters doctrine of synchronic contingency to the potentia
absoluta / ordinata distinction. Just as with the systems of Damian and Sco-
tus (making due allowance for the latters complexity), Bradwardines model of
333 Bradwardine 1618/1976, p. 702 D: [Q]uod aliquid semper fuit futurum, et adhuc est futu-
rum; non est tamen necessarium ullo modo illud unquam fuisse, aut nunc esse futurum;
et quod aliquid nunquam fuit futurum, nec nunc est futurum, et possibile possibilitate
omni necessitati opposita est illud semper fuisse, et nunc esse futurum, et de praescientia
Dei correspondenter omnino. De omni tamen praeterito vel praesenti dicit, quod necesse
est illud fuisse, et quod necesse est Deum semper praescivisse illud fuisse futurum, vel
scire illud esse nunc praesens, quod etiam necesse est Deum scire illud esse praeteritum
ac fuisse.
334 These are summarized in Genest 1992, ch. 1, and Leff 1957.
335 Bradwardine 1618/1976, p. 834 A: Quod divina volutio est semper aeque libera et contin-
gens intrinsece, quare et aeque libera et contingens intrinsece respectu praesentium et
praeteritorum, sicut respectu futurorum, et semper aeque necessaria, quare et aeque nec-
essaria respect futurorum, sicut respect praesentium et praeteritorum.
divine alternative actuality can be handled by a simple non-temporal modal

logic, and it is no coincidence that, in refuting sophisms of divine mutability
and fallibility, he makes extensive use of the scope disambiguators appealed to
by adherents of the sophismatic solution.336 The doctrine Bradwardine criti-
cizes, however, is noteworthy for being one of the main live models available
to Walter Chatton as he wrestled with the problem of future contingents in the
1320s. As we shall see, Chattons various responses show some affinity to this
doctrine.
8 Ponere [in Esse]: Drifting between the Derivational, the Temporal,

and the Ludic
Because of the central role that the phrase ponere [in esse], posit [in being],
plays in many crucial arguments proffered by Chatton and his contemporaries,
it is necessary to attempt at least a preliminary analysis of the lexical seman-
tics of this phrase in early fourteenth century scholastic Latin.337 In fact, texts
from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries show a complex equivocation
regarding ponere in esse, or simply ponere, between (i) the assumption of some-
thing in a formal, hypothetical way, in the context of a disputation or argu-
ment, and (ii) the actual (eventual) occurrence of something in the timeline.338
The connection between this equivocation and the ambiguity of the simple /
conditional necessity distinction should be obvious: sense (i) fits the second,
derivational interpretation of the modal distinction, while sense (ii) fits the
first, temporal interpretation (see 4.3 above). I shall begin with the formal
or hypothetical interpretation of ponere [in esse].
8.1 Ponere [in Esse]: Initial Approaches

The expression ponere [in esse] and the associated concepts and discursive
practices emerge from three passages in Aristotle, one from the Prior Analytics,
one from the Metaphysics, and one from the Physics. In Analytica Priora, we
read the following:
336 See for example his laudatory review of Henry of Ghents use of the distinctions in
Bradwardine 1618/1976 p. 843 E, and his own use of it at p. 858 A.
337 Sometimes (as in Auriol) the phrase is ponere in actu, sometimes simply ponere.
338 As Thakkar notes in his analysis of Gregory of Riminis approach to future contingents, it
is often difficult to tell in any specific case which meaning is intended [Thakkar 2005, p.
A.58, note 78].
166 chapter 1
For I call contingent, and what happens [contingently], that which, while
it is not necessary, when however posited to be, [there] will be nothing
impossible because of this; for we speak equivocally when we say that
the necessary happens [contingently].339
Here is the same principle from the Metaphysica, this time employing the term
possibile:
Let us suppose that that which is not, but which however is possible, is or
occurs; then nothing will be impossible.340
Finally, the text from the Physics reads:
If, therefore, we posit that something which is possible is, nothing impos-
sible will follow, though something false [i.e., counterfactual] might.341
Whether the term to be defined is contingens (Greek endechmenon) or possi-

bile (Greek dynatn), the intent is clearly to establish, as a criterion of the real
possibility of some non-occurring event, the circumstance that we can make
some kind of a dialectical gesture bringing about its occurrence in some kind of
formal space without entraining some kind of impossibility.342 But what kind
of gesture, what kind of space, and what kind of impossibility? The scholastic
reception of these texts, which includes the interpretation of modal syllogistic,
the evaluation of arguments concerning future contingents, and the construc-
tion of rule-systems for the ars obligatoria (among many other contexts), yields
various answers to all three questions. In what follows, I assume that the impos-
sibility in question is a conceptual or logical contradiction; this interpretation
seems to hold across the texts relevant to future contingents. By contrast, the
339 Aristotle, Analytica Priora, i.13, 32a1821 (tr. Boethius): Dico enim contingere et contin-
gens quod, cum non sit necessarium, ponatur autem esse (Gk. tethntos dhuprchein),
non erit propter hoc impossibile; nam necessarium aequivoce contingere dicimus.
340 Aristotle, Metaphysica, ix.4, 1047b1012 (tr. William of Moerbeke): [S]upponamus esse
aut fieri (Gk. hupothometha enai ei gegonnai) quod non est quidem possibile autem,
quia nichil erit impossibile.
341 Aristotle, Physica viii.5, 256b1011 (tr. James of Venice): Si igitur ponamus possibile esse
(Gk. en on thmen t dunatn enai), nullum inpossibile accidit, falsum autem fortassis.
342 Although the issue is irrelevant here, the conceptual distinction between t endech-
menon and t dynatn is the source of a major textual confusion in the Prior Analytics;
see Aristotle, Prior Analytics, tr. Smith (1989), p. 125.
other two elements in this formulationthe nature (and source) of the gesture
indicated by ponere, and the type of formal space indicated by in esse or in actu
(if the phrase is included)are very much up for discussion. For example, we
have seen in 5.2.3 above how Duns Scotus attempts to resolve the sophism I
call God Can Be Wrong by clearing up the semantics of ponere [in esse]. Sco-
tus distinguishes between two ways we can formally posit something in being,
i.e., imagine something to be the case: we can treat it as an additional member
of our premise set, or as a counterfactual to be cordoned off from our premise
set by the assumption that it is located in a distinct modal frame. Missing from
Scotus discussion, however, is any explicit recognition of the importance of
what one might call the reality polarity of the distinct derivational frames he
endorses. When, by positing a counterfactual in being, we move from the first
derivational frame to the second, are we positing it as a mere counterfactual,
or are we positing it as an alternative actuality? As we have seen, Scotus has his
own very complex implicit answer to the question, involving instants of nature
and negotiable determinacy (cf. 5.2.15.2.2). A simpler application of the
idea of modal frames is possible, howeveran application that dispenses with
the Scotistic machinery of instants of nature and uses the idea of a transmodal
instant or time in the service of a very low-caliber kind of counterfactuality.
In the work of Arnold of Strelley (d. 1349), this application comes to the fore.343
8.2 Arnold of Strelley and Obligational Theology

Strelley, a contemporary of Ockham and Chatton,344 belongs to a Dominican
tradition that took the disputational ars obligatoria as the structural basis for
the discussion of a number of problems in philosophy and theology, including
many classical problems involving future contingents.345 His treatment of con-
tingency therefore has something approximating the typical structure of such
disputations, which proceed in the following way: An opponens or opponent
proffers a counterfactual or problematic proposition (the positum) to a respon-
dens or respondent, whose job it is to mount a defense of that positum in the
form of concessive or negative replies to further, arbitrarily selected proposita
on the part of the opponent. In earlier versions of the game, a fairly simple
set of rules governs these replies: if the opponents propositum is a logical con-
sequence of everything the respondent has agreed to thus far (his commit-
343 My analysis of Strelleys arguments essentially follows that of Gelber 2004: 158170.
344 Gelber 2004: 102 dates Strelleys Sentences commentary to 13231330.
345 See Gelber 2004: 151190 for a discussion of the use of obligationes as the controlling
metaphor for a specifically Dominican obligational theology, culminating (in Gelbers
view) in the work of Robert Holcot.
168 chapter 1
ment set, in modern parlance346), then the respondent must concede it; if it
is logically excluded by his commitment set, he must deny it; if neither it nor
its negation follows from his commitment set, he must answer according to
its quality (secundum qualitatem), i.e., according to the state of affairs in the
actual world. The entire counterfactual scenario emerging from this mixture of
the factual and the counterfactual plays out against the background of a pre-
sumed casus, an initial real state of affairs agreed upon by both opponent and
respondent. The opponent wins if, after a fixed time, he can demonstrate that
the respondent has committed himself to an inconsistent set of propositions;
the respondent wins if, after a fixed time, he can demonstrate that his commit-
ment set is consistent.347 It will be noted that the verb ponere and associated
noun positum already play a central role in this game; the concept of ponere in
esse, as is clear from the following examples, is not identical to it, but is clearly
informed by it. In Dialogue 1, the ludic and disputational character of Strelleys
treatment is clear. (I have added numbers for easy reference.)
Dialogue 1 (D1):
(1) I posit that God reveals to someone a future [contingent a that He

knows].

(2) Whence I say that, if such a revelation as a will be has been posited,
nevertheless it will be contingently and not necessarily, since it is in
the nature of this a that it denotes contingently.
(3) But you say that if it happens contingently, then it is possible that it
not happen.
(4) I concede.
(5) You say, therefore let it be posited in being [that a will not be].
(6) I say that it will not be posited in being [that a will not be], but
I concede that from its nature it could be posited in being, for that
346 The term commitment set or commitment slate, common in modern literature on
dialogical games (including obligationes), comes ultimately from Hamblin 1970 and 1971.
347 This sketch greatly oversimplifies the game. For an introduction to the various forms of
obligatio, see first Stump 1982 and Spade 1982 and 2008. For a relatively accessible logical
analysis, see Dutilh Novaes 2005; for a more sophisticated take, see Uckelman 2010. Uckel-
mans regularly updated bibliography of the large literature on the subject of obligationes
in general can currently (December 2016) be found at the following address: https://www
.yumpu.com/en/document/view/16227278/bibliography-of-obligationes-literature
-tilburg-university-the-..
proposition [that it could be posited in being] is consistent with

[another]: that an impossible event not be posited in being.348
Tr. gelber, in gelber 2004: 159 and 163, slightly altered
The passage is meant not as a strict record of licit moves and countermoves
in an obligational dispute, but as an informal account of the thrusts, parries,
and justifications that might be employed in the course of such a dispute.
So, for example, (1) and (2) simply set the stage: Let us imagine that the
respondent has conceded that God has revealed some a of the type Socrates
will sit to someone. It follows by the nature of a, a free act, that a will happen
contingently and not necessarily. Now, at step (3), the roles of respondent and
opponent are defined: you are the opponent, I am the respondent. The
interrogation of my commitment to the contingency of a, conceded at step
(4), proceeds: at step (5), you try to get me to admit that the semantics of
contingent commit me to letting not-a be posited in being. If I allow this,
however, an impossible event follows: God has revealed a, but not-a has been
granted a kind of formal actuality. These actualities clash; hence the impossible
event.349 Thus, at step (6), I can licitly refuse to add the positing of not-a
to my commitment set, since the principle that an impossible event not be
posited in being trumps the normal requirement that any genuine possibility
be positable.
The argument bears a close affinity to that of Scotus, but there is a clear
difference as well. Scotus made no objection to the application of the positabil-
348 Arnold of Strelley, In libros Sententiarum i, q. 7, cited in Gelber 2004 p. 159 footnote 18 and
p. 163 footnote 26:
Sed contra pono quod Deus revelet alicui eiusdem futurum

Unde dico quod posita tali revelatione a erit, sed tamen contingenter erit et non
necessario, quia hoc est
de natura ipsius a, scilicet quod contingenter denotat.
Sed dicis si contingenter evenit, igitur potest non evenire.
Concedo.
Dicis ponatur igitur in esse.
Dico quod non ponetur in esse, sed concedo quod de natura sui posset poni in esse, ista
enim stant simul quod non ponetur in esse actum impossibile.
I have split up all the occurrences of inesse that Gelber leaves scrupulously unsplit.
349 The trappy line of reasoning to which you invite me here is a close relative of (one
interpretation of) the Master Argument. See Chatton, rss i d. 38 [34] and commentary, as
well as Appendix A1.21, A2.21, and A3.821.
170 chapter 1
ity criterion to counterfactualshe simply distinguished between two distinct

formal gestures that this criterion could refer to. By contrast, Strelley has a
unitary reading of positing-in-being, and evades contradiction by explicitly
exempting counterfactuals from a criterion which can be supposed to be oth-
erwise globally in force. That unitary reading clearly involves the attribution of
actuality to the posited counterfactual, an actuality which in this case would
yield a contradiction. Some possibles, implies Strelley, just will not happen, but
they are no less possible for all that. As Gelber 2004: 166 rightly points out, this
attitude is compatibilist. Specifically, it is a version of logical compatibilism:
although the fixed future contains a, not-a may still count as legitimately pos-
sible.
The foregoing argument, which posits a fixed future and grants certain
possibles a waiver on the positing-in-being requirement, exists side by side in
Strelleys Sentences commentary with a superficially quite different analysis
of a form of God Can Be Wrong. According to Gelbers paraphrase of the
argument, Strelley presents the basic structure of this argument thus:
Dialogue 2 (D2):
(1) God knows that I will sit tomorrow

(2) And I will not sit tomorrow
(3) Therefore, God is deceived.
gelbers paraphrase, from 2004: 167
Now, Strelley asks: what modal status can we attribute to the three proposi-
tions? (3) is clearly impossible, so either (1) or (2) must be impossible as well.
Strelley parries this by denying the principle that an impossible conclusion
implies the impossibility of one of the premises: two possibles may yield an
impossible conclusion if they are collectively incompossible, i.e., inconsistent
(ibid.). The upshot is that if, in an obligational dispute, (1) is posited in being,
then (2) must have the status de possibili, i.e., counterfactual; if (2) is posited,
then (1) is de possibili. Both are positable in principle, even if the other was
casus or positum to begin with; however, if we move from a scenario in which
(1) was posited to one in which (2) was posited, we have really moved from one
obligational dispute to a separate dispute with analogous initial conditions but
with another outcome.350 The reality polarity has been switched in the two
examples, but they remain two.
350 Thus Gelbers paraphrase of Strelleys argument in 2004: 169170. In fact, Strelley switches
As suggested above, Strelleys treatment of D1 seems to clash with his treat-

ment of D2. In the former, certain possibles are exempt from the positability
requirement; in the latter, the requirement is apparently conceded, but a way
is found to satisfy it without entraining impossibility within a distinct obliga-
tional scenario. Has Strelley changed his mind? He has not. In his treatment of
D2, we have moved to a meta-level on which alternative lines of play are being
weighed and considered. An obligational dispute may go one way, he suggests,
but we can formally construct another line of play, and that formal construct
a counterfactual world with an alternative actualitycan legitimately house
the positing-in-being of a counterfactual state of affairs. No question of mov-
ing from one line of play to another need arise. The difference between D1 and
D2, then, can be put thus: the treatment of D2 renders explicit the full formal
implications of the waiver endorsed in D1. The alternative positing-in-being
applied in the case of D2 is simply a vividly imagined and thorough spelling
out of the implications of what it means for something to be genuinely possi-
ble: the latter is something that some agent might have posited in being, i.e.,
posited as actual, but did not.351
examples during the course of this discussion: the question becomes one of whether God
is willing to damn Socrates. The modal issues are the same, however, so I have chosen to
keep things simple.
351 It should be noted that it is at any rate superficially surprising to give distinct treatments of
D1 and D2 since, as discussed in 3.2.13.2.2, they are transposed versions of each other.
D1 is based on an enthymeme of the following form (hidden premise supplied):
1. God knows/reveals some future contingent a.

[2. Necessarily, whatever God knows/reveals is true.]
3. Therefore, necessarily, a is true.
For the intended reading of D2, we simply transpose and negate lines 2 and 3:
1. God knows/reveals some future contingent a.

2. It is possible that a is not true.
3. Therefore, it is possible that something God knows/reveals is not true.
But, as explained above, the treatments given to the two arguments are not really distinct.
Psychologically, at least, it makes sense that it is precisely the second argument-form
that leads Strelley to develop his idea of alternative obligational lines of play: in D1, after
all, the suppressed second premise is necessary, whereas in D2, both premises are ex
hypothesi contingent; we want a way for both of them to be, in some sense, simultaneously
possible.
172 chapter 1
Strelleys analysis, in other words, assumes a fixed future throughout. But his
treatment of distinct and incompossible obligational lines of play once more
suggests a further development in the direction of libertarianism, namely the
idea that agents might in some sense switch the reality polarity. This idea, along
with Scotus notion of synchronic contingency, may have had some influence
on Ockhams development of the Revocable Default Future model.
In 7.2.2, I have characterized Ockhams use of ponere in esse as essentially
action-theoretical in character (as opposed to that of Scotus, whose use is
logical). This usage is consistent with Ockhams treatment of the term in other
contexts; taken as a whole, these contexts are the basis for attributing to him the
communis opinio discussed in 7.3. In the Ordinatio, for example, he attributes
to certain artisti the view that extrinsic (future-dependent) truths about the
past can be changed. Indeed, he says, the proposition God knows that this part
of the contradiction will be true is contingent to the extent that although [it
is] true, nevertheless it is possible that it never will have been true.352 Ockham
then explicitly invokes the positability criterion:
And if it should be said: let it be posited in being, and nothing impossible

will follow; therefore, these two things are true at the same time: God
wills that a shall be, and God does not will that a shall be.
I say that if that possible [thing or proposition] has been posited in
being, nothing impossible follows. But it may not be posited in being
thus: God, willing that a shall be, does not will that a shall be; but
[rather] thus: God does not will that a shall be, and if this is posited in
being, nothing impossible follows. For nothing follows except this: God
has never willed that a would be, and this is not impossible but rather
contingent, just as its contradictory, God wills that a shall be, has always
been contingent.353
352 Ockham, Ordinatio i, d. 38, q. u. [OTh vol. 4, p. 586, ll. 47]: Immo haec [proposition Deus
scit quod haec pars contradictionis erit vera] est contingens in tantum quod quantum-
cumque haec sit vera , tamen possibile est quod haec numquam fuerit vera.
353 Ibid., p. 586, l. 19p. 587, l. 47: Et si dicatur: ponatur in esse, et non accidet impossibile,
et per consequens ista stant simul Deus vult a fore et Deus non vult a fore.
Dico quod posito illo possibili in esse, non sequitur impossibile. Sed non debet sic poni
in esse Deus volens a fore, non vult a fore; sed debet sic poni in esse Deus non vult a
fore, et isto posito in esse, nullum sequitur impossibile. Quia non sequitur nisi ista Deus
numquam voluit a fore et ista non est impossibilis sed contingens, sicut sua contradictoria
semper fuit contingens, scilicet Deus vult a fore.
This is the Revocable Default Future model. Ockham, or the artisti he alludes
to, are countenancing the possibility of a switch in the future TRL: At time (t0)
(the notional now), the default future moment a (which ex hypothesi does not
predate (t+1)) houses the res or proposition , while at time (t+1), a may come
to house . As a result, for each moment in the timeline before (t+1), extrinsic
(future) facts about a domiciled in that moment will be genuinely different
from the way they were before the relocation of the default future: the (relative)
future will have changed for such moments. The deep problems this creates for
Ockham, which oblige him to engage in a certain degree of politically canny
obfuscation, have been discussed in 7.2.3.
Before moving on to a typology of ponere [in esse], yet another variant must
be mentioned. This variant is, once again, due to Duns Scotus, and will appear
again in a different form in the work of Walter Chatton.354 Recall that creaturely
agents, for Scotus, engage at every moment in ontological disambiguation
along the atemporal medium of instants of nature; this disambiguation is
referred to as positing in being (see 5.2.15.2.2). Clearly, then, positing in
being need not assume a default future (or future, if we are talking about
Scotus atemporal medium) at all: it can simply select for actualization one of
the several futures that currently constitute live options.
8.3 Ponere [in Esse] in Sense i: Assumptions and/or Actions

From Scotus, then, we have three meanings of positing-in-being, from Strelley
we have a fourth, and finally a fifth is developed in the work of Ockham. The
varieties of positing-in-being hitherto discussed can be tabulated as follows:
i(1) The assumption of something as an additional member of the set of

things that are the case. This sense, which can be compared to the making
of assumptions in a Fitch-style natural deduction calculus, is the interpre-
tation Scotus rejects when discussing God Can Be Wrong (see 5.2.3).
i(2) The assumption of something as a mere modal alternative, i.e., the formal
stipulation of possible worlds other than @ (the actual world) and the
exploration of the structure of such worlds, without reference to actuality.
This is the interpretation Scotus effectively endorses when discussing
GCBW.
i(3) The fixation of @ to a unique index. On the assumption of a default future,
sense i(3) is ambiguous between i(3)(a) merely metaphysical, i.e., some-
thing God might have allowed but did not (Strelleys ludic usage), and
354 For discussion see 10.1.2.3, 10.1.3, 10.1.4.2, and 10.1.4.3 below.
174 chapter 1
i(3)(b) conative, i.e., something God or creature can still bring about (on
my reading, Ockhams usage); absent the default-future assumption, i(3)
is conative, and disambiguates between multiple live futures (Scotus
usage, also occurring in Chattons Day 2 model; for the latter, see 10.1.4.2
below).
8.4 Ponere [in Esse] in Sense ii: The Real Occurrence of a Given Res /
Proposition
The phrase ponere [in esse] is often used in the sense of God arranging for
some thing or state of affairs to exist or be the case, or for its mere (eventual)
occurrence. Depending on the context, the emphasis may be on God and the
efficacy of His will, or it may be on a fixed future eventually becoming the actual
present. Yet once more, Duns Scotus furnishes good examples. In a discussion
of divine omnipotence, he maintains that when the divine will has been
determined by a final determination to posit something in being, that [thing]
will be.355 Elsewhere, in a passage specifically devoted to the relation between
determinate truth and positing-in-being (quoted at length at the end of 5.2.1),
he uses the idea of positing-in-being to mean that something has or has not yet
actually happened, i.e., been instantiated in reality in the timeline. For Scotus,
positing-in-being-ii clearly does not define determinate truth: a future truth, for
example, can be determinate though not yet posited-ii.356 But the fact that the
future truth in question has not yet really occurred, i.e., not yet been posited-ii,
means that it is open to some cause to posit-i(3) the opposite; and this kind of
openness is enough to justify consilatio and negotiatio. Here and elsewhere in
high scholastic literature on future contingents, positing-in-being-ii is a central
expression of the largely unquestioned pre-modern commitment to A-series
thinking: that which has been posited-in-being-ii is that which is left in the
wake of the moving nunc.
355 Duns Scotus, Ordinatio i, d. 46, q.u. [Vat. vol. 6, p. 377, l. 17p. 378, l. 9]: Voluntas Dei, quan-
tum ad omnia, semper debet impleri,quia sicut omnipotens potest omne possibile, ita,
quando voluntas divina determinatur ad ponendum aliquid in esse ultima determina-
tione, illud erit; velle autem illud voluntate beneplaciti, est velle illud ultima determina-
tione quae potest poni ex parte ipsius voluntatis omnipotentis, volentis effectum in esse;
ergo, respectu cuiuscumque effectus Deus est sic volens, illud erit.
Et posset confirmari ratio, quia si causa, ultima determinatione ad aliquid determinata,
non poneret effectum in esse, hoc non videretur nisi propter impotentiam eius
356 Hence ita quod alterum extremum est positum (Ordinatio i, d. 38, pars 2, et d. 39, qq. 15
[Vat. vol. 6, p. 432, l. 2]) should be construed as a restrictive rather than as a nonrestrictive
clause.
Later thinkers, to Strelley and beyond, take up interpretation ii of positing-

in-being and use it to argue for various, often mutually conflicting, positions.
Some of these we have already seen or touched upon. Ockham, distinguishing
between Gods antecedent and consequent will, writes: [Gods] consequent
will is that by which God efficaciously wills something by positing that
[thing] in being.357 Peter Auriol, arguing against the distinction Scotus draws
between determinate truth and positing-ii, claims that from the fact that a
future-tense statement has a determinate truth-value, it inevitably and neces-
sarily follows that this future [event or proposition] will be posited in being.358
In his Reportatio super Sententias, Walter Chatton, in contrast to Scotus and
more or less in line with Wylton and Auriol, establishes a close conceptual
connection between determinate truth and positing-in-being-ii. For him, it is
perfectly safe and accurate to ascribe determinate truth to propositions as long
as we include the clause quo posito in esse in that ascription:
[On the correct interpretation of Aristotle,] some proposition signifies

that something will be, which [something], once posited in being, [would
be such that] it would then be true to say that a thing just is, in fact,
as the proposition said it would be, and thus it cannot be denied that a
proposition about the future is determinately true 359
Chatton expands on this idea a few sections later:
What, then, do you understand by [the claim that] this proposition is true:
Socrates will sit? Either that the thing is now just as the proposition
signifies, and that is what is demanded by the truth of a proposition about
357 Ockham, Ordinatio i, d. 46, q. 1 [OTh vol. 4, p. 674, ll. 56]: Voluntas autem consequens est
illa qua Deus vult efficaciter aliquid ponendo illud in esse.
358 Auriol, Scriptum, d. 38, a. 3 [Schabel 1995, p. 126, l. 840p. 127, l. 844]: Quod igitur sequatur
immutabilitas futurorum, si concedatur quod propositio de futuro illud exprimens sit vera
vel falsa, potest evidenter demonstrari ex duabus propositionibus: Prima quidem quod si
talis propositio vera est, illa immutabiliter et inevitabiliter erit vera; secunda vero quod ex
illa inevitabiliter et necessario sequitur quod tale futurum ponetur in esse.
359 rss i, d. 38 [8]: Quid igitur vocat ARISTOTELES propositionem non esse determinate
veram? Vel quod nihil sit in rerum natura, quo posito haec propositio de futuro est
determinate vera, et hoc [est] verum; vel quod aliqua propositio significat aliquid fore,
quo posito in esse, verum esset tunc dicere quod sic est modo in re sicut propositio
significavit fore, et sic non potest negare propositionem de futuro esse veram determinate,
quia quando Sortes actu sedet, non potest negari quin tunc ita sit in re sicut significavit
ista prius Sortes sedebit.
176 chapter 1
the present, but not about the future, and thus it is not appropriate; or that
some thing will be, which, once posited in due time [in sua mensura], is
just as the proposition about the future signified; and if we speak thus,
neither Aristotle nor anyone else can rationally deny that it is true.360
Many other passages from Chattons texts on future contingents make use of
sense ii of ponere [in esse]. Other senses, too, appear in his work.361
8.5 Ponere [in Esse]: A Unifying Interpretation?

In short, the full range of meanings for ponere [in esse], along with variants
like ponere in actu,362 is available at least from the late thirteenth century on.
Does a single idea unify all these meanings? Although a Platonizing reduction
seems impossible, a less rigorous generalization is straightforward enough. All
senses of ponere [in esse] involve the adoption of some discursive or agentic
posture toward a res/proposition that is not currently the case/true; the result
of adopting this posture, in each case, is that the topical focus or scene of action
is shifted so as to center on that res/proposition. If we restrict ourselves to
senses i(3), i(3)(a), i(3)(b), and ii, we can narrow things down still further: the
topical focus or scene of action is shifted so as to center on that res/proposition,
now figured as actual. There is a conceptual progression, perhaps facilitated
by the ars obligatoria, from ponere [in esse] as a tool that a disputant must be
able to employ without absurdity as a criterion of genuine possibility, to an
action by which God or creature can realize something by effecting it in the
timeline. The conceptual bridge seems to be sense i(3)(b): if we imagine that
what we can posit in being in a theoretical dispute stands open to us or to God
as a modally real option, then it is a small step to using the term to indicate
the action of really effecting it. Such a use, such a bridge, was perhaps made
more plausible, more crossable, by the salience of the ars obligatoria in these
disputes.
360 rss i, d. 38 [15]: Quid igitur intelligis per istam propositionem esse veram Sortes sedebit?
Aut quod sic sit modo in re sicut propositio significat, et hoc est illud quod exigit veritas
propositionis de presenti, non autem de futuro, et ita non est ad propositum. Vel quod
aliqua res erit, qua posita in sua mensura, sic est sicut propositio de futuro significavit, et
sic loquendo nec ARISTOTELES nec aliquis [alius] potest rationabiliter negare eam esse
veram.
361 A few examples: For sense i(1), see rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1 [5], [69], [79], Quodlibet q. 27 [1],
[8], [42]; for sense i(3)(a), see rss i, d. 38 [34], dd. 4041, q. 1 [10]; for sense ii see rss i, d. 38
[24], [40], [47]. There are many more examples, and many instances that are ambiguous.
362 An alternative favored by Auriol; see 6.2.4, footnote 286.
In general, then, ponere [in esse] emerges as a discursive move located at an

indeterminate or varying point between senses i(1) i(3)(a) on the one hand
(a formal or ludic gesture) and senses i(3)(b) and ii on the other (an agentic
move with real consequences). In most cases, context allows us to isolate
the specific sense intended. However, given that there is in late scholastic
literature a strong tendency to use the ludic or formal as a strong metaphor
for the agentic (as in the Dominican tradition of obligational theology), the
multivalence is sometimes ineradicable: in such cases, senses i and ii seem to
fuse.
9 Recapitulation
At this point it makes sense to take stock. The history of the problem of
future contingents up to the establishment of the communis opinio can be
summarized as follows.
First there is the tradition, initiated (though not endorsed) by Aristotle in the
ninth chapter of De Interpretatione, which argues positively for logical deter-
minism by way of the necessity of the past. This ancient tradition includes
the related causal determinism of the Stoics and, perhaps, the Master Argu-
ment of Diodorus Cronus; Boethius logical compatibilism is a response to it.
Resisting the de-temporalization of the problem and its treatment as a mere
scope fallacy (an approach that will become mainstream in the sophismatic
tradition), Boethius approach postulates a right-branching model of time that
allows both determinate truth about the future and unreal modal alternatives,
as well as enabling the threat of logical determinism to be countered by a for-
mal distinction (albeit an ambiguous one) between two kinds of necessity.
Under Boethius influence, many other formal expedients develop over the cen-
turies (e.g., the conjunctive analysis of divine knowledge claims).
To some, however, the logical compatibilist model seems inadequate, both
because it stipulates a contingency for God and creature that is founded on
merely formal alternatives and because it places retroactive limitations on
Gods timeless power to act. These thinkers, beginning with Peter Damian,
constitute what I call the tradition of divine modal pleroma; they introduce
a medium of action orthogonal to and in some sense prior to the timeline
in order to accommodate Gods selection of the actual world from live modal
alternatives. The most explicit and sophisticated example of this style of think-
ing available in the early fourteenth century is the instants-of-nature model of
Duns Scotus, but even a thinker like Ockham, who rejects much of Scotus anal-
ysis, takes over aspects of the ontologically heavy contingency contributed
178 chapter 1
by the pleromatic tradition. Partly as a result, his solution vacillates between a

Boethian A(a) model and an open-future A(mr) model.
The approaches of Wylton and Auriol constitute a renewed focus on the
possibility of a purely formal solution to the problem. Here, the focus is on the
possibility of keeping the future ontologically stable while revoking the truth-
privileges of future-tense propositions. The assertion of a proposition with an
intermediate truth-value, with Aristotle invoked as an authority, is mooted. This
approach, though it sounds radical, is in fact fundamentally similar in spirit and
in world-picture to Boethian logical compatibilism.
Finally, and partially under the influence of the ars obligatoria, a ludic use
of the traditional term ponere in esse develops which allows thinkers to make
a formal gesture that stands at an indeterminate position between that of a
formal assumption, an action, and the assumption of an occurrent event in the
timeline. The ambiguity of this gesture lets it assume all these functions, and it
often does so, even in the work of individual thinkers (e.g., Strelley and Scotus,
both of whom use the phrase in senses (i) and (ii)and examples could be
multiplied indefinitely).
Thus a thinker of the 1320s who faced the problem of future contingents had
at his disposal an imposing (though quite confusing) array of conceptual tools,
the results of centuries of inconclusive debate on the subject: closed-future vs.
open-future models, scope disambiguators, distinctions between determinate
and indeterminate truth, the future-dependency escape clause, conjunctive
analyses, Scotistic distinctions among kinds of determinateness, instants of
nature, manner of affixation of truth operator, truth-value gaps, ponere in esse
in all its senses, and many variations on all of the above. Faced with such a
wide variety of analytical apparatus, a thinker was to a large extent at liberty to
tailor his system to the measure of his own personality and intellectual inclina-
tions. As we have seen, however, certain positions were more dangerous than
others. Walter Chatton was, if anything, even more keenly aware of the dangers
involved in maintaining certain positions than was Ockham, and his encounter
with the problem of future contingents reflects not only the contours of his
rather off-beat and eclectic mind, but also his pervasive fear of giving offense
to theological orthodoxy.
10 Walter Chatton on Future Contingents
Chatton (c. 1285/12901343) gives his treatment of future contingents in the

first book of his Sentences commentary (hereafter rss i), dd. 3841, and in
his Quodlibet, qq. 2729. These texts do not, at first reading, seem to yield a
coherent doctrine, but rather resemble a kind of agonized and inconclusive

struggle with the logical and theological issues surrounding the subject. Certain
broad trends of thought are apparent, and certain conceptual tools appear
again and again, but the general impression is aptly described by Schabel
2000: 231 as a snarl of opinions. In fact, Chatton does have, if not a specific
and identifiable doctrine, then at least a characteristic (and quite eccentric)
approach to the problem of future contingents. However, for a number of
reasons, recovering that approach from the extant texts poses special problems.
I begin with the rss sections.
10.1 Chattons Reportatio super Sententias

rss was produced some time between 1321 and 1323.363 To judge by the rough
and often obscure state of the text, it is (as Schabel 2000: 231 remarks) a real
reportatio, i.e., someones notes on Chattons Sentences lectures, entirely unpol-
ished.364 As a result, the interpretation of a given passage often involves an
uncomfortable amount of linguistic patching, teasing out of hidden implica-
tions, and arbitrary disambiguation. Furthermore, like many Sentences com-
mentators of the period, Chatton engages intensively and in a complex way
with his predecessors and contemporaries: he discusses their views at length,
criticizing a point here, cautiously endorsing an argument there, and con-
structing his own position through and by this engagement. Russell Friedmans
remarks on Duns Scotus procedure in Ordinatio i, d. 11 can serve to describe
Chattons approach as well:
In this distinction, Scotus presents no less than seven positions, acting like
a narrator adjudicating between the various positions, dismissing what he
finds unacceptable, but taking from them what he finds to be worthwhile
and what will eventually play a role in his own solution to the question.
friedman 2002: 94
To some extent, as the example of Scotus suggests, Chattons adjudicative

approach simply marks rss as a typical product of its time, place, and religious
order.365 By itself, such an approach might not have made for any special
363 See Etzkorns Introduction in rss vol. 1, p. vii.

364 The someone in question may have been Adam Wodeham (cf. Courtenay 1978: 70; rss
vol. 1, pp. 1112, vol. 2, p. x).
365 rss i has a number of other features that Friedman 2002: 84100 has identified as typical
of an early fourteenth-century, and particularly Franciscan, author. For example, Chatton
follows the selective rather than the exhaustive method of commenting on Lombards
180 chapter 1
interpretive difficulty. In this case, however, the dialogical character of the text
combines with a prose that is often vague, awkward, and concise to the point
of unintelligibility; in consequence, it is a considerable challenge to distinguish
the thread of Chattons opinions from that of his often unnamed interlocutors,
many of whose doctrines are in any case frustratingly close to his own.
The difficulties arising from the rough textual state of rss are compounded
by Chattons remarkable and notorious reluctance to commit himself unequiv-
ocally to any definite opinion on the subject at hand.366 While quite willing to
use the first person when pointing out the errors in others reasoning, Chat-
ton becomes extraordinarily cautious at precisely those textual loci where we
might expect to find, or indeed imagine that we have found, his clear text. For
example, in rss i, d. 38, after reviewing a number of approaches, he interrupts
what seems very much like a series of bona fide assertions with the remark I do
not want to assert anything on any [such] perilous subject.367 This tendency
becomes especially pronounced in dd. 4041, q. 1, in which Chatton makes fre-
quent use of various forms of the verb recitare, repeatedly insisting that he is
merely reciting the opinions of others, not affirming his own beliefs. Here are
a few of these disclaimers:
I do not wish to propose anything except as though reciting [others

opinions].368
In the foregoing I have recited certain ways [of explaining things] But
let no opinion be attributed to me, but rather to those whose [opinions]
I recite.369
text: topics of interest to Chatton receive extended treatment, while issues of relatively
little interest to him are given very cursory attention or ignored altogether. Some exam-
ples: Chatton runs dd. 3334 together and treats them in relatively perfunctory fashion,
a move typical of early fourteenth-century Franciscans; he makes a unit of dd. 4041 as
well (although here, of course, he dilates rather than compresses); he elides Lombards
coda on divine knowledge at the end of d. 41; and, in dd. 4041, he focuses his attention
on variations of the popular question of the existence and nature of a meritorious cause
of someones predestination.
366 Schabel 2000: 231 and Keele 2014: 5.1 have both remarked on Chattons skittishness in this
regard.
367 rss i, d. 38 [26]: nihil volo asserere in quacumque materia periculosa.
368 rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1 [4]: Sed istis positis dubium restat, inquirere scilicet quis sit modus
exprimendi in ista materia, in qua nihil ponere volo nisi recitative.
369 rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1 [8]: Nulla tamen opinio mihi imponatur sed illis quorum sunt quas
recito.
If anyone would dare to propound the doctrine just recited, which I do

not dare to do, he would ask of his opponent: What do you understand
by Gods knowledge that this one will be saved?370
And this is just a representative sample. Clearly, Chatton felt that he was playing
with fire in even discussing these ideas, and his desire to avoid getting burned
contributes to our exegetical problems. In the next section I discuss some of
the factors of his immediate cultural and intellectual background that might
account for his timidity.
10.1.1 Condemnations
In response to the challenges posed by the reception of Graeco-Arabic Aris-
totelian and Neoplatonist doctrines in the Latin West, traditionalist elements
within the Church mounted a kind of rearguard action that found expression
in a series of condemnations issued in France and England from the thirteenth
to the early fourteenth centuries.371 These condemnations have an eclectic
character, and most are unrelated to the problem of future contingents. How-
ever, among the many doctrines listed as heretical are a number which have a
direct bearing on issues of matters of modality and of divine and human power
that are inextricably linked with our problem. For example, of the doctrines
proscribed in the Paris 1277 condemnations, propositions 13, 14, and 15 place
broadly Neoplatonist limitations on divine cognition; indeed, proposition 15
specifically claims that God does not know future contingents.372 Propositions
17, 22, and 27 impose similar limitations on divine action.373 The condemned
propositions that concern creaturely potency focus on the possibility of astral
determinism (propositions 104106374 and 156375) and determination of the
will by appetite and intellect (propositions 158169376). General necessitation,
though of an exclusively causal variety, is condemned in propositions 101 and
370 rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1 [14]: Si quis auderet dicere viam iam recitatam, quam ego non audeo
dicere, quaereret ab opponente quid intelligis per Deum scire quod iste salvabitur.
371 See Wippel 2003 and Thijssen 2013 for an overview of the Paris 1270 and 1277 condem-
nations, Lewry 1984 for Richard Kilwardbys 1277 condemnations, and Courtenay 1991 for
condemnations at the Austin Friar convent at Oxford in 1315.
372 Hissette 1977, pp. 3940. Here and throughout, I use the Chartularium numbers as Hissette
lists them.
373 Hissette 1977, pp. 45, 55, 64.
374 Hissette 1977, p. 174.
375 Hissette 1977, p. 240.
376 Hissette 1977, p. 262.
182 chapter 1
102; as so often, Siger of Brabant is the apparent target.377 Of Kilwardbys 1277

condemnations in logicalibus, proposition 8 asserts general necessitation of
future events.378
Modality in the broad sense is also the subject of the Oxford condemnations
issued at the Austin Friar convent in 1315. These condemnations concern the
relation of the Trinity to creation.379 The identity of the censured bachelor
is unknown, but the condemned propositions all run in the same direction:
the bachelor had claimed that God, by His absolute power, could have made
creatures without resorting to the Word. In modern terms, the bachelor wanted
to establish the existence of possible worlds that are more or less normal
in terms of the relation of the Father to Creation, but in which the Son does
not, or does not yet, exist. The condemnation establishes that there are no
such possible worlds: John 1:14 must be taken as describing not only what
happened, but what necessarily happened.
What can be gathered from the foregoing review? Merely that in the early
fourteenth century, the topic of future contingents, since by its very nature it
involved just those issues of modality and divine cognition that had repeatedly
and recently provoked censorious attention from Church authorities, was dan-
gerous ground. Consider that several of the 1277 condemnations had the effect
of prohibiting modal and cognitive limitations on God, while the 1315 condem-
nations prohibited granting excessive modal latitude to God. In the mind of a
theorist who set out to describe the interplay between divine and creaturely
modality, the pressure to strike the right balance might well have produced,
if not neurosis, then at least a certain circumspection. If Chatton was indeed
afraid, his fear was not without basis: in 1324, his colleague and sparring part-
ner William Ockham would be removed to Avignon and accused of Pelagianism
partly because of his heterodox views on grace and predestination (see 7.2.3
above). If we bear all this in mind, Chattons frequent recourse to doubletalk
and indirection becomes, if no less exasperating, at any rate more understand-
able.
10.1.2 Chattons Toolkit

The specific reasons for Chattons skittishness will become more apparent
when we come to examine his substantial claims about future contingents.
However, since those claims are in a state of flux throughout rss i, dd. 38
377 Hissette 1977, p. 171.

378 Lewry 1984: 420, footnote 5: 8. Item quod omnis propositio de futuro vera est necessaria.
379 See Courtenay 1991 for texts, translation, and commentary.
41, it makes sense to begin our inquiry with the theoretical apparatus that
remains relatively stable throughout these texts. Chattons toolkit contains the
following highly adaptable instruments: the Copulative Analysis of Divine
Foreknowledge, the Wylton Scope Analysis, the theory of res as objects of
cognition and assent, and the Doctrine of Contradictories. None of these
tools is entirely new, but Chatton uses them in novel and interesting ways, and
in any case their use as an ensemble is indeed original.
10.1.2.1 The Copulative Analysis of Divine Foreknowledge380

We are familiar with this analysis from earlier versions of it, discussed in
4.6.44.6.4.2 above: propositions asserting that God knows that will be
must be analyzed into conjunctions of the form God knows , and will be.
Unlike Bonaventure, Aquinas, and Scotus, Chatton regards the analysis as cor-
rect. He also provides an interpretation of both conjuncts that lets him avoid,
or at least postpone, some of the difficulties that his predecessors found trou-
bling: he reads divine cognition as a form of apprehension and the facticity
of the known quasi-propositional object as a kind of assent, giving the name
copulative (copulativa) to the linguistic complex serving as the vehicle for
the joint assertion of these two phenomena. First he draws on a distinction,
which he has taken over from Ockham, between apprehensive and judicative
acts of intellect. On Ockhams reading, in apprehensive acts, which can be
directed to simple objects (e.g., things) or complex objects (e.g., propositions),
we merely consider the relevant object without either assenting to it or dissent-
ing from it; in judicative acts, which are limited to complex objects, we assent
or dissent.381 In the course of a long debate with Ockham on the subject of
assent, connected with his celebrated critique of Ockhams early fictum theory
of cognitive objects (see below), Chatton articulates the following position:382
Judicative acts normally presuppose corresponding apprehensive acts, but are,
strictly speaking, separate from those acts. Moreover, acts of judgement have,
in themselves, no propositional content (this is the salient point of difference
between Chattons position and Ockhams); instead, they resemble a simple
nod, compared by Brower-Toland to a Fregean judgement stroke, which can
380 This discussion builds on the analysis of Keele 2014: 5.3. The Copulative Analysis appears
in rss i, d. 38 [28], [40][41]; d. 39 [13][17], [20]; and dd. 4041, q. 1 [14], [16], [31], and [35].
See also Quodlibet q. 28 [46].
381 See Ockham, Ordinatio i, prol., q. 1 [OTh vol. 1, p. 16, ll. 622].
382 My exposition of Chattons approach to the apprehension-judgement distinction gen-
erally follows that of Brower-Toland (forthcoming, 2733). The main locus for Chattons
theory is rel prol., q. 1, a. 1.
184 chapter 1
in principle, e.g., by Gods absolute power, appear in the absence of any cor-
responding apprehension.383 Thus Chatton comes to the discussion of future
contingents with a pre-existing doctrinal reason to accept the idea, counterin-
tuitive though it may be, of a complete separation of cognition and its contents.
Chattons next move is to combine his understanding of the apprehensive
judicative distinction with the analysis of divine cognition given by Ockham as
follows:
It must be known that know is interpreted in this discussion in two

ways, sc. broadly and strictly. In the first way, it is the same as cognize,
according to [the sense in which] cognizing is common to everything [as
its object]. And in this way, God knows, i.e., cognizes, everything, i.e.,
the complex and the non-complex, the necessary and the contingent, the
true, the false, and the impossible. [But] strictly, know is the same as
cognize [something] true, and in this sense nothing is known but what
is true.384
Chatton adopts Ockhams approach to divine cognition, which corresponds

roughly to the traditional account of scientia simplicis intelligentiae, while out-
sourcing the function of scientia visionis to assent; the latter is given a volun-
tarist reading (see below). He thinks that this analysis secures an interpretation
of divine intellection as necessary, complete, and immutable, while allowing
the objects of divine knowledge (as redefined) to be contingent, particular, and,
in the case of creaturely actions, mutable.
The details are as follows. God has a perfect cognition of all simple and
complex objects. To say, however, that God cognizes this, where this can be
taken as standing for some object, does not yet imply that that object will be
actualized. What it amounts to, instead, is a perfect knowledge of the intension
of that object. If we limit ourselves to propositional objects, then in terms
383 The characterization of assent as a nod (adnuitio), along with the possibility of a com-
plete separation of apprehension and assent, comes from a discussion of Chattons views
by Adam Wodeham (Lectura prol. q. 6 18 [Wodeham 1990, vol. 1, p. 173, ll. 1337], cited and
discussed in Brower-Toland, forthcoming, 32). See also rel prol., q. 1, a. 1, p. 21, ll. 106111.
384 Ockham, Ordinatio i, d. 39, q. u. [OTh vol. 4, p. 589, ll. 1016]: [S]ciendum quod scire
dupliciter accipitur ad praesens, scilicet large et stricte. Primo modo idem est quod
cognoscere secundum quod cognoscere commune est ad omnia. Et isto modo Deus scit,
hoc est cognoscit omnia, scilicet complexa et incomplexa, necessaria et contingentia, vera
et falsa et impossibilia. Stricte scire idem est quod cognoscere verum, et sic nihil scitur
nisi verum.
of the right-branching model, Gods cognition of any proposition amounts

to His knowledge, for any temporal-modal node (tn[]), of the truth-value of
at that node.385 allows any well-formed substitution instance, including
instances with multiple modal prefixes; hence, God has a perfect knowledge
of all possible world-states and all their modal connections. What God does
not know, until events bring it to light, is which of two distinct world-states
will turn out to be the actual one. Defining knowledge1 as knowledge in the
normal sense and knowledge2 as the kind of knowledge God has about events
in time, the sentence God knows2 that Socrates will sit in moment (tf) is
shorthand for something like the situation pictured in Fig. 11, in which histories
AE branch off from the actual now. Gods knowledge1 is thus another way
of talking about the timeless, necessary, and direct knowledge of modally
closed sentences that He has in all versions of the right-branching model
hitherto discussed. The radical difference from those systems can be expressed
by noting that, in Boethian logical compatibilism, God knows1 (i.e., knows in
the normal sense) which future is actual; Chattons God does not. However,
since knowledge, by a generally accepted definition, is cognizing something true,
we may grant God knowledge2, a kind of knowledge-by-courtesy, of a future
which is yet to be posited in being,386 even though that future is, on a normal
reading of know, outside His cognitive reach.
God knows2 that Socrates will sit at (tf):
figure 11 A schematic representation of a Chattonian divine-knowledge2 claim.
The second conjunct in the above formulation is clearly doing a great deal
of work. First, as mentioned above, it represents the facticity of the known
quasi-propositional object: put plainly, it contains the answer to the question
385 In Rondo Keeles phrase, Chattons God is aware of the entire truth career of any given
proposition; see Keele 2014: 5.3.
386 I deliberately refrain from specifying the kind of positing intended here.
186 chapter 1
what will really happen? Furthermore, it represents the combined action

of divine and creaturely wills, thus bringing Chattons analysis in line with
Scotus voluntarism as well as his theory of co-caused events. Indeed, Chattons
treatment of the second conjunct indicates that the Copulative Analysis is
intended, among other things, as a modification of Scotus account of the
interactions of the divine will and the divine intellect. Chatton makes this clear
by aligning the second conjunct with assent,387 treating assent as a kind of
willed action,388 and giving the following analysis, which he offers specifically
as a defense of the Scotistic idea of divine cognition of futures following the
determinations of the divine will:
I say that everything that can be caused either will be caused by God
alone, and then it proceeds from the contingent action of God; or it will
be caused by a creature, and then not without the concurrent contingent
action of God. Thus for the truth of the [proposition] God knows that
this will be, it is required that God apprehend the thing signified by this
complex, and also that this will be.389
Two sections later, Chatton assures us that Gods knowledge that a will be
includes more than Gods cognition and [more] than the apprehension of the
thing signified by this complex, since it includes [the fact] that a will be from
God.390 Chattons analysis, which separates divine knowledge into cognitive
and volitional portions, has the disadvantages of Scotus second, esoteric
account of the instants-of-nature model (see 5.2.1, footnote 192); on the other
hand, again like the instants-of-nature model, it does succeed in locating the
ultimate origin of all events, and all knowledge of events, in God Himself, even
if that knowledge has a counterintuitively fragmented form and if control
over some events is delegated by God to creatures.
387 See, e.g., rss i, d. 38 [42].

388 See rss i, d. 1, q. 2 [63], cited and discussed in Brower-Toland, forthcoming, 2930.
389 rss i, d. 39 [15]: Ad secundum dico quod omne quod potest causari, vel causabitur a
solo Deo, et tunc procedit a contingenti actione Dei; vel causabitur a creatura, et tunc
non nisi concurrente contingenti actione Dei. Ideo ad veritatem huius Deus scit hoc fore,
requiritur quod Deus apprehendat rem significatam per hoc complexum, et simul quod
hoc erit.
390 rss i, d. 39 [17]: Ad aliud, cum dicitur quod non novit a fore nisi per determinationem
voluntatis suae, dico quod solum volo dicere quod Deum scire a fore plus includit quam
cognitionem Dei et quam apprehensionem rei significatae per hoc complexum, quia
includit etiam quod a erit a Deo.
It should be stressed that Gods knowledge1 never comes to include infor-

mation about actuality; hence it never grows, a saving clause which ensures
the immutability of divine cognition. In other words, the change from mere
cognition (= knowledge2-claims about the future) to knowledge (= knowledge2-
claims about the present and past), which occurs when the truth-making res is
posited in being, is entirely extrinsic to cognition, but nevertheless counts, for
Chatton, as a (harmless) transition from what we call divine foreknowledge to
what we call divine knowledge.391 As we shall see, however, in at least one of the
theories presented by Chatton, God knows1 some information about actuality;
but as He knows it from eternity, His immutability is not threatened.
10.1.2.2 Chattons Version of the Wylton Scope Analysis392

Now, as in previous versions of the conjunctive analysis, the second conjunct
guarantees the contingency of the whole expression. But how exactly is the
contingency of the second conjunct to be construed? Chatton could, of course,
simply rely on its modally specified character, taking note of the existence of
alternative histories (in Fig. 11, specifically histories D and E); this would be
a logical-compatibilist approach to contingency. But while he does offer such
an analysis as an orthodox alternative,393 Chatton does not himself choose to
define contingency in this way, instead relying on the Wylton Scope Analysis.
The WSA has been discussed in 6.1 above; see also commentary to d. 38
[22][23]. Suffice it to say that Chatton adopts Wyltons solution, which he
claims to have heard some time previously at Oxford, without significant
changes. In addition, he reviews and endorses Wyltons in infinitum maneuver
against the attempt to reinstate a wide-scope truth-declaration and a concomi-
tant reactivation of the truth-to-necessity argument.394
Here is the first formulation of the WSA in Chattons writings:
391 Chatton expresses this as a difference between mere cognition and knowledge or assent;
crucially, however, he makes it clear that nothing happens to cognition at instant a. See
especially rss i, d. 38 [42], dd. 4041, q. 1 [31].
392 For Chattons expositions of the WSA, see rss i, d. 38 [22], [23], [40], [43], and [55]; for the
remainder of dd. 3841, see especially dd. 4041, q. 1 [31][35], where the analysis underlies
the treatment of assent to prophecy. In the Quodlibet, q. 28, the WSA appears as Opinion
13 (OP13), and is presented and defended in [30][35].
393 This is the fallback option; see rss i, d. 38 [26], [29], [41], [55], commentary on these
sections, and 10.1.4.1 below.
394 See 6.1 above. Chattons review of this argument is at rss i, d. 38 [23]; see also Quodlibet
q. 28 [30].
188 chapter 1
[This analysis] says that when you accept Antichrist will be or Socrates
will sit in a, this can assert either that it is true, or that its actuality [suam
de inesse] will be true. On the first reading, it is not true; on the second, it
is (or can be posited to be) true.395
This first formulation is carefully worded. For example, Chatton makes it clear,
from the beginning, that the WSA can be used both as a way to establish an
indeterminate truth-value and as a way to guarantee contingency. Thus the
contingent proposition Socrates will sit in a can either be formulated wrongly
as (1) (which would equate to necessity) or rightly as (2):
(1) (True) (FUTURE(a)) [Socrates sits], i.e., It is true now that Socrates will
sit in a.
(2) (FUTURE(a)) (True) [Socrates sits], i.e., It will be true that Socrates sits in
a.
For Chatton, the placement of the truth operator in (2) indicates, on the one
hand, a kind of truth, namely the kind best explained in terms of an ability
of a truth-making res to be posited in being in some as yet undefined way;
on the other hand, as for Wylton, it also indicates the absence of a kind of
truth, namely in-advance necessitating truth, the kind for which formulation
(1) would be appropriate. The expression it is (or can be posited to be) true
(est vel potest poni esse vera) brings out this ambiguity, while also connecting
the question of truth to the positing in being of the truth-making res associated
with the proposition. To these res I now turn.
10.1.2.3 The Status of Res as Objects of Cognition, Assent, and Reference396

The concept of a resin the first instance, a substance or an accident, but
more broadly also a fact or state of affairs397plays a central but, it must
be said, very confusing role in Chattons approach to the problem of future
395 rss i, d. 38 [22]: Tertia opinio, quae currebat in Villa, tempore quo audivimus in Villa
philosophica rationabilior iam dicens quia quando accipis Antichristus erit vel Sortes
sedebit in a, ista potest vel asserere se esse veram, vel suam de inesse fore veram. Primo
modo, non est vera; secundo modo, est vel potest poni esse vera.
396 Res play such an integral role in Chattons analysis that it is hard to single out individual
passages as examples in dd. 3841. However, outside the texts under discussion, of partic-
ular interest are rel, prol., q. 1, a. 1, rss i, d. 3, q. 2, and lss i, d. 3, q. 1 and q. 3.
397 See footnote 5 on the traditional ambiguity of this word in the philosophical literature of
late antiquity and the Middle Ages.
contingents. For Chatton, res serve many functions. They are not only the
objects of cognition but also the significates of propositions and the objects of
propositional attitudes; indeed, they act both as truth-makers and, as we shall
see, even as truth-bearers. All of these functions of res are available both for
God and creature.
The importance of res in Chattons thinking can be shown by a review of
his attack on Ockhams idea of the ens fictum, familiar from many summaries
and analyses of it in recent years.398 Ockham was, throughout his career, a
thoroughgoing nominalist; the ultimate constituents of reality were, for him,
particulars. Nevertheless the early Ockham viewed universal concepts, though
lacking subjective (i.e., in modern terms, objective or mind-external) existence,
as existing objectively (in modern terms, subjectively or mind-internally, i.e.,
intentionally). Ockham was driven to this position by a simple consideration:
it is possible to think of and refer to various kinds of unreal objects, e.g.,
objects with contradictory attributes, logical objects (including universals), res
respectivae (all Aristotelian categories other than quantity and quality), and
contingent but non-actual possibilia such as an (as yet) unbuilt house which a
human intends to build or an (as yet) uncreated creature which God intends
to create. For this to be the case, these objects must in some sense exist;
hence, probably under the influence of Peter Auriol, Ockham opted for the
idea that they have merely objective existence (esse objectivum).399 Chatton
responds that this idea is untenable.400 For example, either such a fictum
is wholly dependent on the associated act of cognition, in which case it is
superfluous, a violation of ontological parsimony; or it is not so dependent,
in which case it can exist even in the absence of such an act, which is absurd
([19]). Furthermore, as a superfluous intermediary between mind and object,
a fictum would necessarily be the subject of predications intended for the
mind-external object, leading to various absurdities; for example, attempts to
398 See Gl 1967, Kelley 1981, Adams 1987: 8385, Brower-Toland 2011: 1379, and Keele 2014: 7.
All of these authors argue that Chattons criticisms were directly responsible for Ockhams
later abandonment of the fictum theory. For an alternative reading, taking the view that
Ockhams eventual rejection of the theory was largely self-driven and that Chattons
critique was merely the occasion for it, see Panaccio 2004: 2327.
399 Ockham, Ordinatio i, d. 2, q. 8 [OTh vol. 2, pp. 271274]. See the discussion of the related
concept of esse apparens in Auriols work in Tachau 1988: 89104.
400 See rss i, d. 3, q. 2 [Wey and Etzkorn 20022005, vol. 1, pp. 231248]. Unless otherwise
indicated, all remaining references in this paragraph are to the numbered paragraphs in
Wey and Etzkorns edition. The corresponding critique in lss occurs mostly in i, d. 3, q. 1
and q. 3.
190 chapter 1
cognize God as three and one would lead to a cognition of the fictum, instead,
as three and one ([21]). Then, too, the idea leads to an infinite regress via third
man-style reasoning ([46]). Instead of a fictum intervening between mind and
object, Chatton proposes, nothing intervenes in the sense intended: the res is
the direct object of cognition, although the relation is mediated by intelligible
species.401 It is things that we perceive and cognize; cognition is a process, and
must not be hypostatized.
As goes cognition, so go propositional attitudes.402 In rel, prol., q. 1, a.1,
Chatton attacks Ockhams idea that a complexum or an articulus complexus
which I follow Brower-Toland (forthcoming) in interpreting as a mental sen-
tenceis the object of propositional attitudes such as assent, dissent, doubt,
etc. Ockham assumes, reasonably enough, that an act of apprehension, as
described above, must precede the adoption of any propositional attitude;
how else could our assent, dissent, doubt, etc., have any content? Chatton in
general agrees with this claim, but objects to Ockhams next move, which is
to claim that the act of apprehension is instantiated in a mental sentence
which forms the object of the propositional attitude.403 His attack on this
idea is developed in rough parallel with his attack on ficta. For example, he
notes that it is possible to conceptually prescind from all apprehension of a
mental sentence, and yet have assent remain; therefore assent is to the thing(s)
signified by the mental sentence(s), and the assumption of mental-sentence
401 See rel, prol., q. 1, a. 1, p. 30, l. 395p. 31, l. 404. For Chattons defense of intelligible species,
see rss ii, d. 3, qq. 15, and Tachau 1989: 198202 for discussion.
402 In fact, Chattons treatment of the former (rss i, d. 3, q. 2) follows and occasionally refers
to his treatment of the latter (rel, prol., q. 1, a. 1); my order of exposition is dictated by the
relative familiarity of the content rather than conceptual or textual precedence.
403 Both assumptions are on view in the following passage:
Alius actus potest dici iudicativus, quo intellectus non tantum apprehendit obiectum
sed etiam illi assentit vel dissentit. Et iste actus est tantum respectu complexi, quia nulli
assentimus per intellectum nisi quod verum reputamus, nec dissentimus nisi quod falsum
aestimamus.
ockham, Ordinatio i, prol., q. 1 [OTh vol. 1, p. 16, ll. 1218]
[The first act is apprehensive;] the second act can be called judicative. By this act the
intellect not only apprehends the object but also assents to it or dissents from it. And such
an act is related only to a mental sentence, since we assent, by the intellect, to nothing
except that which we think to be true, nor do we dissent from anything except that which
we deem false.
objects is a violation of parsimony.404 Analogously to ficta, mental-sentence

objects (more specifically, the grammatical subjects forming proper parts of
such objects) would wrongly receive predications appropriate for their mind-
external referents; hence the mental sentence God is three persons would
be both true and false, since it is true of God and false of the mentalese
word God.405 Furthermore, the mental-sentence-as-object theory wrongly
attributes a kind of reflexivity to all cognition, since it assumes that we must
apprehend mental sentences in order to make any judicative acts whatever;
this contradicts our experience of such acts, which do not routinely seem to
involve the evaluation of such sentences.406 Chattons own opinion, therefore,
is that the acts of believing, knowing, and opining, and any act of assent that
the intellect has by forming a mental sentence signifying a mind-external thing,
has that mind-external thing, and not that mental sentence, for its object.407
The mental sentence itself is a process, andlike cognitionmust not be
hypostatized.408
In addition to being the objects of cognition and propositional attitudes,
res function for Chatton as truth-makers, truth-bearers, and the significates of
propositions.409 As Keele 2003: 4853 documents, their status as truth-makers
404 rel, prol., q. 1, a. 1, p. 21, ll. 106111.

405 rel, prol., q. 1, a. 1, p. 23, ll. 153161.
406 rel, prol., q. 1, a. 1, p. 20, ll. 180184; p. 26, ll. 264276. This point is stressed by Karger 1995:
184 and Brower-Toland, forthcoming, 10.
407 rel, prol., q. 1, a. 1, p. 20, l. 100p. 21, l. 103: Tam actus credendi quam actus sciendi
et opiniandi, et quilibet actus assentiendi quem habet intellectus per hoc quod format
complexum significans rem extra, habeat rem extra pro obiecto et non illud complexum.
408 Two points are worth making here:
(1) Chatton objects not to the idea of mental sentences per se, but merely to their
hypostasis as objects. On a number of occasions (e.g., rss i, d. 3, q. 4, a. 4 [33]; dd. 40
41, q. 2, a. 2 [28]) he insists on a (presumably non-objectual) mediating complex
intervening causally between our cognition or assent and the mind-external res
that constitute the objects of that cognition or that assent.
(2) Chattons analysis does not rule out the possibility that second-order thoughts
and propositions can occur; in such cases, first-order thoughts and propositions
do indeed constitute their objects. But this is not the normal or prototypical case;
nor does the admission of such second-order cognitive and propositional objects
compromise Chattons theory in any serious way. See rel, prol., q. 1, a. 1, p. 38, ll. 613
619, and for discussion Keele 2003: 46 and Brower-Toland, forthcoming, 13.
409 The status of res as the significates and truth-makers of propositions in Chattons analysis
is at least strongly reminiscent of the role they play in Walter Burleighs propositional
192 chapter 1
is clear from Chattons various expositions of his anti-razor, also called the
Chatton Principle (Keele 2002). This principle, formulated by Chatton in an
attempt to place limits on Ockhams drive toward ontological parsimony, can
with some oversimplification be described as the rule that one must posit
such entities as are necessary to make a given proposition true.410 The texts in
which the principle is applied show that res (including res respectivae) are the
entities in question. For example: [Take] an affirmative proposition, which,
when it is verified, is verified only for things [pro rebus]; if three things are not
enough to verify it, a fourth must be posited, and so forth.411 As for the more
counterintuitive status of res as truth-bearers,412 it emerges naturally from
theory. According to an early (c. 1302) version of that theory, propositions are of three
types: the propositio in scripto, the propositio in voce, and the propositio in mente. The
mental proposition is composed not, as one might expect, of concepts or of passiones
animae, but directly of res, i.e., mind-external substances and accidents. In a later version
of the theory (which Burleigh went on revising for the next three decades), the propositio
in mente would be split into two subdivisions, one representing an ensemble of concepts
(the propositio mentalis subiecta) and one representing an ensemble of res (the propositio
mentalis obiecta or, more famously, the propositio in re). The propositio in re is, somehow,
a conceptual or mental whole whose parts are mind-external; it is precisely the hybrid
status of this entity that renders it capable of functioning as a truth-bearer. Analogously
to the standard suppositional approach (cf. Ockhams treatment discussed in 7.1), truth-
clauses are stated in terms of the identity or nonidentity of the res constituting the S and
P terms of the proposition. See Nuchelmans 1973: 219225, Meier-Oeser 2009, Cesalli 2001,
and Cesalli 2011 for texts and discussions.
Burleighs discussions of this theory (or complex of theories) show that some of his
motivations are similar to Chattons: like Chatton, he is anxious to stanch various vicious
regresses and to obviate unnecessary entities intervening between mind and world. More-
over, Chatton shows familiarity with the propositio in re theory (see rel prol. q. 5, a.
1, pp. 266267). However, the differences are more important than the resemblances.
Burleighs theory, in all its iterations, is highly circumscribed and carefully articulated,
while Chattons is vague and wide-ranging. As we have seen, for Chatton, res function as
everything from truth-maker to object of cognition, and, as we shall see in 10.1.4.3.1, also
as the intensions of propositions.
410 For examples see rss i, d. 30, q. 1, a. 4 [39][42], [57]; q. 3 [72]; for discussion see Maurer
1984 and Keele (2002 passim, 2012 33.3).
411 rss i, d. 30, q. 1, a. 4 [57]: Propositio affirmativa, quae quando verificatur, solum verificatur
pro rebus; si tres res non sufficiunt ad verificandum eam, oportet ponere quartam, et sic
deinceps.
412 Counterintuitive only from a modern perspective; for other well-known medieval ac-
counts of objectual truth, see Anselm, De veritate, c. 7 [Anselmi opera omnia vol. 1, pp. 185
186]; Aquinas, De veritate q. 1, a. 2, co. [aoo vol. 3, p. 2]; Duns Scotus, Quaestiones super
Chattons position that res are the objects of assent: after all, assent (although,
as pointed out above, Chatton links it to volition) is simply the propositional
attitude of assertion, and we assert things that are capable of being true. Finally,
res are the significates of propositions; otherwise propositions would have to
refer to themselves, which would lead to variants of the liars paradox.413
Res, then, serve as a kind of all-purpose ontological anchor for cognition, ref-
erence, propositional attitudes, and truth-value.414 How successfully does this
approach address Ockhams worries about the referential and cognitive acces-
sibility of various kinds of spooky objects? Chattons replies are sketchy but
suggestive. He assimilates the distinction between potential and actual being
to that between merely mental and mind-externally existent entities respec-
tively. Analogously to the way in which a potential stone is denominated by
its various causes in the actual world, so a merely mental entity is cognized or
denominated extrinsically by the existence of an understanding in the mind:
[Against Ockhams argument for mind-internal objective fictum], based

on a division of an entity into an entity in the soul and [an entity]
outside the soul, I say that this is a division highly similar to that between
an entity in act and [an entity] in potency, as when I say a certain
stone is in potency, and a certain [stone] in act; and that division holds
for the [proposition] a stone exists either by its own existence, or it is
extrinsically denominated by the existence of a material or efficient cause
by which the stone can be produced Likewise here: a certain stone in
the soul and a certain [stone] outside the soul means either the stone
is denominated extrinsically by the existence of an understanding in the
soul or it exists outside the soul by its own existence.415
libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis, lib. vi [Opera philosophica vol. 4, pp. 6567]. Cf. also
Chatton, rss i, d. 39 [25] and commentary.
413 rel, prol., q. 1, a. 1, pp. 2526.
414 Cf. Brower-Toland 2013: 180, who talks about Chattons focal meaning approach to the
concept of res.
415 rss i, d. 3, q. 2, a. 1 [38]: Ad primum supra enumeratorum de divisione entis in ens in
anima et extra animam, dico quod illa est consimilis divisio qualis est entis in actum et
potentiam, ut cum dico lapis quidam est in potentia et quidam in actu; et illa divisio
valet istam lapis vel exsistit exsistentia propria vel extrinsece denominatur ab exsistentia
causae materialis vel effectivae ex qua potest lapis produci vel quae potest lapidem
producere. Similiter hic lapis quidam in anima et quidam extra animam, id est vel lapis
denominatur extrinsece ab exsistentia intellectionis in anima vel exsistit extra animam
exsistentia propria. Cf. also rss i, d. 2, q. 1, a. 2 [63].
194 chapter 1
I say that a proposition that signifies something either signifies things

really existing outside the soul or such things [talia] which, if they existed,
would exist outside the soul, or things existing in the soul or such things
[quae], if they existed, would exist in the soul, or partly in the soul and
partly outside the soul. And whatever may exist: in the same way that this
[ipsum] is said to be the referent of the proposition, it is denominated the
object of assent.416
Impossible objects are handled dispositionally via per impossibile reasoning:
[A]bout the chimera, I say that understanding a chimera and impossibles

of this sort is nothing other than an understanding, existing in the mind,
in virtue of which the mind can judge that such would be the nature of
the chimera if it were a part of the real world (in rerum natura). Again,
the argument proceeds the same way about the will, since I can just as
easily want to have a chimera as understand one. Again, it proceeds the
same way about the singular fictum and about the singular chimera just
as about the universal [chimera].417
The rest of Ockhams litany of cognized irrealia are handled in a similar fash-
ion: in every case, such objects are dealt with by reference to understandings
(intellectiones) that inhere subjectively in the mind, i.e., as accidents informing
that mind.418 Crucially, these understandings are not to be equated with their
objects; that was Ockhams mistake. But in that case, what are those objects?
What is the ontological status of the res (in any of its roles) associated with
a counterfactual, conative, or future contingent proposition? Chatton wres-
tles with this problem in various contexts. In the context of divine cognition
416 rel, prol., q. 1, a. 1, p. 45, ll. 806811: Ad octavam obiectionem principalem dico quod
propositio quae significat aliqua, vel significat res actualiter extra animam, vel talia quae,
si essent, essent in anima, vel partim sic et partim sic. Et qualiacumque fuerint, eo
modo quo ipsum dicitur esse significatum propositionis, denominatur obiectum assen-
sus.
417 rss i, d. 3, q. 2, a. 1 [42]: Ad secundum de chimaera dico quod intelligere chimaeram
et huiusmodi impossibilia non est aliud nisi intellectionem esse in mente virtute cuius
ipsa potest iudicare quod talis esset natura chimaerae si esset in rerum natura. Item,
argumentum aeque procedit de voluntate, quia aeque possum velle habere chimaeram
sicut intelligere. Item, aeque procedit de singulari ficto et de singulari chimaera sicut de
universali.
418 See rss i, d. 3, q. 2, a. 1 [43][45].
and volition, his answer is as follows: That which acts as an object of Gods
cognition and volition of a given res is in a way Himself, since otherwise He
would depend ontologically on something outside Himself.419 However, it is
in another sense something outside Himself, since otherwise divine cognition
and volition, which can embrace all possibilities, would not be directed toward
a particular result.420 When pinned down on the question of a stone that has
yet to be created, Chatton replies that the cognized being of the stone is, in
some way, the divine cognition itself, but only according to extrinsic denom-
ination (cf. the first passage quoted above), which begs the question (not
answered) of what, exactly, is extrinsically denominated.421 Whatever it is, it
has the power to move created intellects, just as God does. Indeed, even impos-
sibilia have this power:
If therefore you accept move in this way [i.e., in the way that God moves
created being, as a beloved or desired object], then the impossible can
move the possible, since there is no movement unless the cognition of the
[object] is caused, whatever that cause may be [undecumque sit]; and thus
it is fitting for a chimera, as for God, to move [our intellects], although not
without a mediating complex cognition; therefore whatever [things] are
understood, of which the understanding is caused in the mind, whatever
that cause may be, move [our intellects] in this way.422
Such objects are somehow available to both God and creature for reference and
intensional analysis, whether or not they do or even can exist. The cognitive
and propositional manipulation of objects can operate at a point anterior to
the cut between the possible and the actualindeed, anterior to that between
the impossible and the possible.
419 See rss i, d. 35, q. 1, a. 2 [31][36]. It is Averroes position that is being presented, but it is
clear that Chatton endorses it.
420 See rss i, d. 38 [8], [11], [16]; d. 42, q. 2, a. 2 [35], [39].
421 rss i, d. 36, q. u., a. 2 [24]: Sed estne illa cognitio esse lapidis?Dicendum est ad istud
sicut de esse Homeri in opinione, quod sic, secundum denominationem extrinsecam, quia
cognitio est quo posito omni alio circumscripto, lapis vel Homerus est cognitus, et hoc est
esse cognitum lapidis esse.
422 rss i, d. 3, q. 4, a. 4 [33]: Si sic igitur accipias movere, ita impossibile movet sicut possibile,
quia movere non est nisi quod eius cognitio causetur, undecumque sit; et ita sic movere
convenit chimaerae sicut Deo, licet non nisi mediante cognitione complexa; omnia igitur
quaecumque intelliguntur, quorum intellectio causatur in mente, undecumque sit, sic
movent.
196 chapter 1
On one reading, Chatton seems to be flirting with a trip to the Meinongian

jungle. There seem to be subsistent entities that act, ultimately, as the referents
for propositions, cognitions, and acts of assent that take non-existent objects,
even though such objects are themselves neither understandings nor any kind
of ficta. To take a straightforward creaturely example: Assuming that a stone
is lying on the ground in front of me, the word stone in a stone is lying on
the ground in front of me refers directly to the stone in question. Assum-
ing there is no stone, stone refers to a stone out in nonactual modal space
by way of the existence of an understanding in the mind that extrinsically
denominates this spooky object. This reading is neither absurd nor anachro-
nistic; Ockham himself, famous though he is for his ontological parsimony, has
been plausibly interpreted as having committed himself to various existent or
subsistent irrealia (cf. Adams 1977: 173; McGrade 1985). However, it runs into
a problem, namely that Chatton very clearly takes an ontologically deflation-
ary approach throughout his debate with Ockham: the whole point is to get
rid of the theoretically supererogatory fictum, which after all is an illicit kind
of res. An alternative reading, therefore, might construe the res in sentences
about irrealia as constituting the intensions of such quasi-entities (cf. the ref-
erences to what would be the nature of the chimera in the passage above, as
well as the combined references to wanting and understanding a chimera). This
second reading commits Chatton to a less obviously exotic ontology: instead
of subsistent chimeras reminiscent of Meinong, we have subsistent intensions
reminiscent of late Frege. A difficulty with the second reading is that Chatton
seems to avoid the word res when discussing impossibilia, preferring unspec-
ified neuter plurals like quae and talia; an advantage is that it connects res,
one of Chattons central theoretical tools, with the intensional analysis given
in 10.1.2.1 above (the Copulative Analysis) and 10.1.2.4 below (the Doctrine
of Contradictories).
Note that on either reading, Chattons talk about res entails considerable on-
tological commitment: res, whether real objects, real relations, or real objectual
intensions, are no mere figments, but can play all necessary roles in grounding
reference and establishing truth-value (for the latter, see 10.1.4.3.1 below).423 In
423 Chatton thus stands at the crossroads of two doctrinal traditions with respect to the modal
interpretation of res:
(1) Though he makes no references to it, he may be drawing on the distinction, associ-
ated with Henry of Ghent and Duns Scotus but dating back at least to the work of
Bonaventure and Aquinas (Porro 2011, Honnefelder 1990), between a res a reor reris
and a res a ratitudine. In Henrys formulation, a res a reor reris is a purely nominal
the context of divine intentional and volitional states, this approach to cogni-
tion and reference thus aligns Chatton with the pleromatic tradition, providing
him with an objectually oriented way of dealing with counterfactual possibili-
ties. Can it provide him with a way of dealing with future contingents as well?
The answer must be broken down into two parts. (1) In all of Chattons theo-
ries of future contingents, reshowever construedare (somehow) available
for reference, ensuring that all propositions with expressions referring to as yet
nonexistent substances and accidents are significant. Chatton nowhere states
this outright, but it is implicit in the very fact that he takes future contingent
propositions seriously and takes the trouble to construct various alethiologi-
cal approaches to them. (2) Chattons answer to the question whether future
contingent propositions have a discrete truth-value (T or F) is another matter.
In some of the theories reviewed below, the answer is yes; in others, no,
or rather not yet. In general, the answer turns on whether or not the res in
question has yet been posited in being, reading ponere in esse either in sense
i(3), sense i(3)(b), or sense ii in the 8.38.4 typology. Before the res has been
posited, a narrow-scope reading of truth in accordance with the WSA is the
only appropriate way to express the prediction; after it has been posited, a wide-
scope reading is allowed.
10.1.2.4 The Doctrine of Contradictories424

Given that res, in addition to being significates of propositions, also function
as their truth-makers, how is one articulate the relation between propositions
and truth-values in order, for example, to tell the difference between true
conception which need not be objectively possible (e.g., a goat-stag or a chimera);

a res a ratitudine or res rata is something with a real essence that can actually exist
(e.g., a man, a donkey, or a stone). As with Chatton, the cut is anterior to the break
between the impossible and the possible; however, Henrys res a reor reris seems
to be a mere linguistic construction involving no (or little, or dubious) ontological
commitment. See Henrys Summa a. 21, q. 4 [Paris 1520, f. 127 r Ov P]; a. 24, q. 3
[f. 138 v O 139 r S] and, for discussion, Porro (2011; 2014 6) and de Libera 2002:
231236.
(2) Chattons treatment of res is also a forerunner of a semantic tradition, inaugurated
a few decades later by Marsilius of Inghen and continuing into the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, according to which the suppositional operation of ampliatio
is divided into five differentiae of time: the present, the past, the future, the pos-
sible, and the impossible. It is the last differentia that allows the term chimera
to establish contact with its referent. See Ashworth 1985 and de Libera 2002: 99
104.
424 For some of the many formulations of this doctrine, see rss i, d. 2, q. 1 [9]; d. 4, q. 3 [56];
198 chapter 1
and false propositions? Suppose we are trying to establish the truth-value of

some normal proposition referring to currently existing things; for varietys
sake, let us take the proposition Xanthippe is standing. The res theory, as
just expounded, seems to direct our question to the substance Xanthippe
and the accident is standing regardless of whether Xanthippe is, in fact,
standing (since res, irrespective of their actuality, are the referents and truth-
makers of propositions and beliefs). Chattons response distinguishes between
the reference of a given proposition and its truth-value. According to a principle
he often repeats, contradictories signify the same thing entirely; otherwise
they would not be contradictories.425 He here appeals to the fact, stressed
in modern philosophy by the early Wittgenstein and, under his influence,
Bertrand Russell,426 that the modal profile of any proposition (i.e., the value-
range of the function taking to pairs of possible worlds and truth-values in
those worlds) is isomorphic to the modal profile of . Put non-technically,
the criteria for determining whether is the case are the same as those for
determining whether is the case.
As the formulation quoted above indicates, Chatton articulates this princi-
ple in terms of common reference to a single res. Indeed, such common refer-
ence is presented as the criterion for determining whether two propositions
are genuine contradictories; to repeat our example, Xanthippe is standing
and Xanthippe is not standing are contradictories because they refer to one
and the same res. Clearly, however, this means more than the mere fact that
they both refer to Xanthippe; if that were the criterion, Xanthippe is standing
and Xanthippe is singing would be contradictories. Thus, somehow, the entire
ensemble of res to which two contradictories positively or negatively refer
the accident-inhering-in-the-substance, whether this ensemble is factual or
counterfactualmust be the intended referent. A text from Book ii of the
Reportatio confirms this: Inherence and non-inherence [of an accident] mean
the same thing [idem]; but inherence signifies the dependence of the form
on the subject; therefore, in like manner, non-inherence will signify the same
[thing] negatively, whether a quality or the whole composite be posited.427
d. 38 [52]; d. 39 [29]; dd. 4041, q. 2 [4], [5], [7], [14], [20], [26], [27], [35]; d. 43 [5], [10];
d. 46 [12], [15]; rss ii, d. 12, q. 1 [31].
425 rss i, d. 39 [29]: [C]ontradictoria idem significant omnino, aliter non essent contradicto-
ria.
426 Keele 2014: 5.3 n. 12 remarks on the resemblance of this doctrine to the Principle of
Bipolarity of the early Wittgenstein. See, e.g., Wittgenstein 1979: 26 and 1922: 72 (Tractatus
4.0621); Russell 1985: 6579 (lecture 3) and 2010 [1921]: 198 (ch. 13).
427 rss ii, d. 12, q. 1 [31]: Inhaerentia et non-inhaerentia idem significant; sed inhaerentia
Although Chatton does not extend his analysis to the determination of truth
and falsehood, we can easily do it for him by augmenting reference with an
alethic adverbial component modeled on his positive/negative adverbial com-
ponent: assuming that Xanthippe is in fact standing, Xanthippe is standing
refers truly to the res-ensemble Xanthippe-standing, since this res-ensemble
is actually the case; if she is in fact not standing, the sentence refers falsely to
that same res-ensemble, since the latter is not actually the case.428 Note that
this account provides more evidence for the intensional construal of res: given
that the res-ensemble is intrinsically neutral in terms of its actuality or non-
actuality, it can easily be interpreted as the modal profile of a proposition (cf.
10.1.4.3.1 below).
10.1.3 Is a Toolkit Already a Solution?

Taken as a whole, these tools yield an approach to statements asserting divine
knowledge of future contingents that can be expressed as a formula. Such
statements must be formulated as follows:
(t0[TRL]) [CG(, ) (tf) T (tf) ] God cognizes , and will be true.
The formula works by two iterations of formal analysis: first, the Copulative
Analysis addresses worries centered on theological determinism; second, the
structure of the second conjunct deals with the threat of logical determinism.
The formula as a whole is asserted to be true, in some sense, in the actual
nunc (hence the entire expression is prefixed with (t0[TRL])). The first conjunct
is an assertion of divine knowledge of the entire modal map with respect to
the proposition : hence CG = God cognizes, while (, ) represents the
object of Gods cognition, namely the modal profile of the proposition . The
second conjunct, (tf) T (tf) , is a modally open sentence (cf. the open-sentence
expressions in 6.1 above): it predicts that, when moment (tf) has arrived,
it will be true that, at (tf), is the case. The first conjunct, which affirms
Gods cognition of the modal field, is metaphysically necessary and guarantees
that God knows everything about creation in a way that is safely immutable.
The second conjunct has a form that adheres to the Wylton Scope Analysis
and is therefore contingent, guaranteeing freedom. Furthermore, on the truth-
maker side of the analysis, the second conjunct is verified by a res (however
significat dependentiam formae ad subiectum; ergo similiter non-inhaerentia significabit

eandem negative, sive ponatur respectus sive totum compositum.
428 Cf. Russell 1985: 71; also cf. Chattons remarks on the affirmative truth and negative truth
of divine assent in the Day 3 account described below in 10.1.4.3.1.
200 chapter 1
construed) which has yet to be posited in being (reading the latter phrase in
sense i(3), i(3)(b), or ii). Moreover, whether or not will in fact be true, the
sentence as a whole is significant, since and refer to the same res as per
the Doctrine of Contradictories. In accordance with standard propositional
and modal analysis, the status of the whole formula is therefore contingent,
as desired.
These, then, are the tools that Chatton uses to solve the problem of future
contingents. They are already on view in d. 38: the Copulative Analysis appears
in [28], the Wylton Scope Analysis in [22][23], the reliance on res in [15]
[16], and the Doctrine of Contradictories in [52]. Before discussing the the-
ories Chatton builds with these tools, let us consider the possibility that the
ensemble constitutes, in itself and without further development, an adequate
solution. Recall that an adequate theory of future contingents, in order to meet
the demands of orthodoxy, must affirm divine omniscience while allowing suf-
ficient room for creaturely freedom (1). Furthermore, such a theory should
ideally refute Divine Foreknowledge Necessitates and God Can Be Wrong, val-
idate John Can Be Wrong, and avoid appeals to scope disambiguation or het-
erogeneous modality (3.2.2). Chattons ensemble seems to cover most, if not
all, of the bases: DFN is handled by the Copulative Analysis, since the second
premise, asserting the necessity of the divine foreknowledge claim, is falsified.
GCBW fails analogously: since Gods cognition, i.e., knowledge1 of the modal
map, is separated from actuality, it cannot be falsified by any variation of the
actuality parameter.429 JCBW can be validated, on Boethian and Wyltonian
lines, by taking note of the open-sentence character of the second conjunct.
Heterogeneous modality is not appealed to, and scope disambiguation, while
at the heart of the Wylton Scope Analysis, is not of the crude sophismatic
variety discussed in 3.13.2.2. Superficially, at least, things look good. But the
ontological and alethiological questions posed in 1 remain unanswered. Does
Chattons theory respect bivalence? Is his world-model A(a), A(mr), or some-
thing else? Is the Correspondence Assumption retained or rejected? Until we
know the answers to these questions, we will not be in a position to evaluate
Chattons solution.
And, indeed, Chatton himself is troubled by the fundamental issues of truth
and ontology just mentioned. To be sure, his obvious interest in and reliance
on his bag of formal tricks places him firmly in the ranks of the logico-
429 Chatton specifically uses the Copulative Analysis to refute DFN in d. 38 [40]. CGBW is
refuted by the use of the related distinction between broad and narrow divine assent in
dd. 4041, q. 2 [14].
semantic approach to divine knowledge described by M.J.F.M. Hoenen.430

Nevertheless he is not merely a logico-semantic thinker. More intensely than
most scholastic philosophers, Chatton is aware of the conceptual and doctrinal
issues that are at stake in the adoption of fixed theories of future truth and
fact. This awareness, combined with the fear of falling into heresy detailed
above, leads him to construct three distinct solutions to the problem of future
contingents in the course of rss i, dd. 3841. These Distinctions record the
uneasy progress of a philosophical pilgrim who cannot yet make up his mind
on the question of the openness or closure of the future, and who bends a
complex theory of propositional and objectual truth almost to the breaking
point in order to accommodate a constantly shifting understanding of divine
foreknowledge.
10.1.4 Chattons Days.

Relatively late in his Reportatio discussion of future contingents, namely in rss
i, dd. 4041, q. 1, a. 2 [57], [58], and [59], Chatton presents that discussion as
having taken place over three days of lecturing, with each day devoted to a
specific model. Whether or not this summing-up corresponds to the textual
realities of rss i, dd. 3841, which certainly seem far messier than this tripartite
scheme suggests, the presentation of three discrete iterations affords much
insight into the general tendency of Chattons thought on future contingents. I
take the days in their (notional) chronological order.
430 Hoenen has already been remarked on in 1. He claims plausibly that there was a general
trend, starting in England around 1317, in favor of solving problems of divine knowledge
by formal means:
The logico-semantic approach to divine knowledge, which had been lingering in the back-
ground for some time, suddenly came to dominate the field, producing treatises that were
devoted exclusively to the semantic analysis of propositions about Gods (fore)knowledge
Typical questions in this context included: Which propositions can be true simultane-
ously, How does the change in truth value of one proposition affect that of the other, and
What is the difference between a proposition being true and its being necessarily true?
With regard to the question of certainty and contingency, this was an important prob-
lem shift: the focus of attention was no longer the content of foreknowledge, but rather its
extrinsic and formal aspects.
hoenen 1993: 244245
Chapters 3.14.6.4.2, 67.2.3 and 8.2 will furnish the reader with many examples of
the background presence of this approach.
202 chapter 1
10.1.4.1 Day 1
The doctrine presented in this section, hereafter simply Day 1, is one in which
eternal in-advance truth is unproblematically compatible with contingency,
as long as truth-declarations are formulated in the correct way. In Chattons
words:
On the first day, I expounded the opinion which posits how the future-
tense proposition Socrates will sit in a is, in its [proper] mode, eternally
true, and [how] the assent corresponding to it is eternally determinately
true, and nevertheless contingentlynot because the thing is posited
because of which it is true, nor because of a determination of the cause,
as neither of these is the casebut because things will be just as the
proposition signifies that they will be.431
Wey and Etzkorn (rss vol. 2, p. 381, note 19) identify d. 38 [16] and [60], as well
as d. 39 [20], as examples of the doctrine here adverted to. The hallmark of the
doctrine sketched in the passage above is a combination of the following: (1) an
emphasis on the eternal in-advance truth of future contingents as guaranteed
by a [proper] mode of presentation of that truth; (2) a stipulation that the
divine assent to the proposition is true; and (3) a focus on res as the truth-
makers of propositions. If we read the WSA as expressing the proper mode in
which future contingent propositions can be true, we can augment Wey and
Etzkorns list to include the following passages: d. 38 [8], [15][26], [46], [60];
d. 39 [20][34].432
431 rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1 [57]: Prima enim die declaravi opinionem quae ponit quomodo
propositio de futuro est suo modo aeternaliter vera Sortes sedebit in a, et assensus
correspondens sibi aeternaliter determinate verus, et tamen contingenter, non propter
hoc quod res ponatur quare sit vera, nec propter determinationem causae, sed ubi neuter
casus iste est, sed quia res erit sicut propositio significat fore.
432 A note of caution is in order. I am by no means convinced that it is possible in all cases
to assign a given discussion or argument to a specific day. Due to Chattons vagueness
of terminology, his tendency to use his favorite tools of analysis in different models,
and the considerable conceptual overlap between all three days, many discussions and
arguments are effectively in a state of superposition with respect to the model intended
for their evaluation. For example, the important objection in d. 38 [34], and Chattons
equally important partial concession of that objections validity in section [48] of the
same article, can be construed equally well as belonging to Day 2 and to Day 3. Like-
wise the introduction of the Copulative Analysis in d. 38 [28] could easily be read as
belonging to any of the three days. There are many more examples of this kind; the best
Day 1 is predominantly res-oriented; that is, it centers on Chattons claim that

the truth-makers of future contingent expressions have not yet been posited in
being, but that once they are, the expressions will be true. Chatton character-
izes this position as being essentially in harmony with Aristotles analysis. In
making this claim, he is setting himself up in opposition to both Ockham and
Auriol, both of whom read Aristotle as endorsing a T3 theory. Not so, says Chat-
ton: Aristotle formulated an approach to future contingency that is entirely
compatible with present truth, reading the latter in the correct mode. In his
words:
Why, then, does Aristotle consider a proposition to be not determinately

true? Either because there is nothing in nature [i.e., in the present state of
affairs] which, when posited, [makes it so that] this proposition about the
future is determinately trueand that is true; or because some proposi-
tion signifies that something will be, which [thing], once posited in being,
[would be such that] it would then be true to say that a thing just is, in fact,
as the proposition said it would be, and thus it cannot be denied that a
proposition about the future is determinately true, since when Socrates
actually sits, it cannot be denied that things are then, in reality, just as the
sentence Socrates will sit signified.433
I believe that the clearest thing one can do is ask the opponent what
he understands by the proposition Socrates will sit in a being deter-
minately true. Either: [he understands] that some thing is or has been,
whether it be something spoken, something written, or a cognition,
which, once posited, [makes] this proposition true now. Thus things are,
now, such as the proposition signifies; and this is not true. Rather, this is
the condition only of a proposition about the present or about the past;
and no proposition about the future is, speaking in this manner, determi-
nately true. Or, otherwise: [he understands] that some thing will be in a,
which, once posited in a, will then [make it] true to say it is now just as
one can do is to disambiguate where one can while keeping ones interpretive options
open.
433 rss i, d. 38 [8]: Quid igitur vocat ARISTOTELES propositionem non esse determinate
veram? Vel quod nihil sit in rerum natura, quo posito haec propositio de futuro est
determinate vera, et hoc [est] verum; vel quod aliqua propositio significat aliquid fore,
quo posito in esse, verum esset tunc dicere quod sic est modo in re sicut propositio
significavit fore, et sic non potest negare propositionem de futuro esse veram determinate,
quia quando Sortes actu sedet, non potest negari quin tunc ita sit in re sicut significavit
ista prius Sortes sedebit.
204 chapter 1
the proposition about the future formerly signified, and thus a proposi-
tion about the future is true.434
Noteworthy here are the references to determinate truth and to nature

as the repository of truth-makers, if any such there be: this is Aristotle read
through the lens of Boethius (cf. the latters Commentary doctrines discussed
in 4.1). In contrast to Boethius definite operator, however, the determi-
nate operator seems to have no special role to play: in line with Aquinas
usage, it is a mere emphatic appendage to the truth predicate (cf. 4.6.3). As
for the content of the theory, its similarities with the Wylton Scope Analysis
should be obvious, and indeed Chattons first invocation of the WSA comes
between the two passages quoted above (namely at d. 38 [22][23]). As sug-
gested in 10.1.3 above and in the commentary on d. 38, the analysis in terms
of posited or unposited res is the truth-maker pendant of the WSA. To say
it will be true, in instant a, that is to say an as yet unposited res corre-
sponding to the temporally indefinite proposition will be posited at instant
a.
Chattons approach is reminiscent not only of Thomas Wyltons, but also of
Peter Auriols. In the passage quoted in 6.2.3, Auriol stipulates that the actual-
ity associated with a propositionin Chattons terms, the truth-making res
gives determination (i.e., truth) to that proposition with respect to all subse-
quent instants, but not to any preceding ones. Auriols theory seems like a close
conceptual variant of Chattons account of the relation between res and timed
truth. How, then, does Chattons Day 1 theory differ from Auriols? The main dif-
ference, as we have seen, is the same one that separates Chatton from Wylton:
the concept neither true nor false does not appear in Day 1; truth asserted in
the proper mode is, for Chatton, still truth. Chatton, however, thinks he sees
another difference: he thinks that Auriols theory implies that Gods knowledge
tracks the timed structure of actuality. God, according to Chattons Auriol, must
await events in order to know things.435 As Schabel 2000: 232 points out, this
434 rss i, d. 38 [24]: [N]ec credo quod possit esse clarior quam quaerere ab opponente quid
intelligit per istam esse veram determinate Sortes sedebit in a. Aut quod aliqua res sit vel
fuerit, vel dictum vel scriptum vel cognitio, quo posito haec propositio sit modo vera, et
ita sit modo sicut propositio significat, et hoc non est verum, sed ista solum est condicio
propositionis de praesenti vel de praeterito; et nulla propositio de futuro est, sic loquendo,
determinate vera. Vel aliter: utrum aliqua res erit in a, qua posita in a, tunc erit verum
dicere modo est sicut ante significavit propositio de futuro, et sic est propositio de futuro
vera.
435 See rss i, d. 38 [12][14].
is a crass distortion of Auriols doctrine; for Auriol, Gods knowledge of timed

reality prescinds from all tense, and hence has an indistant rather than a sub-
sequent relationship to future contingents (cf. 6.2.1).
The motives for Chattons distortion of Auriol are considered in 10.1.4.5; for
the moment, note that the pseudo-Auriol is a thinker whose doctrine implies
either a genuine limitation on divine foreknowledge (assuming there is a fact of
the matter about future contingents) or a genuinely open future (which would
imply that there is no such matter of fact and therefore nothing for God to
foreknow). As Chatton develops the Day 1 approach in dd. 3839 in conscious
opposition to such a doctrine, it is not surprising that Day 1 turns out to be
highly familiar territory: a T2 theory of truth is proposed, and God is asserted to
foreknow everything. Due allowance, of course, must be made for the complex
way in which truth-values attach to propositions (namely in accordance with
the WSA), as well as for the peculiar structure of divine foreknowledge (con-
strued in accordance with the Copulative Analysis). Nevertheless the result is
clear: there is in-advance truth about all timed matters of fact,436 and God fore-
knows that truth from eternity.437 As there is no indication anywhere in the
texts associated with Day 1 that the Correspondence Assumption is violated
(contrast the Boethius of the Commentaries and the Ockham of the first inter-
pretation), the most natural assumption is that Day 1 corresponds to an A(a)
model of the world.
The status of Day 1 as an A(a) model has a number of consequences for
Chattons analytical tools. First of all, it is clear that Day 1 relies heavily on the as
yet unposited status of the future truth-making res: as the res has not yet been
posited, it can still be prevented (d. 38 [46]) and the proposition associated
with it can be false ([60]). But if there is a single actual future, the positing of
these res cannot be the ontologically strong i(3) type; it must be sense ii, which
merely denotes the fixed future becoming, in due time, the actual present.
By the same token, the WSA cannot have the open-sentence structure given
in 6.1 and 10.1.3 above; at least, given that there is a fixed future, there is
no work (apart from purely speech-act-theoretical work, as in 4.2) that such
a structure could be performing. Instead, it must have the following closed-
sentence structure: (t0[TRL]) (tf[TRL]) T (tf) . But this amounts simply to (tf[TRL])
, which means that the Copulative Analysis, instead of having structure (a),
will have structure (b):
436 See, e.g., rss i, d. 38 [17].

437 See rss i, d. 38 [20]; d. 39 [20].
206 chapter 1
(a) (t0[TRL]) [CG(, ) (tf) T (tf) ]

(b) (t0[TRL]) [CG(, ) (tf[TRL]) ]
Now we have seen, in 4.6.4, that the copulative (or conjunctive) analysis, so
construed, amounts to the claim at time (tn): [God is God, and at time (tf),
will be]; deleting the informationally vacuous first conjunct leaves us with
the bare (and, here, modally closed) assertion that will be.438 On a logical-
compatibilist reading, of course, the latter may be contingent though true, in
accordance with the analysis in 4.5. But on logical compatibilism, there is no
special motivation for an unorthodox construal of divine foreknowledge such
as the Copulative Analysis; God can know1 contingent truths without neces-
sitating them (cf. 4.5.2). And indeed, at several points in d. 38, Chatton inter-
rupts his exposition to offer readers an alternative account of divine knowledge
in the following terms:
There is another way of putting the matter, and a more common one
since I certainly do not want to assert anything on any such perilous
subjectthough perhaps it is clearer [than it would otherwise be]
through the mode I have just mentioned. Ask what you understand by
the [proposition] Socrates will sit: either that it is true in such a way
that, whether he wants to or not, he will sit in a, and in this sense I deny
it; or that he will deliberate, and, having deliberated, he will voluntarily
sit, and thus I concede it.439
God knows that a will be and that you will sit, not that you will sit
whether you want to or not, but [He knows this] in such a way that He
knows that you will deliberate and do it contingently.440
438 This does not invalidate John Can Be Wrong in Day 1, since the clause can simply be
taken to be open for the purposes of calculating the contents of creaturely belief, as in
the following formulation:
(t0[TRL]) BJ [CG(, ) (tf) T (tf) ]
At (t0[TRL]), John believes that [God cognizes , and will be true at instant f].
439 rss i, d. 38 q.u. a. 1 [26]: Alius modus ponendi, -- quia nihil volo asserere in quacumque
materia periculosa, est iste et communior, et potest esse magis clarus per istum modum
iam dictum. Quaere quid intelligis per istam Sortes sedebit; vel quod hoc ita sit verum
quod, sive velit sive nolit, ipse sedebit in a, et in isto sensu nego; vel quod deliberabitet
deliberato voluntariesedebit, et sic concedo.
440 rss i, d. 38 q.u. a. 1 [29]: Deus scit a fore et te sessurum, non quod sedebisvelis nolis
sed sic quod scit [quod] tu deliberabis et ages contingenter.
Keele 2010b has called this a fallback position (hereafter Fallback); if read-
ers find his main approach too unorthodox, they are welcome to take this one
instead.441 The point worth stressing here is that the Day 1 theory and Fallback
are close enough that the latter can be offered as a plausible alternative to the
former: both assume a fixed future and read problems of necessitation as solu-
ble by formal means alone (though those means differ). Nevertheless Chatton,
though offering Fallback on several further occasions in d. 38, is not happy with
it, and much prefers his own ensemble of instruments; as these include the
Copulative Analysis, Fallback must yield (as he recognizes in d. 38 [41]).
Chattons preference can be explained by a strong sensitivity to two issues
which Fallback can seem, at least intuitively, too weak to address: (a) the power
of the Divine Foreknowledge Necessitates argument442 and (b) the dangers of
divine fallibility and mutability implicit in the God Can Be Wrong argument.
Assuming one can get it to work, the Copulative Analysis is an adequate instru-
ment with which to defuse DFN and GCBW (cf. 4.6.4). It is also, as we have
seen, a handy tool with which to preclude divine mutability, since it stipu-
lates that Gods cognition never changes. Chatton seems, however, to harbor
some residual worries about divine mutability having to do with the relation-
ship obtaining between God and truth-making res. Responding to these worries
in d. 39, during a discussion of the traditional question whether God can know
more than He knows (utrum Deus possit scire plura quam scit), he develops a
complex theory of the relationship between objectual and propositional truth.
For the details, the reader is referred to the commentary on sections [29][32]
of that Distinction; here suffice it to say that Gods cognition of truth-making res
is held to be eternal and immutable, while allowance is made for His harmlessly
changing knowledge of the current truth of associated propositions. However,
the Copulative Analysis has its dangers, and Chatton seems to have some sense
of them. For example, the alethiology in [20][32] includes hints to the effect
that Gods cognition is more than mere apprehension. In [20], for example,
Chatton claims explicitly that God cognizes that a will be (Deus cognoscit a
fore); if cognoscit is not merely a slip for scit,443 it suggests that the contents
of Gods cognition include assent to one side of the contradiction. Similarly, in
[26], Chatton writes that strictly speaking, knowledge is assent to something
that is signified by a true complex (scire stricte est assentire alicui quod per
441 We might call this the Marxist approach to future contingents, as in the remark attri-
buted to Groucho: Those are my principles. If you dont like them, I have others.
442 Cf. his remarks in d. 38 [2] and [21].
443 Cf. the similar turn of phrase in d. 39 [10], where context makes it clear that Chattons
intention is indeed to distinguish clearly between cognition and knowledge2.
208 chapter 1
complexum verum significatur), and he ties this definition of knowledge to an

argument that what is true at any one time is true for all times; the suggestion, at
least, is that not only cognition but also assent, and therefore one-sided divine
knowledge of actuality, obtain for all times. While these turns of phrase are
really no more than hints, their mere presence suggests that Chatton is, after all,
uneasy with the fact that, according to the Copulative Analysis as expounded in
the context of the Day 1 theory, there are facts about the worldnamely future
states of affairsof which God is unaware.
10.1.4.2 Day 2
While explicitly granting God precognition of all actuality would, by definition,
assuage worries connected to Gods precognitive impairment444 under the
Day 1 regime, it would also simply reinstate all the problems associated with
DFN, thus undoing all the work accomplished by the Copulative Analysis and
the WSA. Another option, however, is to abandon the assumption of a fixed
future. If there is no eternal fact of the matter with respect to the occurrence or
non-occurrence of a given future contingent, then there is nothing for God to
know about that occurrence or non-occurrence, althoughassuming that the
modal map remains constantit is still the case that there is everything for
Him to cognize. While this would revive the mutability problems dealt with
in Day 1 by the alethiological analysis of d. 39 [29][32], it would solve the
problems of divine epistemic blur vis--vis the future: since a blur is all there is,
the fact that God sees a blur means that He sees reality, and His precognition
is unimpaired. The Day 2 theory takes this approach. Chatton presents it as
follows:
The second view, which I expounded on the second day, holds that a
future-tense proposition is not true about a contingent, nor is the corre-
sponding assent true; rather, [one can say] only that the [corresponding]
cognition has been from eternity, since there is knowledge of a [thing]
only when that [thing] is, and not before, since, before, it was not know-
able, assuming that there has been no preceding determination of any
cause.445
444 This amusing phrase is due to David Hunt (2001: 53).

445 rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1 [58]: Secunda via, quam alio die declaravi, tenet quod nec propositio
de futuro est vera de contingenti, nec assensus correspondens verus, sed solum quod illa
cognitio fuit ab aeterno, quia tunc est scientia huius quando hoc est, et non ante, quia ante
non erat scibile, et hoc ubi non praecessit determinatio causae alicuius.
The ideas associated with this theory are expounded in d. 38 [12][14], [42]
[43]; dd. 4041, q. 1 [8][20], [28][37], and [43][45].446
Day 2 is akin to the modern school known as Open Theism.447 This is
essentially the view described in 2.1 as A(mr): the fixed present and past
are ontologically and epistemically available to God and creature (making due
allowance for the differences between creaturely and divine knowledge), but
future contingents are ontologically and epistemically unavailable (none of the
relevant truth-making res exist yet, whether or not they subsist) and so even
God must await events, including the willed actions of creatures, before His
cognition becomes knowledge. The implication, never explicitly stated, is that
the future is in a state of genuine flux: the moving nunc creates an actuality
bottleneck, shaving off alternate temporal lines as agents posit choices in
being. Although Day 2 bears some resemblance to other ancient and medieval
models,448 few if any medieval thinkers openly maintained such a theory. This
includes Chatton; as we shall see, instead of claiming it as his own, he presents
it, falsely, as Peter Auriols.
Like the evidence that Day 1 is an A(a) model, the evidence supporting an
A(mr) model for Day 2 is indirect. One piece of evidence is the two-class theory
of predestination that Chatton develops in dd. 4041, q. 1 [10][13]. The predes-
tined fall into two categories, writes Chatton: the specially predestined, whom
God has ordained from eternity to be saved, and the rest of us. The first category
(e.g., the Blessed Virgin and St. Peter) are, in a limited sense, free not to be pre-
destined; their salvation is contingent in the sense that it is theologically but
not logically impossible that they be damned (cf. Peter Lombards treatment
of predestination, discussed in 5.1). Chatton develops a defense of this kind
of contingency, which I call type A contingency, based on modal scope disam-
biguation (n.b. not the WSA).449 However, there is, from eternity, a determining
cause of such persons salvation, namely God. Propositions asserting that such
persons will be saved thus count as determinately true future type A contin-
gent propositions, since, as Chatton puts it, something is actually the case [in
446 Wey and Etzkorn (rss vol. 2, p. 382, footnote 20) indicate only dd. 4041, q. 1 [14][17], [28],
and d. 38 [42].
447 See Boyd 2001 and Fischer et al. 2009 for Open Theism.
448 For contemporaries of Chatton, cf. the Revocable Default Future model (3.1, 5, 5.2.2,
7.2.27.2.3, 7.3) and the doctrine of the Contingency of Signification (see Quodlibet
q. 27 [3][12], commentary, and 10.2.1 below). See also footnote 21 on Gersonides doc-
trine.
449 See rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1 [37] and commentary.
210 chapter 1
virtue of] which that proposition is true.450 As for the ordinarily predestined
(the rest of us), our actions with respect to our salvation or reprobation fall
under a different type of contingency that I call type B, one that is connected
to the indeterminate truth-status of claims that we are, in fact, predestined. A
proposition asserting that we will be saved is not yet true: rather, it will come
to be true if and when our eventual blessedness is posited in being, an event
which is radically dependent on our behavior. Until then, since there is neither
any determining cause in the form of a divine decision nor any current truth-
making res, the future type B contingent proposition is neither true nor false.451
Of course, the mere fact that Chatton articulates (or recites) a T3 theory
does not ipso facto mean that he, or his feigned source, is endorsing an ontologi-
cally open future: as we have seen, Boethius the commentator, Thomas Wylton,
and Peter Auriol constructed theories in which T3 is paired with a closed-future
modeland indeed Chatton himself will do the same in Day 3. Here, how-
ever, is where the second piece of evidence in favor of A(mr) for Day 2 comes
into play. In the context of analyzing the structure of propositions asserting
ordinary predestination, Chatton makes remarks both about divine foreknowl-
edge and about divine and creaturely assent that strongly suggest a model in
which the future is in a state of genuine flux. For example, in Day 2, the Cop-
ulative Analysis seems to lead a double life. As elsewhere, it is an analysis of
divine-foreknowledge claims into two separate components, with cognition
and assent assigned to different portions of that analysis. However, it is also an
account of an irreducibly temporal unfolding and transformation of cognition
into assent. In Day 2, Gods cognition with respect to the eventual salvation of
the ordinarily predestined becomes assent, i.e., knowledge, at the same moment
in which the proposition in question becomes true; before that moment, His
cognition was not yet assent.452 Indeed, as Chatton makes Auriol say, it is in
the nature of Gods knowledge to follow the positing of the thing, but not to
precede it.453 The same can be said for Gods salvific will (which, recall, is tied
450 rss i, dd. 4041 q. 1 [11]: Et sic loquendo, dico quod sumendo propositionem veram
de futuro in materia de contingenti, quae determinatur ad veritatem a causa superiori,
aliquid est in re quo ipsa est vera. Et quid est illud? Determinatio causae superioris et hoc
absolute vel condicionaliter.
451 See rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1 [13], [14], [34].
452 See rss i, d. 38 [42]; dd. 4041, q. 1 [16], [28].
453 rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1 [28]: Tenens praedictam opinionem solveret sicet ita si intelligant
aliquae aliae, puta illa PETRI Aureoli, quam recitaviquod propositio de futuro non est
vera, quia talis dicit [quod] est scientia Dei qualis nata est sequi positionem rei, non autem
praevenire.
to His assent on Chattons reading): it changes over time in accordance with the
behavior of the ordinarily predestined (but not of the specially predestined). As
Chatton puts it:
On the third principal doubt (whether it must be conceded that God wills
that this one be saved), I say that [if we are speaking] about the instant in
which He gives him blessedness, [the answer] is obviously yes, and there is
no doubt. But [does He will it] from eternity? Here it seems that we should
speak as we do about [Gods] knowledge: (a) from eternity He has the will
through which He gives you blessedness in that instant, and (b) this is
true; for this [proposition] is a copulative, for whose truth both conjuncts
are required. If, however, He were to give you blessedness contrary to
general and special laws [i.e., if He were to specially predestine you], it
would not remain in your indifferent [power].454
It is no exaggeration to call this theory semi-Pelagian (Schabel 2000: 231); on

the Day 2 reading, the ordinarily predestined can exert an influence on the
divine will with respect to their own predestination. Indeed predestination
seems like a misnomer here, as the pre prefix can only be said to come into
effect retroactively.
Matters stand similarly with the Wylton Scope Analysis, which appears in
disguised form in Chattons treatment of creaturely assent to prophetic utter-
ances. God can indeed cause an assent in a prophets mind regarding the salva-
tion of this or that ordinarily predestined person, writes Chatton; and if He does
so, then the prophet should of course assent to the prophecy. But the assent
must play out in time in the following way: until instant a, the prophet must
expect the state of affairs corresponding to the prophecy; and at instant a, he
must assent to the present-tense form of the prophecy. The entire process
expectation first (corresponding to the future operator in the WSA) and assent
454 rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1 [35]: Ad tertium dubium principale, an debeat concedi quod Deus
vult quod iste salvetur, DICO quod de instanti in quo dat isti beatitudinem, patet quod
sic, et nulla est dubitatio. Sed an ab aeterno? Hic videtur dicendum sicut de scientia,
quod ab aeterno habuit velle, per quod velle dat tibi beatitudinem in hoc instanti, et
hoc est verum; est enim haec una copulativa, cuius veritas requirit ambo extrema poni.
Si autem praeter leges in generali ordine et in speciali, daret tibi beatitudinem, non
remanet in aequali indifferentia tua. Sed an Deus possit revelare tibi? Potest utroque
modo praedicto, sive exspectes scilicet tempus futurum, et tunc assentias huic dicto.
Patet igitur ad argumentum, quia Deus ab aeterno habuit velle, quo dat modo beati-
tudinem.
212 chapter 1
second (corresponding to the truth operator), enacted over timecounts as

assenting to the prophecy in a nave or pretheoretical sense.455 Throughout
this discussion, Chatton mixes references to this ones salvation with refer-
ence to Socrates sitting, indicating that propositions asserting ordinary pre-
destination are to be treated simply as standard examples of future contin-
gent statements.456 For both God and creature, then, future type B contingent
propositions are verified, and their truth known, in time: their truth-status, the
knowledge of their truth-status, and the actuality they correctly or incorrectly
represent are irreducibly diachronic. In a way, the diachronic character of such
propositions is just Chattons processual interpretation of all propositions (cf.
10.1.2.3 above) applied to the peculiar case of (genuinely) contingent state-
ments about the future: the way in which our assent interacts with the truth-
making res in question is, in this case, necessarily diachronic, since the res only
becomes available, and thus capable of making truth, at the end of an expec-
tative process.
As in the linear model of (the genuine) Auriols system as described in 6.2.3,
the Day 2 model is one in which it is simply not the case at any (tn) that any
future contingent (tm>n) obtains, although for all (tm<n), (tn)[(tm<n)] obtains.
The crucial difference between that earlier model and Day 2 is that Chatton
provides no loophole in the form of Gods indistant knowledge of timed reality.
This omission implies that in Day 2, unlike in Auriols system, there really is
nothing (yet) to know with respect to a large class of future contingents. Hence
Gods omniscience is unharmed, but the future is in flux.
A right-branching model illustrating how all this works can be provided by
slightly modifying Figures 4 and 9 as Figure 12 (see next page). As in the stack
model of Auriols system, Day 2 allows a single real present and past but multi-
ple real futures (like any A(mr) model). Unlike the stack model, however, Day
2 assumes that there is no time-structure postdating that is availableeven
indistantlyto God. Hence while some res dated at (t) can form the subjects
of determinately true assertions, some cannot, even for God. For example, let
W stand for Mary is saved while S means Joe (some ordinary wayfarer) is
saved. Marys salvation at (t), having been specially predestined, was one of
the criteria God used to decide which worlds to prune and which to leave as
455 See rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1 [15], [32][35]; cf. also [43][45]. The diachronic analysis of
prophecy persists into the Day 3 model: see [78].
456 This one shall be saved and you/I/Socrates will sit are used more or less indiscrimi-
nately in the Day 2 sections; at one point, in dd. 4041, q. 1 [9], they appear in a single
section with no obvious sense of a change of subject.
figure 12 An example of a time-structure illustrating Chattons Day 2 system. Currently real

futures are in red. There is a Thin Red Line up to (t)/(t0); after that, the terminology
(and accompanying subscript) no longer refers to a unique history and so is not
used. (The propositional variables PR in Fig. 4 have been deleted as irrelevant.)
live options: all worlds in which Mary is damned have been ab aeterno con-
signed to the status of unreal options that count, nevertheless, as adequate
truth-makers for the claim that Marys salvation is type A contingent. By con-
trast, Joes salvation is type B contingent; hence, as histories B and F show,
he can, in a more radical sense, be damned at (t). His salvation is depen-
dent (among other things, presumably) on his making final perseverance, a
choice that is reflected in the decision points at (t) and (t).457 The eventual
occurrence of Joes salvation is presented as a positing-in-being of the relevant
truth-making res. Note that the Day 2 model, since it assumes a wide vari-
ety of questions with respect to which there are as yet no facts and thus no
counterfactuals, makes use of the simple version of sense i(3) in the 8.3 typol-
ogy.
How do the pattern arguments fare in Day 2? The results are varied. John Can Be
Wrong, as in all right-branching systems, goes through easily on the assumption
that creaturely belief-clauses take modally open complements. For future type
A contingent propositions, Day 2 would appeal to heterogeneous modality in
457 For final perseverance see rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1 [45].

214 chapter 1
order to refute Divine Foreknowledge Necessitates and God Can Be Wrong.458

The results would be the invalidation of those two arguments; however, this
invalidation would be rejected by anyone unconvinced by the sophismatic
solution (see 3.2.1).459 For future type B contingent propositions, matters
are somewhat more complicated; DFN and GCBW both fail, but for different
458 I say would appeal because DFN and GCBW are not explicitly treated in the Day 2
sections with respect to type A contingency. However, in dd. 4041, q. 1 [10], indirect
reference is made to the argument in d. 38 [34], which latter resembles GCBW, and it is
clear that heterogeneous modality is appealed to.
459 In order to distinguish between type A and type B contingency, we can introduce the
following notation for Day 2: a subscript R indicates quantification over real histories; its
absence, over all histories. So from (t0[TRL]), W, being type A contingent, is R (t+3) but not
(t+3), while S, being type B contingent, is R(t+3) and a fortiori (t+3). Thus the truth-
clauses for Day 2, which resemble those of the Auriolian system (6.2.4) except for the R
subscript, allow a distinction between truth-value and modality:
V[Time-structure N: ] = T just in case V[Time-structure N: (tn[TRL]) R ] = T

V[Time-structure N: ] = F just in case V[Time-structure N: (tn[TRL]) R ] = T
V[Time-structure N: ] = U just in case V[Time-structure N: (tn[TRL]) R ] = T
With temporally indexed propositions:
V[Time-structure N: (tm) ] = T just in case V[Time-structure N: (tn[TRL]) R (tm) ]

=T
V[Time-structure N: (tm) ] = F just in case V[Time-structure N: (tn[TRL]) R (tm) ]
=T
V[Time-structure N: (tm) ] = U just in case V[Time-structure N: (tn[TRL]) R (tm) ]
=T
For Mary (type A contingency), the arguments come out invalid based on the failure of
truth-to-necessity in the Day 2 system, which in turn is due to heterogeneous modal-
ity:
DFN:
{(t0 [TRL]) BG R (t+3) W} / (t0[TRL]) (t+3) W

God believes that Mary It is now simply
will be saved at (t+3) necessary that Mary
be saved at (t+3)
(Truth-value: T) (Truth-value: F)
GCBW:
reasons.460 DFN is rendered unsound in virtue of the non-truth of the premise:

the status, at and before (t)/(t0), of Gods foreknowledge of Joes eventual
salvation at (t)/(t+3) is indeterminate, since it includes salvation nodes and
reprobation nodes. In other words, the res determining whether Joe is saved
or damned (for example, the fact of his making final perseverance) have not
been posited in being; the earliest time this could happen is (t)/(t+1) at node
Q. Thus God literally does not (in any sense) know whether Joe will be damned
or saved, although He does, of course, cognize Joes salvation in the sense of
having complete knowledge of its truth-conditions and modal requirements.
GCBW, in turn, fails because of the non-truth of the divine knowledge premise;
here, however, the assumption of the truth of that premise would render the
premise set inconsistent. In any case, the non-truth of the first premise means
we cannot draw the conclusion that God can be wrong even if the argument is
valid.461
{(t0 [TRL]) BG R (t+3) W, (t0[TRL]) (t+3) W} / (t0[TRL]) (t0) [BG R (t+3) W

R (t+3) W]
God believes that Mary will It is now simply It is now possible that God
be saved at (t+3) possible that Mary will turn out to have been
not be saved at wrong in His belief that Mary
(t+3) would be saved at (t+3)
(Truth-value: T) (Truth-value: T) (Truth-value: F)
The divine-foreknowledge clauses do not have a copulative form; this omission is deliber-
ate, and reflects the complete absence of the Copulative Analysis from Day 2 texts dealing
with type A contingency. This absence makes sense given that the idea of God arranging
directly and ab aeterno for Marys salvation would be undermined by separating Gods
cognition from its contents. The Copulative Analysis, of course, could also have helped
defuse DFN; but the appeal to heterogeneous modality is apparently held to suffice for
this purpose.
460 For type B contingency, DFN is addressed in d. 38 [12]; it is also hinted at in dd. 4041,
q. 1 [14] and [16]. GCBW is never directly addressed, but a closely related argument to the
effect that divinely inspired human prophecy can be wrong is presented at dd. 4041, q. 1
[24] and answered in [32][33]. See 10.1.4.2.1 (2).
461 In fact, on my analysis GCBW would be invalid anyway. In both DFN and CGBW, the cop-
ulative divine foreknowledge premise, because of its open second conjunct, is assigned
its truth-value according to its modal status in Fig. 12; since (t0 [TRL]) R (t+1) S, this truth-
value is U. Hence, if we make the normal assumption and take T as our designated value for
the purposes of establishing validity, DFN can be regarded as valid but unsound, since we
cannot licitly affirm the premise, while GCBW once again assumes the aspect of a scope
fallacy:
216 chapter 1
10.1.4.2.1 Problems with the Day 2 Model

It is clear from the text of dd. 4041, q. 1 that Chatton is not ultimately satisfied
with the Day 2 theory, despite expending considerable ingenuity on it and
defending it with two of his favorite tools, the Copulative Analysis and the WSA.
However, he tells us little about the grounds of his dissatisfaction. Four obvious
possibilities suggest themselves:
(1) The Semi-Pelagian Peril

As noted above, the Day 2 theory concedes a remarkable degree of autonomy
to creatures in determining their own salvation or reprobation. Prophecy and
prediction to the effect that a given ordinarily predestined person will indeed
achieve salvation are, in line with the Copulative Analysis and the WSA, nei-
ther true nor false before the final, decisive instant a; the truth-maker of such
a prophecy or prediction is (at least partially) the behavior of said person at
instant a; therefore (so it seems) creatures are not only the co-authors of Gods
predestinarian plan, but are indeed empowered to write the final draft. This
conclusion troubles one interlocutor: is there no divinely originating meriting
cause of this ones predestination? Chatton waffles a bit in response to this
question, but the gist of his reply seems to be that this ones predestination is
predicated on the conditional structure of Gods promiseif this one perse-
veres, then he will be saved. The activation of this conditional promise, though
caused by the entirely free action of this one at instant a, can in a general sense
be referred back to God.462 One could argue, however, that if this ones per-
severance is the determining cause of his final blessedness, then God is simply
DFN:
{[CG (S, S) (t+3) R (t+3) S] } (t+3) R (t+3) S

(Truth-value: U) (Truth-value: U)
GCBW:
{[CG (S, S) (t+3) R (t+3) S], R (t+3) S} / R (t0) [[CG (S, S) (t+3) R (t+3) S]
(t+3) S]
(Truth-value: U) (Truth-value: T) (Truth-value: F)
A careful reading of the texts in which it appears (dd. 4041, q. 1 [14], [16], [31], [35]) shows
that the main purpose of the Copulative Analysis, in Day 2, is to protect God from infection
with mutability; by contrast, its use in d. 38 [40][41] responded to DFN. The WSA, on the
other hand, is used to support creaturely freedom (see dd. 4041, q. 1 [34]).
462 See dd. 4041, q. 1 [44][45].
not in control of providence. This problem is connected to Chattons insistence

that the supposed author of Day 2, Peter Auriol, claimed that Gods knowledge
follows the known.463
(2) The Prophecy Problem

Chatton concedes that God can, either directly or indirectly, prophesy type B
contingent events. However, since the outcome of the prophesied event is in a
state of radical indeterminacy, a version of GCBWcall it The Prophecy Can
Be Wrong (PCBW)looms on the horizon. Of course, we have seen above how
GCBW could be solved, in Day 2, by simple reference to the genuinely unset-
tled state of Gods knowledge2 before instant a, which renders the argument
unsound. It is far from clear, however, that this approach works for a God who
has committed Himself in human writing or speech to the one or the other side
of a given contradiction: This one shall be saved sounds fairly unambiguous.
Interestingly (given his conditional analysis of the cause of salvation), Chat-
ton does not avail himself of Ockhams solution to this problem, which is to
treat simple prophecies as abbreviated conditional statements.464 Instead, he
concedes the validity and soundness of PCBW but softens the blow by provid-
ing implicit assurances that, in the event, the prophesied events will occur as
described and not otherwise. The analysis, if we can call it that, runs as fol-
lows: (1) God can cause an assent in a prophets mind which, in line with the
analysis of type B contingency, is neither true nor false prior to instant a. (2)
It follows that the linguistic expression of this assent, having as it does the
form of an unambiguous assertion, can, in the strongest sense, be wrong. (3)
Not to worry: in line with the diachronic approach to the Copulative Anal-
ysis and the WSA, you will in fact find yourself, at instant a, assenting with
truth to the present-tense version of the original prophecy.465 Chatton does
not state the matter as baldly as I have done, but he gives no other response,
and his reticence can readily be attributed to embarrassment over its inade-
quacy.
(3) Gods Unknowing Cognition of the Contingent

In the Day 2 account, problems associated with the limits on divine omni-
science implied by the Copulative Analysis, for which the switch to an open-
future model seemed to offer an (albeit radical) solution, are reintroduced by
463 See d. 38 [12].

464 See Ockham, Tractatus de praedestinatione q. 1 [OPh vol. 2, p. 513, ll. 176182].
465 rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1 [32][34].
218 chapter 1
the distinction between two types of contingency. The asymmetry that charac-
terizes Gods epistemic relation to type A and type B contingent events is never
relieved; though He knows1 the former, He never comes to know1 the latter. As
is suggested by the absence of the Copulative Analysis from texts expounding
type A contingency, God not only cognizes but knows1 Marys salvation: indeed,
given that He preordained and determined it ab aeterno,466 His epistemic
grasp of it must have been unambiguously one-sided. Hence, the inventory
of Gods cognition, which is for the most part an intensional or apprehen-
sive faculty, includes a substantial number of extensional items, namely actual
truth-values. However, this does not appear to be the case with respect to type B
contingency. God indeed comes to know the outcome of a type B contingent
contradiction, but the texts that assert this467 are all amenable to, or explicitly
invoke, a copulative interpretation of knowledge, in which Gods cognition
remains separated from the facticity of its contents even after instant a. Of
course, this makes sense, given that coming to know something in any more
substantive sense would imply change in the divine being; nevertheless it rep-
resents, intuitively, a significant restriction on Gods epistemic capacity. Thus
one of the chief problems of the Day 1 model simply reappears in another guise
in Day 2.
(4) Gods Extrinsic Mutability

Even if we somehow manage to address all the above issues, we are left with
a world which is constantly in flux, and this makes it very difficult to argue
for divine immutability. An appeal to Cambridge predicates and Cambridge
change is far less plausible than it would be in an A(a) system, in which all
that changes is the locus of the moving nunc on an otherwise stable time-
line. In Day 2, the moving nunc is the point at which the world is ontologi-
cally disambiguated, the moment when substantive matters of fact crystallize;
and this disambiguation and crystallization are very plausibly read as change
in extrinsic predicates of God. A particularly troublesome mutable element
of the Day 2 model is the irreducibly diachronic transition between divine
cognition and divine assent. Even if the facticity of the posited/realized res
is external to divine cognition, leaving the latter internally unchanged, nev-
ertheless the ensemble that constitutes divine assent irreducibly comes into
being. This may still not be intrinsic mutability, but it is too close for com-
fort.
466 rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1 [10].

467 See rss i, d. 38 [42]; dd. 4041, q. 1 [14], [16], [28], [31].
Thus the unstable qualities of the Day 2 model cause the pendulum to swing
back to the assumption of a fixed future.
10.1.4.3 Day 3
In dd. 4041, q. 1 [59], Chatton announces the following doctrine:
But the middle way, which will now be expounded, holds that the [propo-
sition] God has eternally assented, for a, that Socrates sit is true. We
accept that the [proposition] in a, Socrates sits ought to be true, and
that always, before a, [he] is indifferent as to sitting in a or not sitting in
a. Then I want to say that God has eternally assented, for a, that Socrates
sit. And thus I say that He has eternally assented, for band let b be the
total time before athat Socrates be indifferent between sitting and not
sitting in a. Therefore the certainty of the divine cognition is for a, but
contingency and indifference are for b.468
The remainder of dd. 4041, a total of 90 sections, is devoted to expounding and

defending this idea.
As Chattons very language indicates, Day 3 is meant to be a kind of media
via between the two extremes of Day 1 and Day 2. Day 1, as Chatton makes
clear,469 is vulnerable to the truth-to-necessity argument; and as we have seen,
Day 2 offends too obviously against orthodox thinking with respect to divine
omniscience. Day 3 concedes the ontological stability of the future but blocks
necessitation by means of the formal device of the clause for [instant] a/b,
which allows God to have assent and certain cognition of Socrates behavior
in a without necessitating that behavior. In the Day 3 model, divine assent and
cognition remain constant and eternal, while the objects of that assent and that
cognition vary over time. Day 3 has that much in common with Day 2; but in
Day 3 (as in Day 1) there is a timeless fact of the matter about what happens
in instant a. Nevertheless normal statements of the form Socrates will sit in
instant a are, until instant a itself, neither true nor false.
468 rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1 [59]: Sed media via nunc declaranda tenet quod haec est vera Deus
aeternaliter assensit pro a Sortem sedere. Accipimus quod haec debeat esse vera in a
Sortes sedet, et quod semper ante a sit indifferens ad sedendum in a vel non sedendum
in a. Tunc volo dicere quod Deus aeternaliter assensit pro a Sortem sedere. Et ita dico quod
aeternaliter assentit pro bsit b totum tempus praecedens aquod Sortes est indifferens
ad sedendum et non sedendum in a. Certitudo igitur cognitionis divinae est pro a, sed
contingentia et indifferentia est pro b.
469 See rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1 [63].
220 chapter 1
A perspicacious member of Chattons audience immediately and vigorously

objects to the Day 3 doctrine on the grounds that it is a formal variant of Day 1,
with all its problems: [I]f the [proposition] for a, Socrates sits is eternally true,
then there is no need for deliberation about this [matter], since it is already
true that for a, Socrates [sits].470 Chatton promptly counters by using the
divine assent as a kind of buffer between the truth of the proposition and
the necessitation of its contents. The proposition Sfor a, Socrates sits
is, for all instants b<a, neither true nor false; nevertheless we can assert the
truth of Socrates future sittingeither notionally, in the sense that there is
some timeless fact of the matter on the subject, or more confidently, when we
are reporting or delivering an instance of genuine prophecyif we phrase our
proposition as an assertion that the divine assent to S exists. Such a proposition
is, of course, always true, since the divine assent exists timelessly and therefore
omnitemporally; but in asserting it, we are not asserting the current truth of its
temporally-indexed contents.471 This move does not satisfy Chattons audience,
and the objections come thick and fast for the next forty sections. The objector
or objectors focus on a simple and familiar dilemma: either the fixed future
conceded by Day 3 activates the truth-to-necessity argument, or Chattons
efforts to block necessity with the appeal to assent and the for [instant] a/b
device will curtail Gods foreknowledge.
Let us see how Day 3 is supposed to work. As mentioned above, Chatton
uses the divine assent as a buffer or block intervening between creaturely cog-
nizer/speaker and future fact. Since he clearly accepts the truth-to-necessity
argument, this use of divine assent amounts to an apparently radical denial of
the transitivity of truth-value assignment in the following sentence:
(1) God assents that [for instant a] (Socrates sits).
This sentence is ex hypothesi true. Moreover, the contents of Gods assent are,
for instant a, also true. Nevertheless we are not entitled to a bare assertion of
those contents, as in the following sentence:
(2) [For instant a] (Socrates sits).
470 rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1 [60], ll. 2023: Sed contra hanc viam obicio. Contra eam videntur esse
omnia argumenta supra posita contra alias, quia si haec est aeternaliter vera pro a sortes
sedet, igitur non est deliberandum circa hoc, quia iam vera est pro a Sortes [sedet].
471 rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1 [60], ll. 23 ff.
The result seems paradoxical to the objector(s), but is readily explicable in

terms of Chattons distinction between different types of truth.472 His objec-
tors are making the false assumption that the truth involved in the main and
subordinate clauses of sentence (1) is univocal, whereas it is in fact equivocal.
The main clause of sentence (1), being the assertion of a currently existing res,
namely the divine assent, is type 2(a) (res-dependent) true. Sentence (2), being
the assertion of a future res that has not yet been posited in being (in any sense
of that expression), is not yet type 2(a) true; indeed, it is type 2(a) undeter-
mined. Type 2(a) truth, however, is an affair for mere mortals, and God makes
no use of it. From His perspective, the contents of the complement-clause of
sentence (1) have both type 1 (res-borne) and type 2(b) (res-directed) truth.
God directly cognizes and assents to the res associated with Socrates sitting;
he makes no use of complexes (i.e., propositions). The result is that sentence
(1) as a whole, though something of an alethiological hybrid, is true in an
overarching sense; and that sense, while too weak to impose necessitation, is
strong enough to ground prophecy. We can contrast the relationship between
sentences (1) and (2) with that between (3) and (4):
(3) God assents that [for all instants b prior to a] ([for a, Socrates sits] or [for
a, Socrates does not sit])
(4) [For all instants b prior to a] ([for a, Socrates sits] or [for a, Socrates does
not sit]).
Here there is no loss of type 2(a) truth; even from the perspective of the
wayfarer, both (3) and (4) are unproblematically true, though not especially
informative.
Fig. 13 provides a linear representation of Chattons Day 3 model. It recalls
Fig. 8 (the linear model of Peter Auriols system); this is no coincidence.
Although this is Chattons own preferred theory, he is evidently not entirely
comfortable with it, and it is easy to see why. Like Thomas Wyltons theory,
and like (the genuine) Peter Auriols theory, Day 3 is an example of a T3A(a)
pairing, and violations of the Correspondence Assumption always seem coun-
terintuitive and provoke resistance. We can already guess at the contours which
such resistance will take: Granted that the entire debate is being conducted by
means of mere discursive reasoning, using propositions, which God does not
use; nevertheless propositions are pretty much all we wayfarers have got; surely
472 Chatton expounds his three-type theory of truth in d. 39 [29][32]; see text and commen-
tary.
222 chapter 1
figure 13 A linear representation of Chattons Day 3 model. God directly assents to Socrates
sitting at (t) / (t+2) (i.e., instant a) and for any instants c>a. For the portion of the
timeline b<a, He assents to contingency and indifference with respect to (t)S /
(t+2)S (t)S / (t+2)S
it is in Chattons own interest, despite his demurral at dd. 4041, q. 1 [82],

to claim that these propositions are true in some way a wayfarer can grasp;
this implies the res-dependent truth of sentences such as A, construing res
broadly as the way things really are; if things really are that way, surely
we can do nothing about it; and so on. The objectors raise just these issues
(among others),473 and Chatton, who has little trouble addressing worries
about the clarity of divine cognition under the Day 3 regime, finds himself
forced to defend the robustness of conative contingency under that regime
on the dubious, though common, grounds that such contingency is per se
notum.474 Moreover, when the objectors protest that Day 3 implies that it is in
my power, for all of b, that God should never assent to my sitting for a, Chatton
concedes the point, remarking merely that this implies not that I have power
over God, but that this [fact] derives from the fullness of His perfection, i.e.,
that Gods power embraces all modal options.475 This concession, if it is not
a mere appeal to ontologically exiguous counterfactuals la Boethian logical
compatibilism, seems to lead back in the direction of an open future, as in
the Day 2 model. Such wavering notwithstanding, Chatton stands by the Day
473 See especially rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1 [80]; also [60], [62], [64], [78][79].
474 See rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1 [66][75]. For the status of this appeal as a fourteenth-century
commonplace, see Schabel 2000: 217218.
475 rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1 [77].
3 model, using it in the closing sections of q. 1 to solve the predestinarian

problems raised by the form of the question.
Before moving on to the final refinement of Chattons Day 3 model in dd.
4041, q. 2, it is important to take note of the transformation which the con-
cept of divine assent has undergone between Day 1 and Day 3. As stated in
10.1.2.1, the idea of assent seems at first to be akin to a Fregean judgement
stroke; in principle, it can operate independently of the contents of what is
assented to. This usage prevails in the Day 1 sections, in which assent functions
mainly as the second, decisive conjunct in the Copulative Analysis. During Day
2, however, divine assent begins to impinge on the role of cognition in that anal-
ysis. The cause of this transformation seems to be the necessity of conceding
legitimate assent to prophesied future contingents. God must be able to cause
present assent, in some intuitive sense, in the mind of a genuine prophet,476
but that assent must not render the Day 2 theory vulnerable to the truth-to-
necessity argument, DFN, or GCBW.477 Thus, assent, just like cognition, must
be associated with an indeterminate truth-value prior to the occurrence of the
predicted event; only when that event is posited in being (senses i(3) or ii) does
assent become true. Divine assent thus no longer has any per se role to play in
deciding between the one and the other side of a given contradiction in the
Copulative Analysis; that role is played solely by the occurrence or enacting
of the res itself. This interpretation of divine assent continues into the Day 3
model.
10.1.4.3.1 Day 3 Continued: Res as Propositional Intension and the Distinction

between Broad and Narrow Assent
In the second Question of dd. 4041, Chatton uses the altered conception of
divine assent (see previous section) to ensure the stability and certainty of
Gods knowledge in the face of GCBW and to bolster his defense of creaturely
contingency in the face of DFN. Let us begin with the first. We have seen that
Chatton regards res as the proper objects of cognition and assent, as well as
the significates and truth-makers of propositions. In dd. 4041, q. 2, this anal-
ysis continues. First, there is an important shift in the multiform concept of
476 Thus it seems that the delayed assent counts as present assent approach of Day 2 (see
10.1.4.2 above) fails ultimately to convince Chatton: we must be able to assent now to a
future contingent; what we await is not the assent itself, but the determination of its truth
(see dd. 4041, q. 1 [78]).
477 GCBW is dealt with explicitly at dd. 4041, q. 1 [76]; it is clear that Chatton regards the
indeterminate state of divine assent during b<a as a saving clause guaranteeing that God
cannot be wrong.
224 chapter 1
res away from an interpretation as facts to an interpretation as propositional

intensions (cf. 10.1.2.3). We have seen in 10.1.2.4 that, according to the Doc-
trine of Contradictories, and refer to the same res. The significance of the
Doctrine, however, has been limited; in d. 38, Chatton uses it to respond to an
obviously sophistical argument about non-being,478 while in d. 39 he treats it
effectively as a form of simple bivalence.479 In q. 2, by contrast, the Doctrine is
connected to the idea of res as proper objects of divine indeterminate assent.
Chattons ideas about res, divine assent, and the Doctrine of Contradictories
come into focus simultaneously in the following passage, in which he tries to
prove that God necessarily assents to the thing signified by the [proposition]
Socrates sits in a:
And I prove this first in this way. It is impossible that God should not
assent to the thing signified by a true complex when the complex is true;
nor is it in your or anyone elses power, when you sit, that God should not
assent to your sitting; otherwise He would not know when any things are
true. Similarly, when the complex you are not sitting is true, God assents
to the thing signified by it, and [He does so] necessarily, in such a way
that, if you are not sitting, no [cause] can prevent God from assenting
to your not sitting. But it is necessary, and cannot be impeded by any
cause whatsoever, that one of the two [complexes], just as it is formed,
should be true, and similarly that the thing signified by these present-
tense contradictories be true, i.e., you sit in a, you do not sit in a.
Therefore, no cause can prevent God from necessarily assenting to the
thing signified by those [contradictories], since the same thing is signified
by each of them.480
478 See rss i, d. 38 [52], responding to [37].

479 See rss i, d. 39 [26], [29].
480 rss i, dd. 4041, q. 2 [5]: Et hoc probo primo sic. Impossibile est quod Deus non assentiat
rei significatae per complexum verum, quando complexum est verum, nec est in potestate
tua nec alicuius, quando tu sedes, quin Deus assentiat te sedere, aliter ignorare aliqua
quando sunt vera. Similiter, quando hoc complexum est verum tu non sedes, Deus
assentit rei significatae per eam et necessario, ita quod nulla [causa] potest facere quin, si
non sedeas, Deus assentiat te non sedere. Sed impossibile est per quamcumque causam
quin alterum istorum, sicut formeretur, sit verum, similiter et quin res significata per ista
contradictoria de praesenti sit vera, scilicet tu sedes in a, tu non sedes in a. Igitur nulla
causa potest facere quin Deus necessario assentiat rei significatae per ea, quia eadem res
significatur per utrumque.
This new turn is easily misinterpreted as the unimpressive claim that, for any
given proposition , God cognizes and assents to ( ); indeed, some mem-
bers of Chattons audience misinterpret it in just this way, complaining that if
this is what he means by infallible divine assent, then we wayfarers are infalli-
ble as well, since we, too, can confidently affirm tautologies.481 In fact, Chattons
idea is much more substantive than this. In this Distinction and Question, at
any rate, the Doctrine of Contradictories does not merely affirm bivalence (as
in rss i, d. 39 [26] and [29]); nor does it merely fix the reference of a given
propositional pair at a substance-accident complex subsisting somewhere in
modal space (as in rss ii, d. 12, q. 1 [31]). Instead, it specifies an object for the
new interpretation of divine assent, namely a res construed as the intension, or
modal profile, of a given proposition or object. Just as God cognizes the inten-
sion of a proposition (cf. Fig. 11), so He now assents to it. Hence the intension
of each pair (, ) is now true by the truth of the thing,482 guaranteeing that
God necessarily assents to what is objectually true. Furthermore, on the dd. 40
41, q. 2 reading, His assent itself, as a truth-bearer, is true even before instant a
(contrast the dd. 4041, q. 1 reading), although the state of that truth is as yet
indifferent:
[Although God] necessarily assents to the thing signified by the [proposi-

tion] Socrates sits, nevertheless this thing is indifferently true, whether
it be signified by this complex or by its contradictory. Hence, it is con-
sistent with this assent that the [proposition] should be false, since the
truth of the assent is equally compatible with the contradictory of this
complex being true. Hence, if this complex is true, then the assent is true
by affirmative truth; if not, then it is true by negative truth.483
God, in other words, cannot be wrong: after all, no creaturely action can sever
the bond between Gods assent and its truth-making and -bearing object.
481 See rss i, dd. 4041, q. 2 [19].

482 See rss i, dd. 4041, q. 2 [4] and a. 2 [26]. This is type 1 truth in Chattons alethiology (see
d. 39 [29][32] and commentary).
483 rss i, dd. 4041, q. 2 [16]: [L]icet necessario assentiat rei significatae per istam Sortes
sedet, tamen haec res indifferenter est vera, sive significetur per hoc complexum sive
per suum contradictorium. Unde cum isto assensu stat quod haec sit falsa, quia aeque
stat veritas assensus istius, si istius complexi contraditorium sit verum. Unde si istud
complexum sit verum, tunc assensus est verus veritate affirmativa; si non, tunc est verus
veritate negativa.
226 chapter 1
So much for God Can Be Wrong. What about Divine Foreknowledge Neces-
sitateshow can contingency be defended against Gods infallible cognition
and assent? In responding to this question, Chatton improves on the Day 3
answers he gave in dd. 4041, q. 1, which amounted to a denial of the truth
(and a concomitant denial of the necessity) of future contingents. In q. 2 he
retains the denial of truth, but also introduces a distinction between two kinds
of divine assent, which I term broad and narrow assent.484 Simply put, God
broadly assents to the modal profile of a given contradictory pair (, ) and
narrowly assents to whichever of the two contradictories His creatures decide
to posit in being. We wayfarers give the final form to Gods assent:
And thus I concede that it is impossible that God should not assent to
that thing in His soul by an affirmative or negative assent, just as has
been said previously about the assent to a thing outside the soul.485 And
I concede further that it is in my power that the assent of God should be
affirmative or negative, since, with no alteration in Him, it is equivalent
at one moment to an affirmative assent, [and] at another to a negative
[assent], when the thing is otherwise disposed.486
But I say that there is contingency, not because it is in your power
that [God] should cognize or not cognize, but because it is in your power
that the thing be posited or not be posited; and if it is posited, then
[Gods] assent applies to the affirmative complex, or is compatible with
it; if not, [then Gods assent applies] to the negative [complex]; in such a
way, however, that the assent is always the same, and to the same thing,
whether the thing be posited or not.487
484 See commentary sections on dd. 4041, q. 2 [9][16]. The distinction is inspired by Norman
Kretzmanns broad bivalence (see 4.1 above and Kretzmann 1998: 46).
485 See [3][5].
486 rss i, dd. 4041, q. 2 [26]: Et ideo concedo quod impossibile est quin Deus assentiat illi
rei in anima assensu affirmativo vel negativo, sicut dictum est prius de assensu rei extra
animam. Et concedo ultra quod in potestate mea est quod assensus Dei sit affirmativus
vel negativus, quia modo sine omni mutatione sui aequivalet assensui affirmativo, modo
negativo, quando res aliter se habet.
487 rss i, dd. 4041, q. 2 [30]: Sed dico quod contingentia stat, non quia sit in potestate tua
quod Deus assentiat et non assentiat, non plus quam sit in potestate tua quod cognoscat
et non cognoscat, sed quia in potestate tua est quod res ponatur vel non ponatur; et si
ponatur, tunc assensus aequivalet affirmativo complexo, vel est sibi conformis; si non,
negativo, ita tamen quod semper assensus est idem, et eidem rei, sive res ponatur sive
non.
Conative contingency is not cancelled by divine assent, since that assent

is ambiguous; we are powerless to cancel Gods broad assent, but it is within
our power to give that assent its precise lineaments. It should be noted in
passing that res, since they are now interpreted as propositional modal profiles
and not, as in Days 1 and 2, as substances, accidents, or facts, cannot play the
role of fixing propositional truth-value (as in the Copulative Analysis); instead,
individual wills play that role through the enactment of narrow assent.
Given that the move toward a closed-future model in Day 3 seems to rein-
state the freedom-canceling force of DFN and GCBW; and given further that
the distinction between broad and narrow assent, and the role of rational crea-
tures in moving from the first to the second, is clearly intended as a direct
response to those two arguments (cf. the statement of the principal arguments
in sections [1][2]); we may well ask whether the distinction thus introduced
refutes the arguments at too great a cost. To all appearances, our ability to tilt
the divine assent toward the one or the other side of a given contradiction is an
ability to exert causal influence on Gods assent, if not on God Himself. Further-
more, since divine assent is treated as voluntarythis feature of assent has not
changed between the Day 1 and the Day 3 modelsthere arises the disturbing
possibility that we can actually exert an influence on Gods will. Chatton gives
an indirect solution to this problem in rss i, d. 46, in which he answers the
traditional question whether the divine will could be impeded by any action
of a creature488 in the negative. Drawing on established scholastic tradition,
Chatton distinguishes two subdivisions in the divine will: the antecedent will
of good pleasure and the consequent will of good pleasure.489 In the first subdi-
vision are located the specifics of Gods conditional willingness to save every
human: if you are good (i.e., go to church, make final restitution, etc.) you will
be saved; if you are not, you will be damned. In the second subdivision are
located the actual results that follow if these protases are actually posited: sal-
vation and damnation respectively. Against the standard account, according to
which it is within our power to violate Gods antecedent will (or at least His
will of sign) though not His consequent will of good pleasure, Chatton insists
that neither of these subdivisions is subject to creaturely influence, since, after
all, (a) the antecedent (though hypothetical) structure of salvation/damnation
is irrevocable and (b) when we have finally chosen, the results follow according
to Gods will in a way that we cannot influence. Nevertheless we can, of course,
488 rss i, d. 46, q. 1: Utrum divina voluntas possit impediri per quamcumque actionem
creaturae.
489 Cf. 5.2.1 (footnote 198), 6.2.5.2.1, and 6.2.6.
228 chapter 1
freely activate the hypothetical structure so that its inexorable mechanism is

set in motion.490
As for the dangers of divine mutability that this account seems to introduce,
Chatton has two answers:
But if [God has willed] contingently, this is maintained in various ways,

as appears above, since according to one way, it must be said that just as
it is in your power that this not happen in a, so is it in your power that
God, from eternity, not have willed this to happen in a. According to the
second way, it must be said that the same act of God equates to willing
and not-willing, and then it is not in your power that that act be or that it
have such [a thing] for its object, but that that act be willing or not-willing
determinately.
And how can this happen without change? Because there is no transi-
tion from one contradictory to the other, as is clear above.491
The first answer is the old, problematic claim, two versions of which we have
already seen,492 according to which we can arrange for God to have always
foreknown something; this annihilates change along individual temporal lines,
but at the large cost of admitting the defeat of the entire enterprise of d. 46, q. 1,
namely to safeguard God from creaturely influence. The second answer, which
Chatton evidently prefers, denies change on the grounds that a transition from
state A to states B or C is not between contradictories:
A. God wills: [you are finally good you are saved]

[you are not finally good you are damned]
B. You are finally good, hence saved.
C. You are not finally good, hence damned.
490 See rss i, d. 46, q. 1, a. 2 [9][12], a. 4 [24].

491 rss i, d. 46, q. 1, a.4 [25][26]: Sed si contingenter, hoc diversimode sustinetur, ut supra
patuit, quia secundum unam viam, dicendum est quod sicut est in potestate tua ne hoc fiat
in a, ita est potestate ne Deus ab aeterno voluerit hoc fieri in a. Secundam aliam, dicendum
quod idem actus Dei aequivalet volitioni et nolitioni, et tunc non est in potestate tua
ut ille actus sit vel ut habeat tale pro obiecto, sed quod ille actus sit volitio vel nolitio
determinate.
Et quomodo tunc sine mutatione? Quia non est ibi transitus de contradictorio in
contradictorium, ut supra patuit.
492 Cf. Peter Lombards modally low-caliber version discussed in 3.1 and 5.1 and Ockhams
high-caliber Revocable Default Future version discussed in 7.2.2.
The idea is that only the first way, in which there is revocation of a default
future, triggered by creaturely action, from Gods initial disposition to save to
a disposition to damn (or vice versa), is a transition between contradictories
and hence, after all, a kind of change; on the reading of the second way, the
transition is between the Gods will as hypothetical structure and His will as
enacted reality. This is an interesting try, but it depends on our ignoring the
meta-level analysis of the transition, i.e., on our not taking the transition of the
divine will from an indeterminate to a determinate state as happening between
contradictories.
10.1.4.3.2 An Assessment of Day 3

Does the Day 3 model, as augmented by the material in dd. 4041, q. 2, address
the problems for Day 2 that were raised at 10.1.4.2.1? Let us take them in order.
(1) The dangers of semi-Pelagianism are not obviously avoided, since the
distinction between type A and type B contingency has not been aban-
doned; thus type B contingent creatures still have an uncomfortable
amount of say in their own salvation. Moreover, Chattons distinction
between broad and narrow assent seems if anything to render accusations
of Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism more plausible, especially given
Chattons voluntarist reading of divine assent. On the other hand, the
closed-future model relieves at least some of the psychological tension
involved in claiming that God is not entirely in control of creation: since
the future is no longer in flux, less seems to be at stake. (This problem
would be reinstated with full force were Chatton to develop a fully Scotis-
tic model of creaturely agency along the orthogonal medium of action as
in Fig. 7, but he does not do so.)
(2) As for the prophecy problem, the advantage, once again, is the status of
Day 3 as a closed-future model. There is a fixed future in this model, and
all prophesied events will indeed take place in it (at least, so the faithful
must believe). Thus it seems quite reasonable to claim that a prophecy
imparted to or uttered by a true prophet will be true in some special sense
if, in fact, it will be true in every sense of the word. As for the contingency
of the prophecy, it is insisted upon in dd. 4041, q. 1 [72], [73], and [75]
by the contingency is per se notum move; more substantive guarantees
of contingency are given at q. 1 [76], which ties Gods and the prophets
assent to the fragmented timeline of Fig. 13, and q. 2 [33], which states that
we can falsify human prophecy as it is given by a mediating complex, but
not Gods, as it is not. (Chatton does not elaborate on this, but it is clearly
in line with the alethiological analysis in 10.1.4.3 above.)
230 chapter 1
(3) The problems associated with Gods unknowing cognition of the contin-
gent are simplified but do not disperse. On the one hand, the distinction
between type A and type B contingency is less important (if not entirely
notional) in this model, since the alternative possibilities available to a
type B contingent wayfarer are just as unreal as those available to a type A
contingent one; on the other hand, assuming that the Copulative Analysis
has not been jettisoned,493 that analysis has the same effect of substan-
tively curtailing divine knowledge that it had in Day 1 (since there is, on
this model, something that timelessly is the case but is nevertheless not
known1 by God, namely the real future).
(4) Gods extrinsic mutability is substantially relieved by the fact of there
being so little mutability of any kind in the Day 3 model. All that changes
here is the locus of the moving nunc; there is no substantive change, i.e.,
no ontological disambiguation as in open-future models. Furthermore,
even if the Cambridge-change argument (which, incidentally, does not
appear in any form in these sections) fails to convince, Chattons appeal
to the lack of transition between contradictories, problematic though it is,
can provide an alternative firebreak for those who fear importing change
into the divine being.
A review of the Day 3s performance with respect to the pattern arguments

reveals similarly mixed results. John Can Be Wrong, as usual, goes through
as in all right-branching models. We have seen how Divine Foreknowledge
Necessitates and God Can Be Wrong are handled: Gods cognition and assent
are undetermined if one prescinds from creaturely action; taking such action
into account, God knows everything, including future contingents. Prescind-
ing from creaturely action, however, leaves God with no (or severely limited)
knowledge of contingent events, whiledespite Chattons disclaimersthe
Day 3 articulation of divine knowledge ascribes to creatures an unnerving
amount of apparent influence on the state of such knowledge. On the other
hand, scope ambiguity and heterogeneous modality are not appealed to.
10.1.4.4 A Balance Sheet for the Three Days

Whatever our reaction to Day 3, we are now in a position to draw up a balance
sheet for all three days:
493 The Copulative Analysis is scarcely mentioned in Day 3, but may be in operation in dd.
4041, q. 1 [103] and q. 2 [36]; moreover, the entire distinction between Gods different
types of assent for different portions of the timeline is in general harmony with this
analysis.
Day: Theory of truth: Main tools used: World-model:
1: T2 Copulative Analysis; WSA; A(a)

unposited-res analysis;
res-based alethiology
2: T3 Copulative Analysis; WSA; A(mr)

unposited-res analysis
3: T3 res as modal profile object A(a)

of divine assent; res-
based alethiology; broad /
narrow assent; Doctrine of
Contradictories
A sort of dialectical process seems to be in operation here. In Day 1, Chattons

toolkit produced a model so close to Boethian logical compatibilism that it was
possible to offer that very brand of compatibilism, in the form of Fallback, as an
alternative. Although the Copulative Analysis and the WSA were used to attach
truth-values to future contingent propositions in an unorthodox manner, it
was held to be legitimate to talk about the present truth of future contingent
propositions. In Day 2, an open-future model was expounded in tandem with a
denial of such truth. Finally, in Day 3 future truth was denied even as a closed-
future model was embraced and presented as Chattons preferred model. The
right model, then, combines T3 and A(a).
10.1.4.5 The Ambiguous Role of Peter Auriol

We have seen two scholastic models that combined T3 and A(a) before, namely
those of Thomas Wylton and Peter Auriol. The resemblance between the latters
theory and Chattons Day 3 theory is particularly striking. Besides the basic pair-
ing of T3A(a), Auriols theory and Chattons Day 3 theory have the following
features in common: not even God has knowledge of the truth of future con-
tingent propositions, since there is no such truth; nevertheless God has direct
knowledge of what will happen at instant a (for Auriol this is indistant knowl-
edge, for Chatton it is knowledge that for a, Socrates sits, etc.); prophecies,
though ostensibly falsifiable, are in fact utterly reliable; and in both models (as
in Boethian logical compatibilism), the mere presence of unreal alternatives
is enough to justify ascriptions of responsibility. In short, with some modifi-
232 chapter 1
cations, Chatton is offering a version of Auriols theory as presented in the

latters Scriptum (see 6.26.2.7). It is thus noteworthy that Chatton, in his
presentation of Days 1, 2, and 3, imagines that it is not Day 3 but Day 2 that
represents Auriols Scriptum model. As we have seen, what Chatton highlights
as the salient feature of Auriols theory, namely the time-bound dependence of
Gods knowledge on creaturely action, is wholly absent from Auriols exposition
itself; nor is there any indication (quite the contrary) that Auriol countenanced
an open-future model of the world. Chatton has simply read these features of
Day 2 into Auriols text. Why has he done so?
Short of conducting a sance and asking the man himself, we are reduced
to a certain degree of speculation. With all the caveats that normally attend
such speculation, I therefore propose the following account of Chattons vexed
relation with the Doctor Facundus. Chatton wants to stake out new territory for
his own solution to the ancient problem of future contingents. He finds, how-
ever, that his preferred solutionultimately presented as Day 3 in rsshas,
in all its essentials, already been presented by Peter Auriol. By a remarkable
piece of misinterpretation, he succeeds in reading into Auriols text a tempo-
ral dependence of divine knowledge on known facts, including among those
known facts the results of creaturely decisions. This misreading allows him to
sketch the outline of an open-future model, attribute it to Auriol, and use it as
a springboard or negative example so as to present, under the color of a cri-
tique of Auriols ideas, an array of ingenious and original arguments in favor of
a subtly altered form of Auriols genuine model. The benefits are twofold. First,
Chatton thereby creates the rhetorical space he needs to discuss an ontologi-
cally open future, a view of the world for whichdespite his eventual rejection
of ithe has a clear affinity. Second, he has an out: this open-future model is
not his, but someone elses; his own closed-future model, he suggests, is both
new and, he assumes, relatively orthodox.494
At all events, it is clear from any close reading of Chattons Reportatio mate-
rial that he is ambivalent about world-models incorporating an ontologically
strong open future. This ambivalence is substantially resolved in his next and
last attempt at solving the problem of future contingents, to which we now pro-
ceed.
494 Schabel 2000: 236 also speaks of Chatton hiding behind Auriol. However, he reads
Chatton as consciously (though indirectly) endorsing what is presented here as the Day 2
model. As we have seen, the situation is considerably more complicated.
10.2 Chattons Quodlibet

Chattons Quodlibet was produced around 1330.495 In general, the text presents
a more finished appearance than does rss. The topics discussed in its 29 extant
quaestiones include Mariology, Christology, Trinitarian doctrine, various issues
of theoretical and practical ethics, and the visibility, cognition, and commu-
nicative faculties of angels. The last subject, by way of q. 26 (Whether superior
angels are able to reveal future contingents to inferior angels), leads into an
extended discussion, comprising qq. 2729, of revealed future contingents in
general. Question 27 focuses on one specific complex of problems (namely the
Contingency of Signification, the contingency of the consequence, and con-
tingency in the Word), while Question 28 is devoted to a review of 15 opinions
of mixed provenance on the question whether the certainty of revelation of
future contingents is compatible with their contingency. On the surface, Chat-
tons procedure here conforms very well to Friedmans adjudicative narrator
description (cf. 10.1): he considers the merits and demerits of each position,
follows up with an analytical summary in q. 28 [40][46], and evidently intends
to give his own considered opinion in q. 29.496 The latter Question, however,
breaks off after section [5], when Chatton has barely begun to speak in his own
voice. The result is that the reader is forced, to a greater extent than with the
material in rss, to recover Chattons ideas by a close reading of the responses
he gives to others opinions.497
Unsurprisingly, a comparison of the rss and the Quodlibet material turns
up both similarities and differences in doctrine and approach. Perhaps the
most obvious difference is one of tone: these Questions are free of the tim-
orous disavowals and assurances of non-authorship that are so striking in
495 The text of the Quodlibet is in Paris BN MS lat. 15805, ff. 54ra60rb. Dating, attribution, and
contents are discussed in Keele 2007: 668678.
496 The extended and well-organized discussions in qq. 2728, especially the latter, indicate
that the text is not a reportatio (a series of raw notes taken at the original disputation)
but a determinatio (a reworking of those notes). Indeed, in q. 28, the text seems to
lose all connection with an original disputation with students, as Chatton simply lists
one representative position after another and ends by synthesizing the positions into
an analytical whole (see 10.2.2). The discursive character of these quaestiones marks
Chattons Quodlibet as typical of the later history of the genre (cf. Hamesse 2006: 41
42).
497 The problems associated with the incomplete character of the text may be to some extent
alleviated by the publication of Etzkorn and Keeles forthcoming edition of the entire
extant Quodlibet; of particular interest is q. 9, which according to Keele 2007: 676677
deals with the causes of contingency, the necessity of a consequentia about Gods actions,
and the present-to-eternity doctrine.
234 chapter 1
rss i, dd. 3841. Perhaps the topic of future contingents has, in the interim,
become less dangerous than it had been; alternatively, perhaps the absence
of skittish preemptive disclaimers on Chattons part can be attributed merely
to the fact that he hardly has any time to propound his own doctrine before
the text comes to an obviously premature end. The most substantial differ-
ence between the two texts, however, is one of topic. In the rss sections, the
whole panoply of problems associated with futura contingentia is on view;
prophecy is just one issue among many. Such discussions of prophecy as one
finds in the rss sections treat it as a mere adjunct to questions of logical
and theological determinism; they do not dwell on the fact of God having
committed Himself verbally to this or that future thing, event, or state of
affairs, instead focusing on modal, alethiological, and cognitive issues.498 Chat-
tons ultimate position in rss i, represented by the Day 3 account, is that
prophecy is true, certain, and non-necessitating, but this position is sketchily
presented and often far from convincing (see 10.1.4.2.1, 10.1.4.3.2). The Quodli-
bet material, by contrast, maintains a central (but by no means exclusive)
focus on the fact of Gods time-bound and therefore irrevocable utterance.
The principal question of q. 27whether any creature could be apprised of a
future contingentis indeed the focus of these discussions: it is concretized
propositions whose truth-value, modal status, and falsifiability are at issue
here.
In terms of doctrine, the terrain of the Quodlibet is recognizably Chattonian,
but some features from rss are missing. Of Chattons four main tools, the
Copulative Analysis and the Wylton Scope Analysis are still clearly in play,
and in general a predilection for formal solutions to metaphysical problems
is still in evidence. However, there is no clear sign of the theory of res as
objects of cognition and assent, nor of the Doctrine of Contradictories. There
is no indication that Chatton is seriously considering any kind of across-the-
board T3 theory. For example, there are no phrases such as neither true nor
false, and though at one point Chatton claims that future contingents are
not determinately true for philosophy, he hastens to add that they are so for
theology (q. 28 [32]). Furthermore, the tripartite alethiological scheme of rss
i, d. 39 [29][32] is nowhere in sight. There are no references to intervals of
time during which future contingents are in a state of indifference as in the
Day 3 model. In general, Chatton relies on the WSA in support of a theory of
truth which allows us to call future contingent propositions true, rather than
498 See rss i, d. 38 [13], [16], [19]; dd. 4041, q. 1 [32], [33], [61], [72], [73], [75], [76], [107]; q. 2
[24], [33].
using it to introduce a truth-value gap (as does Wyltons own presentation of his
theory, and as does Chattons use of it in rss i, dd. 4041). To the extent that his
positive doctrine in the Quodlibet can be recovered, then, it looks something
like a return to the Day 1 model as expounded in rss i, d. 38.
Now, the Day 1 model, reviewed in 10.1.4.1 above, is a form of logical com-
patibilism. This being so, it is worth pointing out that a logical compatibilist
is, strictly speaking, under no obligation to provide a special account of the
contingency of divinely prophesied futures over and above his straightforward
account of the contingency of futures in general. Indeed, given a sufficiently
cold-blooded and consistent approach to the problems involved, compati-
bilists of any stamp may view with insouciance the possibility that a future
which is ex hypothesi freely chosen might be made known in advance to the
chooser. In the case of logical compatibilism, the analysis of future truth and
conative modality outlined in 4.5 can simply be applied directly to the ques-
tion of some future contingent proposition which, unlike most such proposi-
tions, has been announced by God to some agent. Let incompatibilists worry
about the supposed necessitating effects of forecasts issuing from God; the
cold-blooded logical compatibilist is unfazed by the information that he will
freely commit some specific action tomorrow. He knows both that he will per-
form the action in questionafter all, God has told him soand that he still
has the (albeit unreal) opportunity to avoid it.499
The Chatton of the Quodlibet, as will become apparent, is an uneasy rather
than a cold-blooded logical compatibilist. While arguing vigorously against
499 There are, to be sure, apparent action-theoretical paradoxes which arise if the action in
question is a sinand indeed, Chattons main example, throughout these Questions, is
the sin of Peters threefold denial of Christ. Given a state of absolute cognitive lucidity
and moral rectitude such as only prelapsarian beings possess, the fact of being reliably
informed by God of ones own future sin seems either to render that sin unperformable
(so Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram, book vii, ch. 26 [Augustinus 1894, p. 224]) or to entail
undeserved suffering on the part of the creature who has not yet sinned (so Anselm, De
casu diaboli ch. 2123 [Anselmi opera omnia vol. 1, pp. 266271]). But these problems are
at best peripheral to Chattons interests in this text. Chatton is concerned not with an
ideal unfallen future sinnerPeter is already fallennor, primarily, with the question
of whether a given action or state of mind is coherent. Instead, the issue is whether
announced future truth cancels contingency in some general or overarching sense. For
a discussion of these matters that is closely contemporary with Chattons Quodlibet, see
Holcot, In quatuor libros Sententiarum ii, q. 2, ll. 13901523 [Holcot 1995, pp. 179184];
Holcot mentions and responds to the Augustine and Anselm passages cited above. For
an exceptionally lucid modern exposition of cold-blooded compatibilism in the face of
certain foreknowledge, see Russell 1914: 238240.
236 chapter 1
doctrines that seem to imply an ontologically strong open future, he takes care
to impose not only the Copulative Analysis but also an upgraded form of the
Wylton Scope Analysis between himself and the contents of the fixed future
that he apparently believes in. The result is a curious amalgam of forthright
polemic and cagey formal analysis. Let us begin with the polemic.
10.2.1 Quodlibet q. 27: Securing the Stability of Human and Divine

Semantics
The subject of q. 27 is whether any creature could be apprised [certificari] of
a future contingent. Chatton begins the Question with a long discussion of
the theory which I call the Contingency of Signification (COS). According to
COS, the hard facts associated with a given divine prophecy (i.e., the particular
words spoken in the prophecy, the physical medium of the prophecy, etc.) are
subject to the necessity of the past, but the meaning of the prophecy can be
retroactively changed by creaturely agents. The implications of this doctrine
are remarkably radical: although at time (t0) God (or a genuine prophet) said
Socrates will sit at (t+2) and signified by this utterance that Socrates would sit
at (t+2), Socrates may, at (t+1), undertake action that retroactively causes the
utterance to have meant Socrates will not sit at (t+2), Plato will sit at (t+2),
or indeed practically anything else.
The historical background of COS is somewhat obscure.500 While the doc-
trine seems to have been formulated by Gerard of Novara in the early thirteenth
century, it first achieved widespread currency in the first half of the fourteenth.
A modest version of COS occurs in the works of Robert Holcot, while more full-
throated advocates include Thomas Buckingham and Gregory of Rimini.501 The
space and careful attention Chatton devotes to his attack on the theory suggests
that it was widely discussed in the 1320s, at least in England, but the identity
of Chattons specific targets is unknown. Their doctrine somewhat resembles
that of Buckingham (whose Determinatio de contingentia futurorum dates from
c. 1347502); however, some aspectsabove all the presentation of COS as a form
of the contingency of the consequenceare absent from all the sources I
have seen.
500 It is briefly reviewed in Thakkar 2010: 130131; see also the discussions in Genest 1992: 110
116 and Kaye 1997: 6978.
501 For Gerard of Novara, see MS Vat. lat. 10754 (fols 182), a short passage of which is
transcribed in Thakkar 2010: 131 (footnote 68); for Holcot, see 11 below; for the fifteenth
conclusion of Buckinghams De contingentia futurorum, see de la Torre 1987: 362377 or
Genest 1992: 284290; for Rimini, see Gregory of Rimini, Lectura i, dd. 4244, q. 2 [Gregory
of Rimini 1984, pp. 407409].
502 Genest 1992: 179.
figure 14 The Ockhamist Revocable Default Future model adapted to the doctrine of the
Contingency of Signification. The [TRL] subscripts have been left out for readability.
Quotation marks surround what God said; brackets surround what He knew and
signified.
For our purposes, the important point is that the doctrine is a development
of the Revocable Default Future model (see 5, 5.2.2, 7.2.27.2.3, and 7.3).
To see what is going on, let us modify Fig. 10 as Fig. 14 (see above).
In time-structure B, it is true at (t[TRL]) that (t[TRL]) (i.e., node C is the real
future). God, of course, knows this (i.e., TSB: (t[TRL]) BG (t[TRL]) ); moreover,
He has revealed His foreknowledge in words (He or one of His prophets has said
(t[TRL]) , or words to that effect). However, during the interval (t) (t), some
agents free choice has replaced the default future node C, with its future fact
(t[TRL]) , with the new present node C, with its new present fact (t[TRL]) .
Nothing can be done about what God said, which falls under the necessity of
the past; however, the signification of His utterance has now been retroactively
altered.
The advantage of such an analysis is obvious: the semantic content of proph-
ecy cannot officially be falsified. According to COS, after Christ said the words
This night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice, Peter still had
the live modal option of not denying Christ; had he exercised this option, a
not would have had to be inserted retroactively into the (unheard, merely cog-
nized) semantic content of Christs utterance (so Kaye 1997: 7374). However,
the disadvantages of the analysis are just as obvious: the informational value
of prophecy to wayfarers is reduced to nil, creaturely wills can apparently over-
ride Gods assent to prophecy, and the falsification of Gods prophecy will make
God, in retrospect, either wrong or dishonest. Chatton attacks the theory on all
these points. His overall strategy in q. 27 has the following structure: first, he
frames COS as an example of the contingency of the consequence; next, he
marshals a number of psychological, philosophical, and theological arguments
against the possibility of the kind of semantic change COS seems to demand;
238 chapter 1
and finally, he shows that even if such semantic change were possible, the type
of contingent consequence implied by COS would, after all, make God a fool
or a liar.
Although it forms a natural pendant to the oft-used expression the con-
sequence is necessary,503 the formulation the consequence is contingent is
unusual and, one might almost say, contradictory: if it is possible for the oppo-
site of the consequent to be true with the antecedent (as in q. 27 [5]), then we
seem to be dealing not with a specific type of consequence with a limited kind
of validity but simply with a consequentia mala, i.e., with an invalid argument
or false sequent. Yet Chatton does not just rule the idea of a contingent conse-
quence out of court as an absurdity; indeed, as we shall see, he ultimately finds a
use for it himself. To see why the idea of a contingent consequence might seem
both attractive and problematic, a brief explanation of the modal ideas behind
it is in order. Let us take a simple instance of modus ponens (see next page):
1. If Christ said, Peter, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice, then
Peter will deny Christ thrice by the time the cock crows.
2. Christ said, Peter, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Peter will deny Christ thrice by the time the cock crows.
Now, assuming that the conclusion is contingentand this is an assumption

shared by Chatton and his targets in q. 27then one of the premises must be
contingent as well.504 If we take premise 1 in the Peter argument as a simple
material conditional and assume some kind of more or less undefined alethic
modality, it is a matter of indifference which premise is contingent. In this case,
however, premise 1 is the very consequence that licenses the inference to 3, and
503 See rss i, d. 38 [2]; dd. 4041, q. 1 [10]; q. 2 [16]; Quodlibet q. 27 [1], [17], q. 28 [2], [19], [26],
[40], q. 29 [2], [3].
504 This can be expressed as the sequent {(P Q), P, Q} [P (P Q)], which is valid
in normal modal propositional logic (e.g., system M, sometimes called T, or anything
stronger). I have not found anything quite like this sequent in early fourteenth-century
consequentia theory; note that it assumes that the consequentia itself can be treated as
a material conditional, which would be anachronistic in any case. In modal syllogistic,
however, there is the familiar principle that can be expressed as {(x)(Fx Gx), Fa}
Ga (taking all the necessity operators in sensu compositionis; see Ockham, Summa
logicae, pars iii-1, c. 20 [OPh vol. 1, p. 412, l. 39p. 413, l. 50]). This yields by transposition
{(x) (Fx Gx), Ga } Fa and {Fa, Ga} (x)(Fx Gx), which are close
enough to what Chatton means.
figure 15 The effects of Peters decisive action on the enthymeme. Once again, quotation marks
surround what God said; brackets surround what He knew and signified.
the strong temporal modality here adopted means that the difference between
TSB and TS involves agents real effects on the world. As a little reflection
makes clear, these facts favor locating the contingency in premise 2. This can
be shown by framing the Peter consequence as an enthymeme, using Fig. 14 as
a model. The two versions of the enthymeme, with two different conclusions,
are shown in Fig. 15.
There are two obvious ways to think about the effects of the changeover from
TSB to TS on the status of the consequence in question:
(1) We can relativize the evaluation of the consequence to individual time-

structures. Thus all we care about is that, within TSB and TS respectively,
the principles of divine infallibility and divine honesty are preserved.
Clearly, if we take the material in brackets as expressive of Gods cognized
content and His intended communicative content, this is so: in each time-
structure, what God believes and what He intends to say are the case.
The principles [God believes ] [ is true] and [God intends to
communicate ] [ is true] are not violated; what varies is precisely
the cognitive and intentional content of the divine mind.
(2) We can take the consequence as a unity consisting of the antecedent
as per TSB and the consequent as per TS. On this reading, the agentic
move represented by the arrow is capable of bringing about a situation
in which God has believed and intended to communicate one thing, yet
another thing takes place. If God foresaw the agentic move, then God
has lied (it has been shown that He can lie); if God did not foresee the
240 chapter 1
agentic move, then God can be wrong (it has been shown that He can
be wrong). The biconditional principles mentioned in (1) above are both
violated.
It is tempting to identify (1) with the contingency of the antecedent and (2)
with the contingency of the consequence, but matters are not so simple. After
all, given a choice between (1) and (2), it is clear which is the theologically safer
option; it is implausible that any medieval thinker would deliberately flaunt
his adherence to an unstable model, and therefore to a cognitively unstable
deity, by openly embracing (2). And, indeed, all the sources of COS known
to me express the theory as an example of something that sounds like (1).505
505 In all of these sources, (1) ends up sounding like the contingency of the antecedent. Gerard
of Novara, for example, puts it this way:
Vel potest concedi, necesse est prophetam hoc dixisse, necesse est hoc esse scriptum a
propheta, sicut necessarium est Christum protulisse hanc vocem, hanc propositionem,
[31va] non tamen enuntiasse hoc non aliud; vel necesse est enuntiasse, sed potest eam
non significative, vel saltem non enuntiative, pronuntiasse.
MS Vat. lat. 10754, fols 31rbva, transcribed by mark thakkar, in thakkar 2010:
131 n. 68
[I]t can be conceded that it is necessary for the prophet to have said this, it is necessary for
this to have been written by the prophet, just as it is necessary for Christ to have spoken
this utterance, this proposition, but [it is] not, however, [necessary] to have declared this
[and] not that; or it is necessary [for Him] to have declared it, but He is able to have
pronounced it non-significatively, or at least non-declaratively.
Holcot treats the prophecy, and therefore the antecedent, as contingent in accordance
with the Copulative Analysis (see 11). Buckingham makes use of the idea of the contin-
gency of vision in the Word of God in order to articulate his version of COS, and it is clear
that he, too, identifies the antecedent of our consequentia as the contingent element:
Nam talis sciencia, volucio, assercio etc. est per Verbum, non per speciem per se et
essencialiter rem objectam significantem, nec per actum alium preter Verbum. Et Verbum
contingenter, non per se et essencialiter, est vel fuit talis actus, vel illius rei species
sic significans contingenter futurum. Igitur contingens est, non necessarium, quod talis
volucio, assercio, etc., fuit assercio vel volucio respectu talis rei.
buckingham, De contingentia futurorum, conclusion 15 [genest 1992, p. 286]
For such a knowledge, volition, assertion, etc., exists through the Word, not through the
species which per se and essentially signifies the object, nor through any other act besides
The important point to grasp is that Chattons sources, whoever they were,
evidently intended (1) as well, but simply expressed (1) in terms of a contingent
the Word. And the Word, contingently, not per se and essentially, is or was such an act,
or the species of that thing which thus signified a future contingently. Therefore it is
contingent, not necessary, that such a volition, assertion, etc., was an assertion or volition
with respect to such a thing.
(For contingency in the Word, see commentary on q. 27 [13].) Gregory of Riminis account
is more explicit than the two just cited. He rebuts an objection specifically because that
objection is framed in terms of the contingency of the consequence. The objection runs
as follows:
Nunc autem sequitur deus dixit alicui, verbi gratia Petro, A fore et voluit Petrum credere
A fore ac in ipso causavit huiusmodi fidem vel assensum, et Petrus sic credidit, et A non
erit; igitur Petro dixit deus falsum, et illi mentitus est ac eum fefellit. Et antecedens est
possibile, quia omnes eius partes sunt possibiles et compossibiles, ut declaratum est. Igitur
et consequens est possibile, et per consequens possibile est deum falsum dixisse etc.; quod
fuit antecedens primae consequentiae.
gregory of rimini, Lectura i, dd. 4244, q. 2 [gregory of rimini 1984,
p. 403]
[Objector:] Now, however, [the following consequence] is valid: God said to someone, for
example Peter, that a will be, and wanted Peter to believe that a will be, and caused in him
belief or assent of this kind, and Peter believed thus, and [yet] a will not be; therefore God
said something false to Peter, and deceived him. And the antecedent is possible, since all
its parts are possible and compossible, as has been explained. Therefore the consequent is
also possible, and, therefore, it is possible for God to have said something false, etc.; which
was the antecedent of the first consequence.
(Note that despite the objectors language, he really is framing the issue in terms of the
contingency of the consequence: the antecedent referred to by the objector corresponds
to the antecedent-plus-opposite-of-consequent of the Peter consequence.) Gregorys
response:
Ad tertium nego antecedens proprea, quia, quamvis quaelibet pars de inesse sit possibilis,
non omnes tamen sunt compossibiles. Et, cum probatur, quia illa prima pars de praeterito
est necessaria, negandum est . [D]ici potest, sicut aliqui doctores antiqui dixerunt, quod
possibile est illud dictum non fuisse significativum aut non illius significati, quod est a
fore, et similiter assensum alterius non fuisse assensum seu iudicium de a fore
gregory of rimini, Lectura i, dd. 4244, q. 2 [gregory of rimini 1984,
p. 408, ll. 413]
I deny the antecedent [= the possibility of a counterexample to the Peter consequence],

242 chapter 1
consequence instead of a contingent antecedent. Chatton paraphrases his

advocates of COS as follows:
Therefore these [people] say that the consequence is contingent, and

that the opposite of the consequent is consistent with the antecedent,
i.e., that Christ would have said that proposition and nevertheless that
Peter would not have been [in a state of] being going to deny Christ.
Nor does it follow from this that the [proposition] Christ spoke a false-
hood would be possible. For, conceding that it was necessary that Christ
said that proposition, nevertheless that proposition [was said] contin-
gently, both in voice and in mind; it signified, therefore, that it was in
Peters power that it [the proposition] should never have meant that Peter
would deny Christ, but that it should signify the opposite of this, since it
was in Peters power not to deny Christ. And thus it is clear that it does
not follow that the [proposition] Christ spoke a falsehood was possi-
ble.506
From this section we may gather that the focus of contingency is on the propo-
sition uttered by Christ, not the principle of divine truthfulness underwriting
the consequence. The consequence is contingent only in the sense that Gods
utterance does not always imply that , the natural-language interpreta-
tion of , will be the case; in some cases, divine semantics may be other than
one would normally expect (cf. TS in Fig. 15). Like Gerard of Novara, Gregory of
Rimini, and Thomas Buckingham, Chattons COS advocates are trying to get the
switch between time-frames to do the heavy modal lifting for them while judg-
ing Gods truthfulness and infallibility by consulting individual time-frames
since although each part is possible de inesse, nevertheless all are not compossible. And,
when it is proved that that first past-tense part is necessary, it must be denied . It can
be said, as certain teachers of old said, that it is possible that that utterance was not
significative or was not of that signified thing which was a as going-to-be, and similarly
that the assent of the other one was not assent or judgement about a as going-to-be.
506 Quodlibet q. 27 [6]: Dicant ergo isti quod consequentia est contingens et quod oppositum
consequentis poterit stare cum antecedente, scilicet quod Christus dixisset illam propo-
sitionem et tamen quod Petrus non fuisset Christum negaturus. Nec ex hoc sequitur quod
haec fuerit possibilis Christus dixit falsum. Nam licet tunc fuisset necessarium Christum
dixisse illam propositionem, quia tamen illa propositio tam in mente quam in voce con-
tingenter, significabat sic fore ideo in potestate Petri fuit quod illa numquam significasset
Petrum negaturum Christum, sed quod significaret illius oppositum quia fuit in potes-
tate Petri non negasse Christum. Et sic patet quod non sequitur quod haec fuit possibilis
Christus dixit falsum.
alone. The strategy is highly similar to that which we have seen in Grosseteste
(cf. 5.1.1) and Ockham (cf. 7.2.2 (2)). For those thinkers, something that is
prima facie change counts as real change only if it occurs along an individ-
ual timeline, not between time-frames; in like manner, these advocates of COS
adjudicate the accuracy of divine semantics only within individual timelines,
and this despite their provocative framing of the issue in terms of a contingent
consequence.
Chatton realizes this, and attacks COS not because it violates traditional
rules of logical consequence (which it does only superficially507) but on the
much more fundamental grounds that the modal shift it represents destroys
the stability of human and divine semantics. Partisans of COS, suggests Chat-
ton, think that the (normally) fixed relation of concept to mind-external thing
can, in the case of prophecy, be retroactively subjected to a kind of arbitrary
restructuring in virtue of creaturely action. In the context of early fourteenth-
century philosophy of language, this would amount to a violation of the usage
restrictions on imposition or institution (arbitrary assignment of sign to ref-
erent). In standard analyses, imposition and institution are restricted to the
convention-dependent relations between written and spoken sign, or between
spoken sign and concept. By contrast, the link between concept and mind-
external object is natural and unbreakable.508 Ockham expresses the standard
view:
A concept, or passion of the soul, signifies naturally whatever it signifies,

while a spoken or written term signifies only according to a voluntary con-
vention. From this follows another difference, namely that a spoken or
507 Chatton himself, as has already been remarked, will make use of the idea of a contingent
consequence (see 10.2.2 below), so he, at any rate, does not see the idea as inherently
impossible. Indeed, there are a number of contexts in which early fourteenth-century
thinkers allowed consequentiae to be useful while not absolutely reliable, the distinction
between formal and material consequences being among them. The formal/material
distinction, introduced by Ockham, underwent many reinterpretations in the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries (see Dutilh Novaes 2012: 3.23.4). For Chatton, formal conse-
quences involve a strict conceptual connection between antecedent and consequent such
that it is not even conceivable that the opposite of the consequent can stand with the
antecedent, while material consequences do admit this formal possibility (see, e.g., lss i,
d. 1, q. 4 [117], [152]; d. 2, q. 3 [16], etc.).
508 See Spade 2002: 9097. Apparently the only thinker of the early fourteenth century to
challenge the idea of the nonarbitrariness of mental language was William Crathorn; see
Robert 2011: 4, who interprets Crathorn as adhering to a medieval version of the Sapir-
Whorf hypothesis.
244 chapter 1
written term can change its referent at [the speakers or writers] plea-
sure, while a concept term cannot change its referent at anyones plea-
sure.509
COS is therefore radical not only in allowing a substantive exception to the

necessity of the past, but also in extending a kind of arbitraire du signe to a
relation normally exempt from such arbitrariness. Chatton responds that once
the fixed and natural relation between concept and mind-external object has
been broken, anything goes, including heresies, violations of what had seemed
to be first principles, and general epistemological mayhem:
Against this opinion I argue first thus: this response entails many absur-
dities, e.g., that it would be possible that the article of faith God is three
and one should be false, since it is possible that the concepts in the mind
from which this proposition is composed diverge from the [things] they
signify, and signify the same [things] as do the terms of the proposition
a man is an ass. Indeed, it follows that any of the articles of faith in the
mind can be a proposition that was never possible, and thus it follows that
faith, with respect to each of the articles, can be heresy, and that first prin-
ciples can be false, and that knowledge can be error, and that love can be
idolatry, and that there is no possible certainty about anything that can-
not also be asserted about its own contradictory, etc.510
509 Ockham, Summa logicae, pars i, c. 1 [OPh vol. 1, p. 8, ll. 4752]: [C]onceptus seu pas-
sio animae naturaliter significat quidquid significat, terminus autem prolatus vel scriptus
nihil significat nisi secundum voluntariam institutionem. Ex quo sequitur alia differen-
tia, videlicet quod terminus prolatus vel scriptus ad placitum potest mutare suum sig-
nificatum, terminus autem conceptus non mutat suum significatum ad placitum cuius-
cumque.
510 Quodlibet q. 27 [7]: Contra istam opinionem arguo primo sic: ista responsio habet con-
cedere multa inconvenientia, scilicet quod sit possibile quod iste articulus fidei in mente
Deus est trinus et unus sit falsus, quia possibile est quod conceptus in mente ex quibus
illa propositio componitur cadunt a suis significatis et significent idem cum terminis
istius propositionis homo est asinus. Immo sequitur quod quilibet articulus fidei in
mente potest esse propositio quae numquam fuit possibilis, et sic sequitur quod fides,
quantum ad omnes articulos, possit esse haeresis, et quod prima principia possunt esse
falsa, et quod scientia possit esse erronea, et quod caritas possit esse idolatria, et quod
nulla sit possibilis certitudo habita de aliquo quin illa possit haberi de suo contradictoria
etc.
After a long theological digression which I discuss in detail in the commen-

tary,511 Chatton lists further disastrous sequelae of the contingency of the con-
sequence, e.g., that God can deceive (q. 27 [33]), that Sacred Scripture loses
its authenticity ([34]), that humans can force God to be a liar or a fool ([37],
[39]), and that God can cause blameless hatred of Himself for His own sake
in a creature ([44]). Aside from this reductio ad impietatem approach, Chatton
argues, in sections [8][12], that the idea of a disconnect between concept and
object is logically repugnant. The bond is absolute: two individuals who share
all relevant predicates with respect to the apprehension of a stone will both
apprehend the stone, and there is no way to account for different truth-values
with respect to a sentence such as Socrates apprehends the stone and Plato
apprehends the stone in the absence of a substantive difference between Plato
and Socrates. In like manner, implies Chatton (he does not state it outright), if
Christ, at (t), has told Peter You will deny me thrice, then the signification of
those words uttered at (t) is the same assessed from (t) as it is when assessed
from any other moment, say the future moments (t) or (t).512 Indeed, far from
being arbitrary, the bond between mental proposition and signified state of
affairs is just as modally stable as is the identity predicate.513 Finally, Chatton
notes that even if, per impossibile, we could somehow produce the rift between
concept and object assumed by COS theorists, nothing could annihilate the fact
of a given mental proposition having meant at the time of utterance (q. 27
[15]). Despite the replacement of TSB by TS, TSB was the case in some impor-
tant sense of was; the attempt to abridge the necessity of the past by means
of a move between time-structures fails, as that necessity reasserts itself on the
meta-level.
It will be observed that Chattons doctrine of semantic stability is no more
than an unusually strong and explicit insistence upon the alethic universal rela-
tion common to all right-branching systems in the Boethian mold: what is the
case at any time is always the case (see 4.5).514 Furthermore, Chattons explicit
511 See Quodlibet q. 27 [13][29] and commentary. In these sections, the possibility that a
prophet could somehow find contingency in the Word of God, the latter conceived as a
cognitive field of perfect clarity and completeness, is found to lead to various absurdities
and impieties.
512 See Quodlibet q. 27 [8] and commentary.
514 In other words, past semantic facts have no special status: they are on all fours with other
past and present facts, and are necessitated accordingly.
Note that there is no escape here by the appeal to the modally closed, i.e., history-
specific, character of divine semantics. Even assuming that Gods utterances have the
246 chapter 1
formulation of this principle in terms of truth-values in q. 27 [8] commits him to

the Correspondence Assumption. We have already noted the absence, in these
Questions, of phrases such as neither true nor false; here we have positive
references to truth or the absence of truth. The result: since synchronic seman-
tic stability can be unproblematically extended to diachronic stability, genuine
prophecy is simply true, and true in advance. There is no more talk, in these
Questions, of assent to prophecy playing itself out in time, with your eventual
assent to the prophecy somehow constituting the accuracy of the prophecy (cf.
10.1.4.2, 10.1.4.2.1 (2)). In these sections, then, Chatton is using a standard fea-
ture of the Boethian model both to settle his accounts with the possibility of
an open future and to prepare the reader for a renewed attempt, in the spirit
of the Day 1 account in rss i, d. 38, to talk about transtemporal truth. Later, in
q. 28 [30][33], he will qualify his endorsement of correspondence (see 10.2.3
(3) below), but he will never set it completely aside.
10.2.2 Quodlibet qq. 2829: Mapping the Conceptual Space of the

Problem and Characterizing Contingency
Q. 27 has established what contingency is not: it is not COS, and it is (appar-
ently) not the contingency of the consequence. But Chatton has not yet, in the
Quodlibet, given a positive account of contingency in any form. This is one of
the tasks of the remaining Questions.
Officially, the topic of q. 28 is whether the certainty of revelation of future
contingents is compatible with their contingency. To answer this question,
Chatton reviews fifteen opinions on the problem of revealed future contin-
gents, which I label OP1OP15.515 Superficially, this list, which is presented in
no obvious order, gives the impression of an omnium-gatherum: exotic entries
like backward causation and relative newcomers like the Contingency of Sig-
nification jostle with old standbys like the present-to-eternity doctrine and
the future-dependency escape clause. I discuss each of these opinions in the
same structure as His cognition (an approach to which Chatton is open, at least in
principle; see Quodlibet q. 28 [45][46] and 10.2.3 (2) below), nevertheless the fact that
He is making predictions that are relevant for us means that He is saying more than that
a given event timelessly obtains at a given temporal-modal node which may or may not
be the real future. The only natural way of construing divine utterances in this model is
as follows: at (t[TRL]), God has said: (t[TRL]) , which, if we designate the TRL in TSB
as history A, breaks down as [(t[A]) (TRL = A)]. In other words, the identity of the
real future history is part of what God asserts. For the notation, see Appendix A3.401
A3.403.
515 These are given in numerical order in the commentary on q. 28.
commentary; here I am more concerned with Chattons attempt, at the end of

q. 28 and the beginning of q. 29, to make sense of it all. As becomes clear in
the closing sections of the Quodlibet, the idea motivating the list is not that of
sheer enumeration. Rather, Chatton wants to provide a sketch of the concep-
tual space of the problem (somewhat like my own in 2.1). The list is an (albeit
provisional) attempt to specify the fundamental parameters underlying all the
historical and contemporary doctrines of future contingents. Like his organi-
zation of the problem into different days in rss i, qq. 4041, the analytical
schema which he provides in these closing sections yields enough information
to reconstruct what one might call his official late doctrine of future contin-
gents, even though the text breaks off before he has had a chance to elaborate
that doctrine.
The general approach is very much in keeping with Chattons logico-seman-
tic spirit. Chatton uses as his basic rubric the same prophecy-form of DFN that
he has analyzed at length in q. 27:
God, or a prophet, has said ; therefore, will take place.
Solutions to the problem of future contingents are conceptually organized as

different modal analyses of this consequence. As Chatton now sees it, there
are three basic ways one can tackle the problem: (1) one may focus on the
antecedent, conceiving it as in some way contingent; (2) one may focus on
the consequence, treating it as contingent; or (3) one may concede the neces-
sity of the antecedent and the consequence, and therefore also of the conse-
quent.
Confusingly, while maintaining the fundamental distinction between the
contingency of the antecedent and that of the consequence, Chatton presents
two independent analytical groupings of the opinions. At first, in q. 28 [40]
[44], he divides them as follows. The most encompassing rubric is (1). Accord-
ing to this approach, theorists focus on the antecedent in some way, either by
(1a) reading it as contingent, (1b) distinguishing between its prophetic and lit-
eral senses, or (1c) denying that it is simply contingent (i.e., that it is merely
logically non-repugnant: the demand is for some stronger kind of contingency).
Here is the breakdown:
248 chapter 1
1a (antecedent is contingent):
Opinion: Sections: Doctrine:
OP1 [1][2] Backward causation

OP6 [13][14] Distinction between necessity of consequent /
consequence
OP7 [15][18] Distinction between absolute and conditioned
necessity
OP8 [19][20] Obligational version of logical compatibilism
OP12 [28][29] Future-dependency escape clause
1b (prophetic and literal senses must be distinguished):
OP3 [5][6] Distinction between literal / nonliteral interpretation

OP13 [30][35] Wylton Scope Analysis
1c (antecedent is not simply contingent):
OP2 [3][4] Distinction between assertoric / non-assertoric

interpretation
OP4 [7][8] God reveals only sequels of voluntary precedents
OP14 [36][37] God reveals only sequels of merits / faults seen in the
Word
OP15 [38][39] All prophecy is conditional
Next comes (2), the treatment of the consequence as contingent. This cate-
gory has only two members:
OP9 [21][22] God can lie

OP10 [23][24] Contingency of Signification
Finally, (3) concedes the necessitation of the consequent. This picks up the
two remaining opinions:
OP5 [9][12] Hierarchy of types of causes / modalities

OP11 [25][27] Future contingents are present to eternity
This way of carving up the opinions makes it clear that Chatton thinks the
correct approach can be found somewhere in category (1). Clearly, (2) is not in
the running: Chatton has already argued at length in q. 27 that OP9 and OP10
are unacceptable. And it is clear that option (3) is no option at all. Indeed,
Chattons characterization of the Boethian/Aquinate thesis of Gods eternal
present as entailing the necessitation of the consequent is evidence enough
that he rejects (3), since the proponents of OP5 and OP11 explicitly argue that
this approach preserves contingency rather than abandoning it. Thus one of
the eleven opinions in the first category, or some combination of them, must
constitute Chattons candidate for the right approach. This is hardly surprising;
given Chattons vigorous polemic against the contingency of the consequence
and his repeated insistence that the consequent cannot be necessitated, we
might be forgiven for thinking that whatever mlange of opinions turns out to
be right will end up by illustrating an analysis according to the contingency of
the antecedent.
Hence it is all the more surprising that, immediately following the foregoing
analysis, Chatton presents an alternative analysis that concedes an important
role for the contingency of the consequence. Under the new dispensation, he
retains his rejection of (3) above, but now recasts (1) as (i) and (2) as (ii):
And it can be said that a creature can be apprised [of a future contingent]
(i) by an utterance proceeding from the fact that God knows a as going-
to-be; (ii) in another way, by an utterance proceeding from the fact that
250 chapter 1
God knows that the cause under discussion is of such a character that,
from [that cause], a will proceed by the common law of such a cause.
For in order that a creature be apprised that a will be, it is enough that
an utterance be made to him in [one of] these [two] ways. But these two
ways of apprising a creature that a will be are compatible with a being
contingently going-to-be, as will be clear by resolving the arguments.516
Chatton makes it clear, in q. 29 [3], that (i) and (ii) are the contingency of the
antecedent and consequence respectively. I take these in order.
Category (i) is for what I shall call hard prophecy. No conditional, commi-
natory, instructional, tropic, or other kind of ulterior intent is in play here, but
the simple announcement of a certain but contingent future. The treatment of
the antecedent as contingent is limited, this time, to category (1a) minus the
radical OP1, i.e., OP6, OP7, OP8, and OP12:
In accordance with this way of putting it, [some of] the other opinions
discussed above can be grouped together, i.e., the sixth, seventh, eighth
and twelfth, since if an utterance proceeds from the fact that God knows
a as going-to-be, then the antecedent is equivalent to a proposition one
of whose parts is a future-tensed proposition; thus the antecedent is
contingent. [Such a proposition] amounts to this: God said that a would
be because He knew that a would be. And in this way, any necessary
past-tense proposition, according to the referent of the terms it has, for
every new case posited, if a new case is posited because of which its truth
should depend on a future contingent, is in this way to be resolved into
a proposition one of whose parts is about a future contingent, and by
reason of [that part], the proposition [as a whole] is contingent, etc.517
516 Quodlibet q. 28 [45]: Et potest dici quod creatura potest certificari per locutionem proce-
dentem ex hoc quod Deus scit a fore; alio modo per locutionem procedentem ex hoc quod
Deus scit causam de qua est sermo esse talis condicionis: quod ex ea proveniet a de com-
muni lege talis causae. Ad hoc enim quod creatura certificetur quod a erit, sufficit quod
sibi fiat locutio istis modis. Sed isti duo modi certificandi creaturam quod a erit stant cum
hoc quod a sit futurum contingenter, ut patebit solvendo argumenta.
517 Quodlibet q. 28 [46]: Iuxta enim istum modum ponendi possunt concordari aliquae opin-
iones supradictae, scilicet sexta, septima, octava et duodecima, quia si locutio procedat ex
hoc quod Deus scit a fore, tunc antecedens aequivalet propositioni cuius aliqua pars est
propositio de futuro; ideo antecedens est contingens. Valet enim istam: Deus dixit a fore
ex hoc quod scivit quod a erit. Et isto modo quaelibet propositio necessaria de praeterito
secundum significatum terminorum quod habet, omni casu novo posito si ponatur novus
Category (ii) is for soft prophecy. Once again Chattons extreme brevity makes
it hard to say exactly what he means, but he seems to be rolling up the various
opinions that make allowances for defeasible causality of some kind (i.e., OP2,
OP3, OP4, OP14, and OP15). The consequence God made you believe that a
will be, therefore a will be can, in some cases, allow of falsification instances
without making Gods prediction strictly false:
[Gods utterance can be construed] as [an act of] making proceeding

from the fact that God knew that the cause would be of such a charac-
ter that, from that [cause], by the common law, a will follow, and thus
the antecedent is necessary and the consequence is contingent, and the
opposite of the consequent can be made true along with the antecedent.
And thus it does not follow that God made you believe something false.518
Such prophecies must be construed as divine indications of general tendencies.

Peters state of mind is such that, in the natural course of events, he will
deny Christ three times before the cock crows; it does not follow that Peter
cannot take moral action, upon hearing Christs prediction, that results in the
strengthening of his character so as to avoid the threefold denial.
10.2.3 Some General Observations

Chattons treatment of the problem breaks off at section [5] of Question 29.
Despite the obviously incomplete character of the text, five general observa-
tions can be made about the final state of his thought on future contingents:
(1) As already mentioned, the world-model implied by this final iteration

seems to be A(a). At the very least, there is no indication that we must
read any aspect of Chattons final model as A(mr), let alone anything
more radical. Contingency, in this final turn, is always amenable to a
casus propter quem eius veritas dependeat a futuro [contingenti] est isto modo resolvenda
in propositionem cuius aliqua pars sit de futuro contingenti, et ratione illius sit propositio
contingens, etc.
518 Quodlibet q. 29 [3]: Ad istud dico, distinguendo antecedens, quia aut intelligitur de
factione procedente ex hoc quod scivit a fore et sic antecedens est contingens quia
valet istam Deus fecit te credere a fore factione procedente ex hoc quod scit a fore, et
consequentia est necessaria; aut de factione procedente ex hoc quod Deus scivit causam
fore talis condicionis quod ex ea de communi lege sequitur a, et sic antecedens est
necessarium et consequentia contingens, et oppositum consequentis potest verificari
cum antecedente. Et ideo non sequitur quod Deus fecerit te credere falsum.
252 chapter 1
low-caliber reading. For example, the content of hard prophecy remains

contingent in accordance with the various formal devices listed in OP6,
OP7, OP8, and OP12, all of which are in line with standard Boethian logical
compatibilism. As for soft prophecy, the contingency of the consequence
can be dealt with very modestly; neither a revocation of a default future
nor any strong ontological disambiguation need be assumed. Instead,
we simply take note of the fact that, for some propositions and some
prophesies with literal content , * will in fact take place.519 In such a
case, the interpretation of the prophecy as an assertoric utterance would
simply turn out to have been (and in fact always was) a mistake. The
consequence is thus contingent only from a human perspective, in an
epistemic or Bayesian sense.
(2) Compared to the rss sections, there is an increased reliance on speech-
act-theoretical analysis (rather than alethiology, syntactic analysis, and
theory of cognition) to solve the problems of future contingents. This
shift of emphasis becomes clear from a careful and contextual reading
of clause (i). Although (i) and (ii) apparently differ in that (i) addresses
simple assertoric propositions and (ii) deals mainly with comminatory
or informational speech acts, in fact clause (i) conceals a non-assertoric
analysis as well. This is clear from the following considerations. First of
all, the Copulative Analysis and the Wylton Scope Analysis are still in
force: the two-iteration analysis of 10.1.3 still holds. This may seem sur-
prising: the Copulative Analysis appears nowhere on Chattons Quodlibet
lists, while the WSA, though discussed in detail in q. 28 [30][35], appears
nowhere on the final lists at the end of q. 28. However, it is clear, from
the language of q. 28 [46] (quoted above), that hard prophecy is to be
dealt with by analysis into an utterance whose structure mimics the struc-
ture of divine knowledge2: such a prophecy is a copulative expression, the
second part of which is contingent.520 It is further clear that, from Chat-
tons perspective, the best candidate for guaranteeing the contingency
of the second conjunct is still, as in the rss sections, the WSA. There is
abundant textual evidence that Chatton still adheres to the WSA; it is
given a more than full-length treatment in this Question, and the two
519 Here, as in Chapter iii (Commentary), I use the starred form * to mean the state of
affairs corresponding to the proposition .
520 On a modally modest reading, the Copulative Analysis would not be an interloper on a
list that included OP6, OP7, OP8, and OP12; recall the formal affinity of the conjunctive
analysis with the logical-compatibilist tools given in those opinions (cf. 4.6.4 above).
sections devoted to criticism of it make a distinctly perfunctory impres-

sion. However, the WSA is not simply presented in the form familiar from
rss; instead, it is augmented by the traditional distinction actus exercitus
/ actus signatus.521 Briefly put, an actus signatus, in Chattons treatment,
is an assertoric expression, while an actus exercitus is a non-assertoric
speech act of some kind, which I interpret as a prediction or a bet.522 By
aligning expressions like (True) (FUTURE(a)) [Socrates sits] with actus
signati and expressions like and (FUTURE(a)) (True) [Socrates sits] with
actus exerciti, Chatton underlines the fact that the WSA is a more than
merely formal expedient: it indicates a fundamentally different kind of
relation between speaker and utterance than does a standard proposition
about the present or the past. This move clarifies the fact, already implicit
in Wyltons and Chattons previous analyses but not yet foregrounded
as here, that the radical asymmetry of past/present vs. future extends
even to divine utterances. Although I have characterized hard prophecy
as consisting of simple announcements ( 10.2.2), not even God utters
propositions about the future. Instead, in hard prophecy, He makes bets
(albeit ones with absolutely assured outcomes), while in soft prophecy
He admonishes or informs.
(3) In line with his media via approach to the problem in rss, Chatton is
here striving for an irenic rather than a provocative theoretical stance.
One indication of this is the simple fact that he uses the same exam-
ple, namely Christs prediction of Peters threefold denial, to illustrate
approach (i) and approach (ii), with the implication that either approach,
depending on circumstances, might be reasonable.523 Another indica-
tion of irenic intent is provided by the revamped Wylton Scope Analy-
sis. The WSA, in the Quodlibet account, allows us to reconcile philoso-
phy and theology with respect to claims of future truth. A proposition
of the form (FUTURE(a)) (True) [Antichrist runs] counts, for philoso-
phy, as an acknowledgement that it is currently not determinately true
that Antichrist will run in instant a; for theology, however, such a formu-
lation suffices to express the certain truth of the proposition, thus saving
divine foreknowledge and true prophecy. In 6.1 above, I note a tension
521 For more detail on this distinction and the use to which Chatton puts it, see commentary
on Quodlibet q. 28 [33].
522 Cf. Belnap and Green 1994, Thakkar 2006, and Sorabji 1998: 4. See also the discussion of
modally open sentences as non-assertoric speech acts in 4.2, 4.5.14.5.3, 4.6.2, and
6.1 above.
254 chapter 1
in Wyltons account between (a) his traditionalist reading of Aristotles

De Interpretatione ch. 9, which leads to a third truth-value, and (b) his
insistence on complete divine foreknowledge; in these Quodlibet sections
(q. 28 [30][33], esp. [32]) Chatton relieves this tension by relativizing
what counts as truth to different spheres of authority. Of course, given
the duplex veritas echoes likely to arise from such an appeal to differing
canons of truth, one may well wonder about the advisability of this move.
(4) Chattons use of the contingency of the consequence bears some simi-
larity to his approach to the ideas of Peter Auriol (cf. 10.1.4.5). In both
cases, a critique of the dangerous implications of a theory is followed by
an appropriation of parts of the critiqued theory, yielding a new synthe-
sis. Indeed, we can go further, and observe that in both cases an initial
distortion of a theory is followed by an appropriation of some feature or
features of the undistorted version. The contingency of the consequence
appears as a bugbear and is attacked as such; then it is blandly assimi-
lated to Chattons own theory in a form strongly resembling that which
its advocates seem to have intended in the first place (cf. 10.2.1).
(5) Finally, aside from his decision in favor of a closed future, it is clear that
Chatton has by no means achieved any kind of overarching, finalized ver-
sion of his doctrine of future contingents. The mere fact of his recasting
the fifteen reviewed opinions in two significantly different ways in the
course of seven brief sections of text (q. 28 [40][46]) shows that he
has not come to a settled opinion on these matters. This is a work in
progress.
10.2.4 Towards an Assessment of Chattons Final Position

The status of the final iteration as unfinished, or at least subject to further
revision, need not prevent us from asking the same questions of it that we
have asked of previous models. How satisfactory is it in solving the deep prob-
lems of the tradition? To some extent, of course, the question has already been
answered. As we have seen, the final iteration is essentially a re-issue of the Day
1 model from rss i, with some important formal alterations; for the most part,
it shares the strengths and weaknesses of that model. Thus we have an A(a)
world-view and a T2 theory of truth (albeit with a waiver on T2 for philosophy,
as q. 28 [32] makes clear), guaranteeing that the future is stable and limiting
divine mutability to (at most) the perspectival variety which, one might reason-
ably maintain, can be adequately dealt with by an appeal to the harmlessness
of mere Cambridge change. We have also, of course, the conceptual problems
associated with an ontologically closed future, compounded by the substantive
limitation on divine knowledge which the Copulative Analysis entails at least
in closed-future models (cf. the remarks at the end of 10.1.4.1). The essential
differences from Day 1 derive from (a) the fact of the closed future having been
announced to a wayfarer in hard prophecy and (b) the new formal devices,
namely the obligational analysis in OP8 and the augmentation of the WSA by
the actus exercitus / signatus distinction. How do the pattern arguments fare
under such a regime?
John Can Be Wrong, as usual, is validated on the open-sentence assumption
(there is no question that Johns predictions can be falsified, whether or not
he has explicitly communicated them to another wayfarer). As for Divine
Foreknowledge Necessitates and God Can Be Wrong, they constitute the very
substance of Chattons final wrangle with the problem of future contingents.
Here are the last two extant sections of the Quodlibet:
[4] Second, regarding Peters denial during the time between the predic-
tion of Christ and Peters denial, it is argued thus: Christ asserted that
Peter would deny Him, therefore Peter was going to deny Christ. The
antecedent was then a necessary past-tense [proposition], just as the
[proposition] God fasted, and the consequence was necessary, since the
opposite of the consequent is not compatible with the antecedent, etc.
[5] On this argument, [I proceed] in the same way, by distinguishing
the antecedent, since either (i) that denial of Peters proceeded from the
fact that God knew that Peter would deny Him, or (ii) it proceeded from
the fact that God knew that Peters soul was in such a condition that
such a denial would follow by common law from [such a soul] in such a
case. In the first mode, the antecedent is contingent and the consequence
is necessary. But in the second mode, the antecedent is necessary and
the consequence is contingent. Nor, therefore, does it follow that Christ
asserted something false, since it does not follow [here the text breaks
off]524
524 Quodlibet, q. 29 [4][5]: [4] Secundo arguitur de negatione Petri pro tempore medio
inter praedictionem Christi et negationem Petri sic: Christus asseruit Petrum se negatu-
rum, ergo Petrus fuit Christum negaturus. Antecedens fuit tunc necessarium de praeterito
aeque sicut ista Deus ieiunavit, et consequentia fuit necessaria quia oppositum conse-
quentis non stat cum antecedente, etc.
[5] Ad illud eodem modo, distinguendo antecedens, quia aut illa negatio Petri processit
ex hoc quod Deus scivit Petrum se negaturum, aut processit ex hoc quod Deus scivit
animam Petri esse talis condicionis quod ex ea in tali casu sequitur talis negatio de
communi lege. Primo modo, antecedens est contingens et consequentia necessaria. Sed
secundo modo, antecedens est necessarium et consequentia est contingens. Nec ideo
256 chapter 1
In order to evaluate Chattons final take on DFN and GCBW, let us consider
Peters position. Christ has just informed him that he would deny Him thrice
before the cock crew. How is he to interpret this situation? Epistemically, he
has two possibilities. (i) If he interprets Christs prediction as hard prophecy, he
ought to reason as follows. Christs explicit prediction is part of the unchange-
able past, butas a divine pronouncementit has the two-part structure of
all claims about divine foreknowledge. The second conjunct of such a copula-
tive is contingent, though true (for our purposes, Peter is a theologian rather
than a philosopher). It has the following form: (FUTURE(a)) (True) [Peter has
denied, etc.]. Depending on how Peter chooses to interpret this formula, its
contingency can be held to derive either from various Boethian expedients
(OP6, OP7, OP12), from the fact that Christs utterance is not a proposition but
rather a ludic move akin to the positing or acceptance of an obligational positio
(OP8), orin accordance with the augmented Wylton Scope Analysisfrom
the status of the utterance as a non-assertoric speech act akin to a promise
(i.e., an actus exercitus rather than an actus signatus). On any of these vari-
ous readings, the divine-knowledge claim as a whole inherits the contingency
of the second conjunct. Peter can thus officially breathe a sigh of relief; he
is still free, in the logical-compatibilist sense of the word, to remain stead-
fast. (ii) If he interprets the prediction as soft prophecy, his way is clearer.
Christs claim has merely comminatory or probable import; it can be taken as
a wake-up call informing him of the current but defeasible tendency of his
moral character. As in (i), but perhaps somewhat more sincerely, Peter can
breathe a sigh of relief; what Christ has predicted will not necessarily come
to pass, and it is in some broadly intuitive way up to him whether it does so or
not.
What if Peter indeed acts in such a way as to falsify the content of the
prophecy? Will God be shown to have been wrong? Here again we need to
distinguish between two possible responses. (i) If Peter chooses the hard
prophecy interpretation, then his main options for getting God off the hook
once again involve appeals to Boethian logical compatibilism and variants
thereof. OP6, OP7, and OP12 allow him a standard logical-compatibilist way
of defeating GCBW; even on the unreal assumption that he remains steadfast,
God knows that he will indeed deny Him thrice. (Recall that this does not
imply error on Gods part, since the future is in any case fixed; cf. 4.5.1
4.5.2.) A second, distinct option is to evoke the obligational interpretation of
sequitur Christum asseruisse falsum, quia non sequitur sequitur] Sic terminat textus
Gualteri de Chatton in hoc codice.
OP8, according to which the positing-in-being of an alternative future implies

counterfactual knowledge on Gods part; here again, for different reasons, Gods
foreknowledge is not falsified, since it keeps pace with counterfactual reality.
As is commonly the case with logical-compatibilist replies to GCBW, both
solutions seem to rescind the force of the initial postulate (i.e., the assumption
of reality enshrined in the fourth word of this paragraph). (ii) If he chooses
the soft prophecy interpretation, GCBW is self-evidently invalid: as Christs
prophecy has a hidden conditional structure, it makes no absolute claims as to
whether its content will or will not take place.
So how does Peter feel about all this? If he interprets the prophecy as hard,
then his belief in the contingency of his actions rests on the efficacy of various
formal devices designed to block correspondence between states of affairs and
truth-values. As with other formalist approaches to the problem, this assuages
Peters worries only if he accepts the legitimacy of those devices. If on the other
hand he reads the prophecy as soft, then he may at least rationally hope that
he will in fact remain steadfast: for all he knows, the prophecy was simply
a moral wake-up call. Moreover, since there is no reason to suppose that he
can know whether the prophecy is hard or soft, we may say that his epistemic
situation as a whole inherits the uncertainty of the soft interpretation. Mere
epistemic uncertainty, however, is a notoriously shaky foundation on which
to base agentic freedom. Furthermore, even if Peter sets his hopes on the soft
option, he ends up with something very like the hard option after all. To be
sure, soft prophecy is comminatory or conditional; its fulfillment depends on
Peter doing or omitting something first. But on a closed-future model of the
world, there is still a fact of the matter, known (or known2) to God, as to
whether Peter will do or omit the something in question. Although it is not
explicitly mentioned in the prophetic utterance, this fact of the matterPeters
undertaking or nonundertaking of a some course of action involving moral
self-improvementnecessarily constitutes the object of Gods knowledge (or
knowledge2), and it is only in accordance with the formal devices falling under
hard prophecy that it can be kept from curtailing Peters freedom. In the end,
then, the continued health of Peters post-prophecy freedom depends on a
cocktail consisting of OP6, OP7, OP8, OP12, the WSA, and the Copulative
Analysis. The question of whether to submit happily to this treatment, or rather
to reject it as overmedication of an already doomed patient, is a matter for
Peters own judgement, and ours.
This last remark may seem unduly noncommittal. But it is impossible to
make a more definite evaluation of Chattons last theory, or indeed any of his
theories, without raising and settling issues that are beyond the scope of this
study. The main obstacle is the uncertain status of the toolkit that Chatton
258 chapter 1
develops during the course of his intellectual journey: the tools seem designed
for the type of world-model which he considers but rejects, and ill suited for
the type of world-model which he finally affirms. We can frame the matter as a
new version of the ancient open-future vs. closed-future dilemma:
First horn. In Chattons open-future Day 2 theory, his tools find natural uses.
The ensemble consisting of the Copulative Analysis, the doctrine of res, and the
Doctrine of Contradictories allows Chatton to construe divine cognition as hav-
ing intensions for objects; this is motivated by the threat to divine immutability
assumed by the open-future model. The WSA allows creatures to participate
with God in an irreducibly diachronic unfolding of the truth of prophecy; the
(FUTURE(a)) operator corresponds to a creatures expectation of the prophe-
sied event, while the (True) operator corresponds to his eventual assent when
it in fact takes place. Unfortunately, this natural fit of model and toolkit comes
at a high price, some of whose particulars are reviewed in 10.1.4.2.1: the world
is radically mutable, and therefore so is Gods being, the diachronic truth of
prophecy is deeply counterintuitive, and so on.
Second horn. If the price of an open-future model is too high, we can opt
for a closed-future model such as Chattons Day 1, Day 3, or final Quodlibet
positions. Such a model affords us reassuringly orthodox answers to questions
about divine mutability and the truth of prophecy. But if we accept a closed
future, then it is hard to motivate anything more than a bare-bones version of
logical compatibilism consisting merely of the right-branching model and the
open/closed sentence analysis. That analysis makes a single powerful assump-
tion, namely the essential logico-semantic one: fears of logical determinism
are simple failures to distinguish between this will happen and this will nec-
essarily happen. The right-branching structure of time, on this bare-bones
analysis, is all we need in order to guarantee whatever freedom we want the
facultative will to possess, while the open/closed sentence analysis allows us
to give distinct readings of divine and creaturely beliefs about the future. If
we accept this, as some particularly clear-headed thinkers in the Boethian line
(e.g., Abelard and Anselm) seem to do, then further analytical apparatus is at
best an unnecessary theoretical encumbrance and at worst a subterfuge for the
introduction of hidden ontological assumptions that are at odds with the idea
of a fixed future.
As Chattons last word on the subject of future contingents is the fragmen-
tary Question 29 of his Quodlibet, we must, for the time being, leave him cling-
ing uncertainly to the second horn of this dilemma. If we are to extricate him
safely, we must show that his special ensemble of devices, including its more
exotic items, is not a mere theoretical encumbrance, but rather constitutes a
necessary and sufficient instrument for the purpose of allaying the worries
associated with some form of determinism. This may well turn out to be possi-
ble. As both Keele 2014 and Brower-Toland 2011 point out, the study of Chattons
thought is still in its early stages; as that thought is recovered, it will doubtless
become easier to place the doctrines and debates reviewed above in a context
that will allow a more definitive evaluation than I have been able to provide.
For example, perhaps Chattons formal devices dovetail with a theory of the
facultative will in a way that makes it clear why just these analyses are a proper
fit for this kind of faculty, regardless of whether one assumes an open-future or
a closed-future model of the world. If this should prove to be the case, it may
emerge that the Copulative Analysis, the Wylton Scope Analysis, and such addi-
tions as the actus exercitus / actus signatus distinction serve not as needless for-
mal excrescences interposed between future fact and present truth, but rather
as crucial defenses against the determining power of causation and Gods will.
Such a reading would construe Chattons ensemble of devices as bulwarks not
against logical but against causal and theological determinism; it would also
fit into a larger project which certainly needs more attention than it has hith-
erto received, namely that of harmonizing medieval thinkers theories of future
contingents with their teachings on the many issues in which those theories are
immediately implicated.525 The project of situating Chattons various theories
of future contingents within a broader understanding of his doctrines on lan-
guage, logic, time, cognition, and will is both a natural outgrowth of this study
and the sort of thing that needs doing in general, and I commend it to Chatton
scholars both present and future.
11 Concluding Remarks: Chatton in Historical Context
The historical antecedents of Chattons engagement with the problem of future

contingents are, in their broad outlines, fairly clear: Chattons ideas emerge
chiefly from those of Peter Auriol, Thomas Wylton, and William Ockham, and
more remotely from the common fons et origo of the entire Western debate
on the subject, namely the works of Aristotle and Boethius. As for Chattons
influence on the subsequent history of the problem, little evidence of it has so
far come to lightwith one striking exception.
That exception is Robert Holcot (c. 12901349), who, as Keele 2014: 5.2
(note 11) observes, adopted Chattons Copulative Analysis. A contemporary of
525 Cf. the remarks of Ammonius alluded to in 1 above [Ammonius and Boethius 1998,
pp. 9394].
260 chapter 1
Chatton526 and an exponent of the communis opinio (cf. 7.3), Holcot endorsed
Lombardian counterfactual extrinsic pasts: a future contingent is true, but is
capable of never having been true; God knows the future contingent as true, but
is capable of always having known it as false.527 As is often the case, the caliber
of this contingency is left unclear, but one gets the impression that it is high
indeed. For example, Holcot distinguishes among various broad and narrow
meanings of the concepts scire, certificare, and revelare, and it is clear that some
of these analyses allow God (a) to know things although those things may well
turn out false, (b) to make a blessed one certain of his blessedness although
he very well may lose it, and (c) to reveal futures although revelation, as a
connotative term, remains contingent because the event revealed is, at best,
contingently true.528 Holcots world is most naturally interpreted as some kind
of open-future, A(mr) model.
In some respects, Holcots use of the Copulative Analysis goes beyond Chat-
tons. He not only uses it to defuse Divine Foreknowledge Necessitates,529 but
also applies it explicitly to prophesied future contingents. Recall that Chat-
tons own application of the Copulative Analysis to prophecy in the Quodlibet,
though undoubtedly important, was muted: in his final position it remained
in the background, invoked only indirectly when propositional analysis of
prophecy compelled a reading that was isomorphic to Gods knowledge2 (cf.
10.2.3 (2)). On Holcots view, the analysis can be applied directly to a propo-
sition like Christ predicted a: expanded, this proposition yields Christ pre-
dicted a and a was true. The second conjunct might have turned out to be false,
in which case Christ would not have said a assertorically (assertive). The mech-
anism of the Copulative Analysis in Holcot is somewhat more complex than
the canonical examples in Chatton and his thirteenth-century predecessors.
For example, both the illocutionary force of the first conjunct and the truth of
526 Holcots Sentences commentary and Quodlibet date from the early to middle 1330s [Holcot
1995, pp. 1627].
527 Quodlibet 3, q. 1 [Holcot 1995, p. 60, ll. 2940], q. 2 [ibid., p. 73, ll. 2122].
528 In quatuor libros Sententiarum ii, q. 2, ll. 852929 [Holcot 1995, pp. 151154].
529 Addressing the familiar question utrum ista consequentia sit necessaria: Deus scit a fore
ergo a erit, he answers as follows:
[Q]uando accipitur quod antecedens huius consequentiae est necessarium, ista videlicet:
Deus scit a fore, dicendum quod haec est contingens: Deus scit a fore, quia sic scit a
fore quod potuit numquam scivisse a fore.
Unde, quandocumque aliqua propositio habet multas exponentes, si una earum sit
contingens, illa tota propositio est contingens. Modo, ista propositio: Deus scit a fore
the second conjunct seem contingent; moreover, the contingency of the latter
conditions that of the former. Furthermore, the contingency of the first clause,
Christ predicted a, is clearly a form of COS:
And if it be argued that the soul of Christ could then be deceived, since
the soul of Christ believed that the Day of Judgement will be and that
the resurrection of the dead will be, and [these predictions] can be false;
therefore this is possible: Christ predicted something false, since this
[proposition] is necessary: Christ predicted this, meaning this propo-
sition: The Day of Judgement will be; [in response] it can be said
that this [proposition] is contingent: Christ predicted this, as is this one,
Christ asserted this. And therefore Christ is capable of never having pre-
dicted this, since the proposition Christ predicted this, at least according
to its matter, converts with this one: Christ predicted this and this was
true. And it is certain that this copulative is contingent, and therefore the
other [proposition] is contingent. And on this view, it is said that after
Christ had told Peter You will deny me thrice, the [following proposi-
tion] was contingent: Christ asserted this to Peter, or [Christ] said this
assertorically to Peter, on the interpretation that that utterance signified
that Peter was to deny Christ. And in the same way it can be said that
the [proposition] The soul of Christ believed that the Day of Judgement
will come is now contingent, since it converts with this one: The soul of
Christ believed that the Day of Judgement will come, and this is true: the
Day of Judgement will come.530
aequivalet isti copulativae: Deus assentit huic complexo: a erit, et ita erit quod a erit,
cuius secunda pars est contingens per positum. (Holcot, Quodlibet 3, q. 2, ll. 1927
holcot 1995, pp. 7374
[I]t must be said that God knows that a will be is contingent, since He knows that a will
be in such a way that He was capable of never having known that a would be.
Hence, whenever some proposition has multiple components, if one of them is con-
tingent, the whole proposition is contingent. Now, the proposition God knows that a will
be is equivalent to this copulative: God assents to this complex: a will be, and matters
will be such that a will be, whose second part has been posited to be contingent.
530 Holcot, In quatuor libros Sententiarum ii, q. 2, ll. 11261143 [Holcot 1995, pp. 165166]: Et si
arguatur: tunc anima Christi potuit fuisse decepta, quia anima Christi credidit quod dies
iudicii erit et resurrectio mortuorum erit, et haec potest esse falsa; ergo haec est possibilis:
Christus praedicavit falsum, quia haec est necessaria: Christus praedicavit hoc, demon-
strata ista propositione: dies iudicii erit; et haec potest esse falsa, ergo haec est possibilis:
Christus praedicavit falsum, potest dici quod haec est contingens: Christus praedicavit
262 chapter 1
What is intriguing about this passage is the way in which Holcot has taken
over some Chattonian tools and concerns and fashioned his own distinctive
approach to the problem. The Copulative Analysis is present, but given a new
twist in that both conjuncts are read as contingent; that new twist, in turn,
is made possible by an embrace of the COS doctrine, rejected by Chatton
but discussed at length by him; and the COS doctrine is itself given a more
modest scope by allowing it to retroactively modify not the semantics but the
illocutionary force of utterancesthis latter being another central concern
of Chattons (cf. the final sections of the Quodlibet qq. 2829). Inevitably, of
course, Holcots solution is not without problems of its own; specifically, his
fusion of the Copulative Analysis and COS serves an open-future model of the
world that effectively lands him on the first horn of the dilemma reviewed in
10.2.4. But he furnishes us with a fine example of an original thinker who has
clearly profited by one of Chattons ideas and worked it into his own vision of
the world.
Of course, one should not make too much of this example. The Copulative
Analysis is one tool among many in Chattons kit, and I have found no others in
Holcots possession; it should also be recalled that even the Copulative Analysis
is not Chattons own invention. But the example of Holcot suggests that there
may be more to find out about Chattons influence on discussions of future con-
tingents by his contemporaries and immediate successors, both at Oxford and
elsewhere. An obvious starting point for anyone looking for traces of Chattons
influence would be among other adherents of the communis opinio. Along with
Holcot, both Adam Wodeham (13001358) and Richard FitzRalph (1295/1300
1360) are known for various radical opinions, including the possibility of divine
mendacity and a more or less open future.531 Wodeham is a particularly promis-
ing candidate, given his intensive engagement with Chatton and his ideas (cf.
Courtenay 1978: 7172). Thomas Buckingham (d. 1349), whose treatment of the
hoc sicut ista: Christus asseruit hoc. Et ideo Christus potest numquam praedicasse hoc,
quia ista propositio saltem gratia materiae Christus praedicavit hoc convertitur cum ista:
Christus praedicavit hoc et hoc fuit verum. Et certum est quod ista copulativa est contin-
gens, et ideo alia est contingens. Et secundum hoc dicitur quod postquam Christus dixerat
Petro: ter me negabis, haec fuit contingens: Christus asseruit hoc Petro, vel assertive
dixit hoc Petro ad istum intellectum quod dictum illud significaret Petrum negaturum
Christum. Et eodem modo dici potest quod haec est contingens modo: anima Christi cre-
didit quod dies iudicii erit, quia convertitur cum ista: anima Christi credidit quod dies
iudicii erit et haec fuit vera dies iudicii erit.
531 For more discussion of Wodehams and FitzRalphs views, see commentary on Chattons
Quodlibet q. 27 [31][33] and [53] in Chapter iii below.
topic dates from the later 1340s, is another possibility: as we have seen, his ver-
sion of COS is very close to that criticized by Chatton, a circumstance which
suggests that there may be other connections. My reading of these authors has
not yet turned up any further evidence of Chattons influence in this area, but
the picture may change as new texts become available.
The prospects of finding a more long-term influence of Chattons doctrines
seem dim. The two notable post-fourteenth-century peaks of interest in future
contingents (before modern times) are the querelle des futurs contingents at
Louvain in the late fifteenth century, in which Peter de Rivo (c. 14201500)
sparked an enormous controversy by espousing truth-value gaps in Gods
knowledge of the future, and the scientia media analysis of Luis Molina (1535
1600) in the sixteenth. There is no clear trace of Chattons doctrines in de Rivos
work, which depends heavily on the thought of Peter Auriol; nor does de Rivos
orthodox nemesis, Henry of Zomeren, borrow anything from Chatton.532 As
for Molina, his work represents a genuine departure from the Boethian tradi-
tion: in the thought of the Spanish master, Gods middle knowledge, i.e., His
counterfactual knowledge of how every creature would freely act under any
given set of circumstances, imposes a genuine limitation on His creative power.
In this analysis, none of Chattons typical concernsi.e., formalist analysis
of sentences, concern with res as referents, truth-makers, and truth-bearers,
etc.appear to play any role.533
Thus Chattons approach to the problem of future contingents does not rep-
resent a watershed or turning point in the history of the problem. His signif-
icance emerges when we consider the fundamental choice discussed in 1
2 above and, indeed, throughout this study: what is more important, world-
picture or formal analysis? On one view, any adequate theoretical account of
future contingents must have at its center a correct ontology of future things,
events, and states of affairs; the fundamental question is whether the future
is open or closed. On the other view, the openness or closure of the future is
a remote consideration. Even a closed future has no human meaning. Solving
the problem consists of showing us this meaninglessness and constructing the
formal tools that allow us to transcend the limitations of our necessarily blink-
ered, because time-bound, intuitions about the future and our relation to it.
This duality of approach to the problem is never resolved during the Middle
532 For de Rivos exposition of his theory and his defense against Zomerens attack, see Baudry
1950, pp. 70106; for Zomerens statement of his own position, see ibid., pp. 259321. Both
texts are translated by Rita Guerlac in Baudry 1989. For de Rivos dependence on Auriol,
see Schabel 2000: 315324.
533 See Luis de Molina 1988, pp. 164195 (Disputation 52).
264 chapter 1
Ages and indeed continues to this day. From this perspective, Chattons value
is less historical than exemplary: he provides the opportunity to watch a first-
rate and original intellect wrestling with an intractable problem. Moreover,
unlike many thinkers, Chatton clearly feels the pull of both sides of the debate
between formalism and ontology. Like Ockham before him, but much more
openly, he shifts restlessly between the one perspective and the other, finally
settling upon an idiosyncratically formalist version of an ancient compatibilist
solution. Whatever we think of that solution, we can still appreciateand per-
haps profit fromhis creative and adaptive use of formal tools and methods
in our own engagement with the endless debate over time, freedom, and fore-
knowledge.
chapter 2
Translations of Chattons Reportatio super

Sententias i, dd. 3841 and Quodlibet, qq. 2729
Reportatio super Sententias i1

Distinction 38. Unique Question. Whether the Contingency of Futures
is Consistent with Gods Knowledge of Future Contingents
D38 [1] That it is not [consistent] is argued as follows: everything known by
God is, of necessity, true; that Antichrist will be is known by God; therefore,
of necessity, it is true. The conclusion is not consistent with the contingency of
futures; nor, therefore, is the truth of the premises.
D38 [2] Againand it is in this point that the difficulty of the question consists
[the following consequence is valid]: God knew that Antichrist will be;
therefore, Antichrist will be. The antecedent is necessary and the consequence
is necessary; therefore the consequent is necessary. The consequent is not
consistent with contingency; therefore, [the antecedent is not consistent with
contingency.] The necessity of this consequence is clear from [the fact that]
the opposite of the consequent is not consistent with the antecedent. It is clear
that the antecedent is necessary, since everything that is true about the past is
1 My translation is based on the Latin edition of Wey and Etzkorn 20022005 (rss). I have
benefited from Susan Brower-Tolands translations of several passages (Brower-Toland 2013),
as well as from Keele 2010b, a preliminary English translation of rss i, dd. 38, 39, and part of
4041, which the translator himself kindly sent to me in August 2010. The use of bold indicates
titles and headers of sections provided by Wey and Etzkorn (e.g., Distinction 38. Unique
question, etc.). Square brackets indicate textual interpolations on my part (e.g., That it is
not [consistent] is argued as follows ). I have generally taken over, with gratitude, Wey and
Etzkorns cross-references as well as many of their references to other texts; some of these
references have been silently (or, in a few cases, not silently) emended.
For ease of cross-reference between the text and the commentary, the sections in both are
prefixed in an obvious way (e.g., D38 [2] = rss i, Distinction 38, section [2]; D4041Q2 [5] = rss
i, Distinctions 4041, Question 2, section [5]; Q28 [30] = Quodlibet, Question 28, section [30]).
References to sections without prefix direct the reader to sections in the same Distinction or
Question.

266 chapter 2
necessary. Alternatively, one could put this in another way: God knew that a
will be, therefore a necessarily will be.
D38 [3] Against this [can be argued] that contingency is in things, since every-
one experiences that he has his own actions in his restraining power. And sim-
ilarly, God knows all things; this we hold by faith; therefore, [the contingency
of futures must be consistent with Gods knowledge of future contingents].
Article 1. On How One Should Speak of the Knowledge of God

Respecting Future Contingents
D38 [4] In this question there will be three articles. The first will concern
the way to speak about this matter. First we must ascertain whether God has
determinate knowledge of future contingents, and how this might be better
expressed. For every believer, the certain conclusion is yes. But the ways of
putting this are varied, and hardly anything [about the subject] is clear.2
The Opinions of Others

D38 [5] One mode [of expression] puts it thus: Aristotle must be [understood
as] saying that neither of two contradictory contingents is true, e.g., Socrates
will sit, Socrates will not sit, since both are equally in the free power of Socrates,
therefore neither is more true than the other. Or thus: neither is more true than
the other, therefore either both are true or neither [is true].
D38 [6] Secondly, they say: according to the truth of faith, one must hold the
contrary,3 therefore, [of a pair of future contingent contradictories, one part
must in fact be true, the other false.]
D38 [7] Thirdly, they say that, even granting that divine knowledge is necessary,
it is nevertheless contingently knowledge of contingents.
Against This Opinion4

D38 [8] Against the first (= [5]): a statement of Aristotle neither is nor should be
held to be authoritative unless it is clear and evident. Why, then, does Aristotle
consider a proposition to be not determinately true? Either because there is
nothing in nature [i.e., in the present state of affairs] which, when posited,
2 An alternative to Wey and Etzkorns vix aliquid est clarius (P) is vix aliquis est clarus (F).
3 One must hold the contrary of [5], namely that all statements about the future have determi-
nate truth-values (see [9] below).
4 Against the opinion expressed in [5], [6], and [7].
translations of chattons reportatio super sententias 267
[makes it so that] this proposition about the future is determinately trueand

that is true; or because some proposition signifies that something will be, which
[thing], once posited in being, [would be such that] it would then be true to say
that a thing just is, in fact, as the proposition said it would be, and thus it cannot
be denied that a proposition about the future is determinately true, since when
Socrates actually sits, it cannot be denied that things are then, in reality, just as
the sentence Socrates will sit signified.
D38 [9] Again, when, according to the second [way] (= [6]), they say that one of
the two parts is determinately true according to the faith, one can object that,
if the [sentence] Socrates will sit tomorrow is determinately true, then from
this moment on, there is no need to take counsel about this matter; from the
fact that it is already true now, from this moment it is no longer a matter for
deliberation, and thus merit and rewards and taking trouble will all perish.
D38 [10] I confirm this [rejection] by [using] their own argument against
certain responses [against them]. If it is valid there, then also here. God cannot,
with respect to something past, make it not to have been past;5 therefore, if the
statement Socrates will sit was true in the past, God cannot act except in such
a way that it will have been true, and thus [Socrates] will sit necessarily, which
is false.
D38 [11] I confirm [this rejection also] by their argument on the side of Aris-
totle. The will of Socrates is disposed equally to sitting and to not sitting in a;
therefore, either both of them are true, or neither Socrates will sit in a [nor]
Socrates will not sit in a [is true]. This [argument] counts equally against their
own [position].
The Opinion of Peter Auriol

D38 [12] Another mode of expression relies directly on Aristotle, and [its advo-
cates] hold that no proposition about the future is determinately true in con-
tingent matters: first, on the authority of Aristotle; and second, because if the
statement Socrates will sit is true, we cannot give [a time] in which it began to
be true; therefore it has been true from eternity; therefore it is necessary; since
if notif it could be falsethen either [it could be false] before he will sit,
and this is not so, since, before, it is true from all eternity; nor while nor after
5 Ockham, Ordinatio i, d. 38, q. u. [OTh vol. 4, pp. 578579], might be the immediate source
here, though the doctrine is ancient; see Chapter i, 3.2.1 for references.
268 chapter 2
[he sits], as is plain.6 Therefore they maintain the consequence: Socrates will
sit, therefore he will sit by necessity, but they deny the antecedent. Similarly,
when someone says God knows that a will be, it is false, since it is not true
that a will be. They imagine that the knowledge and awareness of God is of
the sort which can be had after the thing,7 not as though expecting the future
existence of the thing, and thus it does not confer occurrence on the thing, nor
truth on the proposition, nor does it remove the contingency from things.
D38 [13] And how, then, do things stand with prophecy? They say that we sig-
nify one thing and we intend to signify another thing. We signify as though
knowledge preceded [the thing], but we intend to signify as though the thing
preceded the awareness. And they add, rightly, that there is no mode [of expres-
sion] adequate to express Gods foreknowledge.8
D38 [14] If this conclusion were permitted, it would be a very clear mode [of
expression] with regards to the first [mode],9 because no proposition about the
future is true, nor is it known by God to be true.
Against the Opinion of Auriol

D38 [15] But, against this opinion, I prove that the conclusion is not true:
first, by means of the first argument against the preceding opinion (= [8]). I
suppose that a proposition is true just in case the thing is in fact just as the
proposition signifies it to be, if it is about the present; or that it will be just as
[the proposition] signifies that it will be, if it is about the future. What, then, do
you understand by [the claim that] this proposition is true: Socrates will sit?
Either that the thing is now just as the proposition signifies, and that is what is
demanded by the truth of a proposition about the present, but not about the
future, and thus it is not appropriate; or that some thing will be, which, once
posited in due time,10 is just as the proposition about the future signified; and
if we speak thus, neither Aristotle nor anyone else can rationally deny that it is
true.
6 Peter Auriol, Scriptum i, d. 38, a. 3 [Schabel 1995, p. 127, l. 845p. 128, l. 873].
7 The syntax is odd; Dag Hasse (p.c.) suggests emending talis qua to talis quae.
8 Peter Auriol, Scriptum i, d. 38, a. 3 [Schabel 1995, p. 140, l. 1127p. 143, l. 1191]. For Chattons
distortion of Auriols doctrine, see Commentary on [12][14] and Chapter i, 10.1.4.1 and
10.1.4.5.
9 The sense is: This would be an elegant way of supporting the view advanced in [5].
10 I owe the translation of in sua mensura as in due time to Rondo Keele 2010b.
D38 [16] I confirm this, since when God causes assent in the mind of a prophet
about a thing that will be, that assent is true; otherwise God could not make
the prophet certain about the future. And that assent signifies the same thing
as does a proposition such as this thing will be; therefore if the assent is true,
the proposition will be true.
D38 [17] Furthermore, everything which has not been from all eternity and
which is now, was at some time [merely] future; therefore this [proposition]
was true: This is future.11
D38 [18] Again, otherwise12 the wayfarer would not be certain that blessedness
would be given for merit, nor would he take trouble earnestly to act well,
since there is no hope without the sure expectation with respect to a future
contingent.
D38 [19] Again, God does not cause an assent in the mind of a prophet by which
[the prophet] assents that a thing is thus in fact, but rather that a thing is going
to be thus in fact.
D38 [20] Again, against the other [point] (= [12], [13]): Antichrist does not exist
now, and Gods knowledge with respect to Antichrists existence is now, hence
[Gods] knowledge precedes [Antichrists] existence, and not vice versa.
D38 [21] And besides this there is the whole question of how God foreknows
future things, while yet the contingency with respect to [those things] remains.
The Third Opinion

D38 [22] The third opinion,13 which was much discussed in town [i.e., at
Oxford], has, [since] the time when we heard it discussed there, [come to seem]
more reasonable. It says that when you accept Antichrist will be or Socrates
will sit in a, this can assert either that it is true, or that its actuality will be true.
On the first reading, it is not true; on the second, it is (or can be posited to be)
true.
11 Reading omne quod modo est, aliquando fuit futurum; et non ab aeterno fuit as omne quod
modo est, et non ab aeterno fuit, aliquando fuit futurum.
12 I.e., without a satisfactory account of future truth and certainty.
13 This is the opinion which Wey and Etzkorn attribute to a lost work of Richard Campsall
and which I attribute to Thomas Wylton; see commentary on this section and Chapter i,
6.1.
270 chapter 2
D38 [23] If it is true in the second sense, then if it is asserted to be true, it is true
in the same mode [as that in which] it asserts itself to be true, since an opposite
follows from an opposite, if this dictum is understood in a general sense.
Chattons Response
D38 [24] My own opinion differs in part, since everyone experiences, in his
own acts, that there is contingency in things. And thus I say that always, before
a, both alternatives can indifferently [be]; thus to sit, just as to not sit,
and vice versa, is in Socrates power. Hence, about the fact itself, there is no
great difficulty. But the difficulty consists in [determining] which is the correct
mode of speaking [about this]. And one mode of speaking could be the one I
touched on before, and I believe that the clearest thing one can do is ask the
opponent what he understands by the proposition Socrates will sit in a being
determinately true. Either: [he understands] that some thing is or has been,
whether it be something spoken, something written, or a cognition, which,
once posited, [makes] this proposition true now. Thus things are, now, such as
the proposition signifies; and this is not true. Rather, this is the condition only
of a proposition about the present or about the past; and no proposition about
the future is, speaking in this manner, determinately true. Or, otherwise: [he
understands] that some thing will be in a, which, once posited in a, will then
[make it] true to say it is now just as the proposition about the future formerly
signified, and thus a proposition about the future is true.
D38 [25] And in this way all dicta can be saved. And whoever should desire
to speak thus can say, according to the third opinion,14 that these propositions
are distinct: this is true, Socrates will sit, and this will be true, Socrates is
sitting. And I would deny the first, because then, if it is already true, it would
not be necessary to reflect or take trouble about that which will be. I concede
the second, in which a proposition about the present is demonstrated: this will
be true, Socrates is sitting.
D38 [26] There is another way of putting the matter, and a more common
onesince I certainly do not want to assert anything on any such perilous
subjectthough perhaps it is clearer [than it would otherwise be] through the
mode I have just mentioned.15 Ask what you understand by the [proposition]
Socrates will sit: either that it is true in such a way that, whether he wants to
14 I.e., in elaboration and clarification of the doctrine expounded in [15] and [22].
15 I.e., through the doctrine expounded in [15] and [22].
or not, he will sit in a, and in this sense I deny it; or that he will deliberate, and,
having deliberated, he will voluntarily sit, and thus I concede it.
D38 [27] But how do matters stand with Gods knowledge respecting contin-
gents? I say that I do not intend to say that the complex, but rather the thing
signified by the complex, is [the proper object of] true knowledge; neverthe-
less, it can very well be known, in virtue of things, that the complex is true.
D38 [28] But when you ask whether God knows future contingents, what do
you understand by this [proposition]: God knows that a will be? Either that
Gods knowledge is such that, when it is posited, a will be, in such a way that
if the [proposition] a will be were to change,16 then Gods knowledge would
change from truth to falsity, and I deny this; or that the entire [proposition]
God knows that a will be would be equivalent to the copulative God knows
this, and this will be; I concede this, in the sense in which knowledge may be
understood as cognition. For in that case, to say that God knows that a will
be is equivalent to the copulative God cognizes a and a will be, whose first
part is necessary, and whose second part is contingent, since it has already
been said concerning the [proposition] a will be that nothing [regarding this
proposition] has hitherto been posited, but that something will be posited,
which, once it is posited, [will be] just as this proposition now signifies.
D38 [29] How, then, does contingency stand with Gods knowledge? Surely
[the following things] can be consistently maintained: that a will be, and
nevertheless that it will be contingently, since it is true in such a way that
always, before it is posited, its truth can be impeded. By solving the arguments
[in this way], this matter will become clearer. Or according to the second mode
discussed (= [26]), God knows that a will be and that you will sit, not that you
will sit whether you want to or not, but [He knows this] in such a way that He
knows that you will deliberate and do it contingently.
Article 2. On the Difficult Arguments

The second article is to resolve the arguments which create a difficulty here.
D38 [30] The first is: how the consequence should hold in the second argument
for the main [thesis] (= [2]).
16 That is, if the truth-value of a will be should change from T to F.

272 chapter 2
D38 [31] The second is: in what way each part of the contradiction is indiffer-
ently and equally in the free power of Socrates, and nevertheless one is true and
not the other.17
D38 [32] The third is the argument of Peter [Auriol]: when could [the proposi-
tion] be false: before a, at the time of a, after a?18
D38 [33] And besides these things already mentioned, there are others. The
first: If the [proposition] Antichrist will be is true in the way we have
explained, let us posit it. It is therefore either necessarily or contingently true,
so there is no need to take counsel, etc.19
D38 [34] Again, if [a future-tense proposition] is true now, and not now newly
true, then [it has been true] from eternity. Therefore, either it is true necessarily,
and the proposed [thesis has been proved, namely,] that contingency would not
hold, etc. Or [it is true] contingently, in such a way that it is capable of not being
going-to-be. [On the latter assumption,] let it be posited in being that it will not
be. [In that case, the following consequence is valid:] this will not be, therefore
this [proposition], this will be, was not true. The consequent is impossible,
since, from the fact that the [proposition] this will be, now, has been true,
and every past truth is necessary, it is necessary that this [proposition] was
true; and thus from something less impossible there would follow something
more impossible. And what is more, since [when] it is true, it is necessary, I say
that from something contingent follows something impossible, which does not
seem true.
D38 [35] Again, either [of a pair of contingent contradictories] is equally

contingent, therefore neither is more true.
D38 [36] Again, [consider the following claim:] whatever is future is other
than the Antichrist. This is necessary or impossible, therefore a proposition
repugnant to it is necessary or impossible; but this [proposition] the Antichrist
will be is repugnant to it; therefore, etc. The assumption is proved, since either
the Antichrist will be, and then the first is impossible; or he will not be, and
then it is necessary.
17 Referring back to the issue of liberty of indifference mentioned in [3] and [5].
18 Referring once again to Auriols argument mentioned in [12].
19 Reiterating the problem of logical determinism mentioned in [9], and repeating the move
at [23].
D38 [37] Again, the non-being of the Antichrist is something outside the soul
which, [when the Antichrist comes into being], will necessarily be corrupted;
therefore the Antichrist will necessarily be.
D38 [38] Again, the Antichrist is now disposed equally to being and non-being,
therefore the one [proposition] is no more true than the other.
D38 [39] Again, the nature of that which is indifferently contingent is more
opposed to the necessary than is something which is contingent in its greater
part, but this is not so if one part of the contradiction is determinately true,
therefore [neither part can be determinately true].
On the Arguments Discussed Above

D38 [40] On the first [argument].20 [I analyze this] just as I did before,21 since
this is the more evident reasoning: God knew that a will be, therefore a nec-
essarily will be, I ask the opponent what he understands by the antecedent.
If [he understands] the same as [is expressed] by the copulative God under-
stands this, and this is true, then I deny the consequence, since necessarily
is added to the consequent. Why? Because this copulative is contingent, not
by reason of its first part, which is God cognizes this, since this is necessary
([setting aside the question] whether it is possible or impossible [for God to
cognize a contingent]22); but by reason of its second part, i.e., this will be,
since the thing because of whose positing [the proposition] is true has not yet
been posited, but is to be posited in a, and before a it always stays in my free
power not to posit it in a, and when [this condition holds], the proposition is
not true.
D38 [41] You will say: I have accepted the past-tense [proposition] God knew
that a will be in a.23 I resolve this [proposition] into a copulative, in which the
first [is] God cognized this, and this part is necessary, and this will be, and
this second [part] is contingent; and this contingent part is not in the past but
in the future tense. [Those who argue] in this way cannot respond in that other
way, which posits that He knows that you will deliberate, etc.; but they must
say that just as it is in your power whether this is in a, so it is in your power
20 I.e., on [30], which in turn refers back to [2].

21 See [28].
22 The translation in parenthesis is based on Rondo Keeles suggestion (Keele 2010b).
23 Note that a apparently stands both for (1) a state of affairs or state-description, and (2)
the time at which (1) holds.
274 chapter 2
whether God shall have known a from eternity, and then when it is argued that
every true [proposition] about the past is necessary, they must say that this is
true when that past [proposition] does not depend on the future, and here [we]
have assumed the opposite [of this, namely that a does so depend].
D38 [42] However, [on the question] whether Gods cognition24 is assent or
knowledge, and not merely apprehension, it can be said that Gods cognition
is not assent unless the thing itself has been posited; and when the thing is yet
to be, it can be said that cognition is not knowledge; but, once both have been
posited, e.g., Gods cognition and a stone, it would be a contradiction if He did
not know the stone to be.
D38 [43] On the second [argument]25 I say that for the whole time before a,
Socrates will is disposed equally to each [alternative], and thus the [proposi-
tion] Socrates will sit in a is not true for sitting or not-sitting before a, but
for sitting in a; [I do] not [mean] that something would be posited before a
because of which the positum itself would be true, but [that] something will be
posited in a which, once posited in a, [will make it so that] things are thus or
will be thus. It [will] be true, now [i.e., in that posited future], to say things are
just as the future-tense proposition signified that they would be.
D38 [44] On the other [argument] (= [32]), [the one inquiring] when [the
proposition] would begin to be false, I say that the truth of a present-tense
proposition is different from that of a future-tense [proposition]; for [a propo-
sition such as] Socrates is sitting is true because some things now actually are;
once these things have been posited, the [proposition] is true because of these
things; and thus, with regards to that which is true by such truth, it is not nec-
essary to take trouble or take counsel so that things should be this way. It is not
like this with regards to the truth of a future-tense proposition.
D38 [45] You will say that according to Scotus,26 a proposition is not contin-
gently true except when it is actually true. I say that [the word] contingently,
in one sense, is opposed to that whose opposite includes [logical] repugnancy;
and in this sense, it is true that [a proposition] is contingently true when it is
actually true, since there is no [logical] repugnancy [in the idea] that it should
24 Cognition translates both cognitio and notitia in this section.

25 See [31]; the question is how present two-sided contingency comports with future truth.
26 Scotus, Ordinatio i, d. 38, pt. 2, et d. 39, qq. 15 [Vat. vol. 6, pp. 428429].
be this instant, and yet that a proposition which in fact is true could be not
true; but [such a proposition] is not contingent in a way that would require
[us], from this moment on, to take counsel or take trouble about it. But matters
do not stand thus with the contingent truth of a future-tense proposition. And
therefore when Aristotle says that a future-tense proposition about contingent
matters is not true, [what he says] is true on the following interpretation: that
nothing is [yet] posited, which, once posited, [makes it so that] the proposition
is true, but [that] something will be posited which, once posited, [will make it
so that] things will then be just as the future-tense proposition signifies.
D38 [46] On the next [argument] (= [33]), I say that [a future contingent such
as Antichrist will be] is contingently true, since, in its own way, it is true
with respect to the thing to be posited, before whose positing it can always be
prevented.
D38 [47] You will say, if it is true, it is not necessary to take counsel. I say that it
is, since at all times before it is posited in being it can be prevented or effected.
D38 [48] On the next [argument] (= [34]), I concede [the objection] when-
ever a [proposition] was formally true from eternity, since when the thing is
posited in a, things are then just as the future-tense proposition signified from
eternity. And I concede that from a lesser contradiction there follows a greater
contradiction, by arguing negatively from the conclusion to the negation of the
premise.
D38 [49] [But] when you say that the [proposition] Socrates will sit was true
in the past, what kind of truth [do you mean]? Certainly not the kind [that
pertains to a proposition such as] Socrates is sitting; the truth of the [previous
proposition] depended on the future, and, therefore, before it is posited, both
God and creature can do the opposite. I grant you no other [kind of] truth.
D38 [50] The sixth [argument] (= [35]) has already been disposed of.27
D38 [51] On the next [argument] (= [36]), I say that in the mode in which truth
pertains to a future-tense proposition, that assumption is contingent. And this
similarly: Something in the future will be or is the same as Antichrist. And
27 The sixth [argument] has been disposed of by the model of contingent truth sketched
in [46].
276 chapter 2
when you prove that it is not so, since everything either is Antichrist or is not,
and that necessarily,I say that each of these is contingent: whatever will be
future is other than the Antichrist and something in the future will be the
same as Antichrist.
D38 [52] On the next [argument] (= [37]), I have said elsewhere on the subject
of negations28 that they signify the same as do the affirmations opposed to
them. Some, however, say that they are modifications of composition. But if
non-being signifies the same as being, then [the objection] is nothing to the
purpose. But let us posit that that thing, that form, which is inconsistent with
the form of Antichrist in matter, will necessarily be corrupted; it does not follow
that therefore Antichrist will necessarily be.
D38 [53] On the next [argument] (= [38]), it has already been made clear.29
D38 [54] On the tenth [argument] (= [39]), I deny the minor premise, since,
up to time a, a natural contingent can always indifferently be posited or not
posited by a creature, just as can an indifferent contingent.
Article 3. Whether the Contingency of Futures is Consistent with

Gods Certain Knowledge of Them
The third article is a response to the form of the question whether the contin-
gency of futures is consistent with Gods certain knowledge of them.
On the Question
D38 [55] And I answer in the affirmative, just as [any theologian] must hold.
But how this can be posited becomes clear by a discussion according to the
various opinions [already] discussed, i.e., because God sees in what way you
will deliberate, He therefore knows that this [thing] will [come to] be with a
mediating contingency in the cause with respect to its effect.30 But according
to another way of speaking, [it is] for [the following reason]: with such truth
of the proposition as there is, it is not the positing of some thing in fact [= in
the present], but the fact that something will be posited, which, having been
posited, [will make it] true to say then that now things are just such as the
28 See rss i, d. 2, q. 1 [9]; d. 4, q. 3 [56]; d. 39 [29]; dd. 4041, q. 2 [4], [7]; d. 43 [5], [10]; d. 46
[12], [15]; rss ii, d. 12, q. 1 [31]. For discussion of Chattons Doctrine of Contradictories, see
Chapter i, 10.1.2.4.
29 See [43], [44], and [45].
30 The fallback position discussed in [26], [29], and [41].
future-tense proposition has signified. Therefore, [the fact] that God knows
that such a thing will be is consistent with the contingency of that thing, since
it is equivalent to a copulative whose second part is contingent.
Some Doubts
D38 [56] But against this position there remain some doubts. First, for what
instant can God will that a shall not be? And Doctor Scotus holds that [God
can will that a shall not be] for the same instant for which He wills that a shall
be.31 But against this it is argued that God does not have power toward opposite
objects simultaneously;32 therefore it is not possible that for the same instant
for which He does a, or wills that a shall be, He should will the opposite.
D38 [57] Again, He cannot make that which is past not be past;33 therefore, if
He has willed that a will be, He cannot act [in such a way] that He has not willed
that a will be, and thus He will not be able to will that a shall not be.
D38 [58] Again, Gods will is determined with respect to the future being of a
in such a way that it is impossible that [Gods will] not have been determined;
therefore a will necessarily be, and [God] cannot refrain from willing that a
shall be.34
D38 [59] Again, either the effect follows on the willing of God by which He has
determined that a shall be, or it does not. If it does, it does necessarily. If it does
not, then for this reason He does not know that a will be.35
Chattons Response
D38 [60] Response. I do not see [how things could be otherwise than this:]
when the truth of a proposition depends on the future, and its being true is
a thing to be posited in such a future, then at all times before a thing of this
kind is posited, that proposition can be false. Nor can they themselves evade
this [conclusion], that for the same [temporal] extent that a proposition is
contingently true, it can be false; since they say that God has known eternally
that a will be, and that this has eternally been true and contingently true,
therefore it is simultaneously true and contingently true.
31 Scotus, Ordinatio i, d. 38, p. 2 and d. 39, qq. 15 [Vat. vol. 6, p. 427].

32 Ockham, Ordinatio i, d. 38, q. un. [OTh vol. 4, pp. 579581].
33 Ockham, Ordinatio i, d. 38, q. un. [OTh vol. 4, pp. 578579].
34 Ockham, Ordinatio i, d. 38, q. un. [OTh vol. 4, 581582].
35 Ockham, Ordinatio i, d. 38, q. un. [OTh vol. 4, 582583].
278 chapter 2
D38 [61] Again, they maintain that God could have produced the world from
eternity, and nevertheless that God would not then necessarily have produced
the world from eternity; therefore it can be the case that a proposition, in that
[temporal] extent in which it is true, is contingently true and could be false.
Hence, the [proposition] God willed that a would be is eternally true, and
nevertheless everyone must respond here that he willed contingently that a
would be.
Response to the above Doubts

D38 [62] Therefore, on the first argument (= [56]): What [it means for] God
to will, [I treat] elsewhere.36 However, in common parlance, God does [some-
thing] and God contingently wills something are interpreted, [respectively,]
as God does [something] contingently or [God] is going to do it contingently.
D38 [63] When, therefore, you ask at what instant is there contingency?,
either you want to speak about the instant in which the thing is posited, for
which [thing] the proposition is verified in the future, and then there remains
no real power toward the opposite; [or], if you should speak about the other
instant, I say that in every [instant] before [the instant] in which such a thing is
posited, [the proposition] can be false. One imagines that the truth of a future-
tense proposition is just like [that of] a present-tense one, and as though there
were something posited because of whose positing the [proposition] were true,
and it is not so; rather, something must be posited which, once posited, [will
make it so that] things will then be just as the proposition signified. Therefore
there is no power to posit opposites in a, but always before a there is power to
posit a or not to posit [a] indifferently.
D38 [64] To the second argument (= [57]), everyone [who discusses these
matters37] is bound to respond. What, therefore, do you understand by God
wills that a shall be? If it is that God will bring forth or create a, I concede that
this is verified for something to be posited in some future [time], say in a.
D38 [65] On the next [argument] (= [58]), [to the question] what is that
determination?I SAY that it is nothing other than [the fact] that God will, in
the future, produce a.
36 rss i, dd. 4246 [vol. 2, pp. 401452]; on Chattons interpretations of Ockhams divisions
of the divine will see especially d. 46.
37 Suggested by Keele 2010b.
D38 [66] On the next [argument] (= [59]). If you understand this to mean that
when God performs a, a is necessarily performed, then I concede the point; I
say nothing else.
On the Principal Arguments

D38 [67] On the first principal argument (= [1]). The major premise is false, if
we understand everything known by God or cognized by God as meaning that
it will be cognized.
D38 [68] The second [principal argument] (= [2]) has already been disposed
of.38

Distinction 39. Unique Question. Whether God Could Know More
Than He Knows
Whether God could know more than He knows.
D39 [1] For the affirmative. Something can be true which is not now true,
since something is contingently true, therefore [God could know more than
He knows.]
D39 [2] Again, God can will more than He wills; therefore He can also know
more than He knows, since whatever He can will, He can know.
D39 [3] Against: He cannot cognize more than He cognizes; nor [therefore can
He] know more than He knows. The antecedent is clear if we extend being
cognized to being apprehended. The consequence is clear, since nothing can
be true without its being true now, but every true [thing] cognized by God is
known, since we call [this] here being known.39 The proof of the assumption:
since, I say, what is signified by a true proposition is true; but everything that is
apprehended to be thus or not to be thus is signified by some true proposition,
since it is signified by one of [a pair of] contradictories, and one of any [pair
of] contradictories is true.
38 The reference could be to any number of preceding passages in the text; the whole of d. 38
is an extended refutation of the argument presented in [2].
39 I.e., since this is the definition of being known Chatton has establishedsee d. 38 [28].
280 chapter 2
Article 1. Three Doubts

Here, at first, some doubts must be addressed; secondly, the form of the ques-
tion must be discussed.
Doubt 1: In What Manner God Cognizes Futures

The Opinion of Scotus
D39 [4] The first doubt is: in what manner God cognizes futures.
D39 [5] And one Doctor40 says that [He cognizes futures] only by the determi-
nation of His will.
Against This Opinion

D39 [6] Against this [opinion] it is argued in many ways, and by one Mas-
ter41 as follows. If He only knows (novit) future contingents by their cause,
then [He does] not [know them] most evidently, since [He would know them]
more evidently if [He knew them] through their cause and also in them-
selves.
D39 [7] Again, secondly, the will of God is not the total determinative cause
with respect to a future contingent, since, in fact, such a thing will depend on
the determination of my will; otherwise my act would not issue forth from the
freedom of my will, nor be imputed to me; therefore He does not know such a
thing only by the determination of His will.
D39 [8] Again, the cognition of God is, of itself, infinite; therefore, of itself,
each [individual] cognition of [of God] [is also infinite], even leaving aside any
determination of any will.
D39 [9] Again, if [God knows future contingents] only by the determination of
His will, then [He does] not [know them] intuitively.
D39 [10] But these [arguments] run in another sense than they ought, since I
ask: what is that thing which, when posited, [will make it so that] God cognizes
that a will be? [It is] not God only, nor Gods cognition, because that thing can
be posited with the falsity of such a proposition, although the proposition is
40 Duns Scotus; see Chapter i, 5.2.1.

41 Unknown; but see commentary.
[of the sort which42] can be made true by things. If [that which makes it true]
is only the determination of the divine will, that is what the Doctor [i.e., Duns
Scotus] says.
D39 [11] Again, Gods infinite cognition would represent a stone indifferently
[as to] whether it will be or will not be; therefore it does not sufficiently
represent that the stone will be.
D39 [12] And others43 present [the following] argument against ideas: that it is
not by them that a thing is known to be future, since [such an idea] represents
a thing indifferently [as to] whether it will be or will not be. Similarly, why does
the concept of Socrates and whiteness not represent [the fact that] Socrates
is white? Because it represents indifferently [the question of] whether he is
white or not. However, whatever is in the world is indifferently disposed toward
[the question of whether] it will be or not; therefore, nothing in God represents
determinately that a will be.
Against the Arguments Discussed Above

D39 [13] What then? I say that, just as has been said in the preceding question,44
this [proposition] God knows that a will be means more than God or than
something in God, since it is equivalent to this copulative: God cognizes a and
a will be, and the [first partGod cognizes a]is necessary, by assuming
apprehends for [cognizes],45 and together with this, a will be from God. It is
therefore false to imagine that something in God would represent a as determi-
nately going-to-be, except in the sense that it [sc. something in God] represents
all things indifferently as to truth and falsity. The following [consequence] is
valid, as [Scotus] says: God knows that a will be, therefore God cognizes this,
and God will create it; and thus, consequently, it means more than God, and to
represent that this will be is more than to represent God, since [it represents]
that this will be.
42 Suggested by Keele 2010b.

43 Wey and Etzkorn cite Duns Scotus, Lectura i, d. 39, qq. 15, n. 18 [Vat. vol. 17, pp. 484485]
and Ordinatio i, d. 38, pt. 2, et d. 39, qq. 15 [Vat. vol. 6, pp. 406407] as well as Peter Auriol,
Scriptum i, d. 38, a. 1, pp. 100101; see also Duns Scotus, Reportatio I-A, d. 38 qq. 12, nn. 31
37 [RI-A vol. 2, pp. 456457].
44 See d. 38 [28][29].
45 Interpolations suggested by Keele 2010b.
282 chapter 2
On the Arguments against the Opinion of Scotus

D39 [14] On the first argument against the Doctor (= [6]), I say that God knows
(novit) both cause and caused, and it is an intuitive vision of each thing. But
from this it does not follow that, leaving aside all His external contingent
action, the divine knowledge represents this as going-to-be. For if you should
understand that divine cognition would from itself represent this as going-to-
be, I say no, since this would belong to imperfection, and [divine cognition]
would be changed [when this thing] changed from truth to falsity.46 Hence,
it cannot be the case that God knows that a will be unless God cognizes, i.e.,
apprehends, that a will be, and [in fact] a will be. I do not say: He asserts that
a will be, and a will be, since this would be to say something else.
D39 [15] On the second [argument] (= [7]), I say that everything that can be
caused either will be caused by God alone, and then it proceeds from the
contingent action of God; or it will be caused by a creature, and then not
without the concurrent contingent action of God. Thus for the truth of the
[proposition] God knows that this will be, it is required that God apprehend
the thing signified by this complex, and also that this will be.
D39 [16] On the next [argument] (= [8]), I concede that [Gods cognition] is
of the complex a will be, or of the thing signified by [that complex], but
nevertheless it is not true that God knows that a will be leaving aside all external
action of God, since more is included in the significate of the complex [a] will
be than the apprehension of the thing signified by [that complex]. What more?
[The fact] that a will be.
D39 [17] On the next [argument] (= [9]), when it is said that He does not know
(novit) that a will be except through the determination of His will, I say that
I only want to say that Gods knowledge that a will be includes more than
Gods cognition and [more] than the apprehension of the thing signified by
this complex, since it includes [the fact] that a will be from God.
Doubt 2: Whether God Cognizes Futures as Present to Eternity

D39 [18] The second doubt concerns [the question] whether God cognizes
futures because they are present to eternity.47

47 The Consolation of Philosophy, v. pr. vi [Boethius 1973 p. 426; pp. 428430]; Aquinas, De
veritate, q. 2, a. 12, ad 7 [aoo vol. 3, p. 18], st i, q. 14, a. 13, co. [aoo vol. 2, p. 209].
D39 [19] And some48 argue for the negative, since they do not exist in them-
selves, [and] therefore they are not present to anyone.
D39 [20] I say that a better understanding of this is that God cognizes that a will
be, and that it was eternally true to say a will be, in the way that a proposition
about the future can have truth.
Doubt 3: Whether God Cognizes Futures by Means of Ideas

D39 [21] The third doubt is whether God cognizes future contingents by means
of ideas.
D39 [22] And I say with Doctor Scotus49 that ideas do not suffice [to ground]
the [proposition] God knows that a will be.
Article 2. Whether God Can Know More Things Than He Knows

The second article responds to the form of the question [as to] whether God
can know more things than He knows, or other things than He knows.
D39 [23] And one opinion50 says that [He cannot know] more than He knows,
whether knowing is construed broadly, [so as to stand] for apprehending, or
strictly, [so as to stand] for cognizing a true [complex]; for there are as many
contradictories as can be true, and, necessarily, of any contradiction, one part
is true.
D39 [24] Nevertheless they say51 that, if one construes knowing [so as to
stand] for cognizing a true [complex], He can know something which He does
not now know, since something can be true which is not now true.
Against the Opinion of Ockham

D39 [25] But I do not see that these two can stand together, since knowing,
according to my [account], is cognizing a thing signified by a true complex;
and they too [sc. the adherents of Ockhams view] must say this, [whether]
48 Wey and Etzkorn cite Duns Scotus, Ordinatio i, d. 38, pt. 2, et d. 39, qq. 15 [Vat. vol. 6,
pp. 409411], Lectura i, d. 39, qq. 15, nn. 2730 [Vat. vol. 17, pp. 487488], and Peter Auriol,
Scriptum i, d. 36, q. 1 [ed. Romae 1596, 833b-834a].
49 Scotus, Reportatio I-A, d. 38, qq. 12, n. 32 [r i-a vol. 2, pp. 456457].
50 Ockham, Ordinatio i, d. 39, q. u. [OTh vol. 4, pp. 589590].
51 Ockham, Ordinatio i, d. 39, q. u. [OTh vol. 4, p. 590].
284 chapter 2
directly or indirectly.52 If, therefore, He can know something which He does

not now know, then He can know something which then will be signified by a
true complex [and] which is not now signified by a true complex. And if this [is
so], according to [Ockham]and I agreeit is not necessary that, because of
this, He cease to know something that He now knows; therefore He can know
more things than He knows.
D39 [26] Again, strictly speaking, knowledge is assent to something that is

signified by a true complex; but it is impossible that something should ever
be true unless it is signified now by a true complex, since it is impossible that
something should ever be true unless it is signified now by contradictories, and
one of them is true; therefore it is impossible that something should ever be
signified by a true complex, unless it is now signified by a true complex; for
that same thing which is signified by an affirmative proposition is signified by
its contradictory negative; [and] therefore, from [the fact] that it is impossible
that one of [two] contradictories not be true, it follows that whatever can be
signified by a true complex is signified now by a true complex, and thus is [itself
now] true. Therefore it is impossible that God should know something that He
does not now know.
D39 [27] Again, it is impossible that God should ever apprehend something
that He does not now apprehend; therefore [it is impossible that He] should
ever know something that He does not now know.
D39 [28] Again, a thing is not less truly signified by a negative complex than by
an affirmative one. Nevertheless I leave this [matter] partially unsettled.
Chattons Response
D39 [29] I, therefore, have a different [opinion, namely] that it is one thing
to talk of the thing known, and another [to talk of] the complex known, for
there is no thing known to be true if there is not a thing signified through a true
complex, and it is impossible for something to be signified by a true complex
unless it is now signified by a true complex, since it is now signified by [a pair
of] contradictories, and it must be [the case] that one [member] of this pair
is true; and therefore, insofar as truth is assertible of the thing cognized, it
is impossible that something ever should be true unless it is now true, since

the idea of something being true is coherent53 only if [that thing] is signified
by a true complex. Hence, the same thing that is now signified truly by the
[proposition] you are sitting will be signified by the contradictory [of that
proposition] as soon as you get up; and contradictories signify the same thing
entirely; otherwise they would not be contradictories.
D39 [30] However, by taking true in the second mode, insofar as it is assertible
of a signifying complex, [such a complex] can be true in two ways: either
because it signifies the thing to be as it is, or insofar as it is directed at the
[thing] cognized. In the second mode, it cannot but be formed so as to be
truly signified by one or the other of the contradictories, and therefore also
to be true by the truth that is assertible of the thing cognized. But if we take
such a complex insofar as it signifies one [of the contradictories], it can be
true now and untrue before, since now, while you are sitting, the complex
you are sitting is, in this manner of speaking, true, since now things are in
fact just as that proposition signifies them to be, while previously they were
not.
D39 [31] And now, on the argument (= [24]) in which they contend that He
can know something which He does not now know, since something can
be true which is not now true, I say that if they wish to speak about the
denomination of the thing by its sign, this is impossible. If [they speak] about
the sign, in the mode in which the sign is true, then something that is not
true can be true. Here, [however,] this question concerns the truth of the thing
cognized, not the truth of the sign. Since therefore it is impossible that God
should cognize something that He previously did not cognize, and it is similarly
impossible that something should be true by the truth of the thing cognized
(which amounts to being signified by a true complex) without now being true,
therefore, etc.
D39 [32] If, however, you turn to the determinate true complex by which [the
thing] is signified, then it is not always thus; on the contrary, I concede in this
case that He can know or cognize something which is not now true by the
truth by which [the thing] is signified by this determinate complex. Never-
theless, [the thing] is always true either by the truth by which it is signified
53 This is my periphrastic rendition of quia sibi non competit esse verum nisi quia significatur
per complexum verum. More literally: since it does not fit with itself for it to be true unless
because it is signified
286 chapter 2
by this [determinate] complex or by the truth by which it is signified by one of

the mutually opposed contradictories.

D39 [33] Now to the principal arguments. On the first (= [1]), it assumes some-
thing false, if we are speaking of the truth of the thing cognized. If how-
ever we are speaking of the truth of some complex which is the sign of the
thing, the point is not relevant. For it is true that the complex you are sit-
ting is contingent, but the thing signified by it is necessarily signified by a
true complex, since [it is signified by a pair of] contradictories, of which one is
true. Hence, this is necessarily true: this thing is signified by some true com-
plex.
D39 [34] On the second (= [2]). From God can act contingently it does
not follow that [God] can know contingently, for the reasons stated. I con-
cede, however, that God can know something although [et] that thing will not
be.

Distinctions 4041. Question 1. Whether the Mystery of the Divine
Incarnation was the Meriting Cause of Human Predestination
Whether the mystery of the Divine Incarnation was the meriting cause of
human predestination.
D4041Q1 [1] For the negative: as the Incarnation is disposed equally to salva-
tion and to damnation, it would be equally the meriting cause of the predes-
tination of the one and that of the [reprobation] of the other; otherwise, [the
Incarnation] would be more beneficial for the one than for the other accord-
ing to [Gods] personal [sc. unfair] preference.And this is confirmed, since
otherwise Christ would not have come as the universal redeemer: [He did this
because,] by nature, no more is owed to the one than to the other.
D4041Q1 [2] Again, predestination is not contingent, therefore [divine incar-

nation was not the meriting cause of human predestination]. The assumption
is clearly [true], because, from the fact that the determinate proposition this
one is predestined is now determinately true, [it follows that] it is unneces-
sary to take counsel or deliberate about this [matter]; however, it would be
necessary [to do so], if predestination were contingent; therefore [the nega-
tive].
D4041Q1 [3] Against. The Incarnation was a part of redemption; therefore,

when it is posited, blessedness is given.
Previous Views
D4041Q1 [4] In this matter some things are certain, and some not. First, [the
following] is certain: anyone can indifferently do good and do evil. Second, that
those [faculties] which imply no imperfection, such as knowing, willing, and
the like, are to be attributed to God; however, those [faculties] which include
some imperfection are not to be attributed to Him; [included in this category]
is anything whose being argues for mutability. But, even when these things have
been established, a doubt remains: namely, we must inquire as to the [correct]
mode of expression in this matter, in which I do not wish to propose anything
except as though reciting [others opinions].
Article 1. Whether a [Given] Person is Contingently Predestined.54

The Opinion of Ockham
Therefore the first article will ascertain whether a [given] person is contin-
gently predestined. And [there are many] who answer in the affirmative.
D4041Q1 [5] And one man55 answers in the affirmative, because ones salva-
tion depends on the will of God, causing contingently, and on ones own will,
acting contingently. And they distinguish modes of propositions in this matter
according to composition and division, etc. See [the works] of Ockham. And
this is the common way of responding here,56 [namely] by positing that57 [a
proposition asserting predestination] is [now] actually true, and by evading
the argument by [appealing to] composition and division.

D4041Q1 [6] But such a way [of explaining things] is not clear, since there
remains the entire difficulty on which the question turns. For in what way
can these two conclusions hold simultaneously: that this one was predestined
(however contingently), and yet that he can be damned. And the arguments
against this position [still] stand [against the above response],58 because if the
54 Latin: an iste sit contingenter praedestinatus. From now on I translate iste as this
one.
55 See Ockham, Ordinatio i, d. 40, q. u. [OTh vol. 4, pp. 592596].
56 This is indeed a common strategy; see commentary for some references.
57 Reading quod (F) for quid (P).
58 Interpolation suggested by Keele 2010b.
288 chapter 2
[proposition] this one will be saved or this one is predestined is now true,
then [Ockham] is deceived in his syllogizing.
D4041Q1 [7] You will say: it is in fact [de facto] true, but its truth depends
on the future.I say that these [two] things seem opposed: that now, in fact
[de facto], the [proposition] this one will be saved is true, and nevertheless
that its truth should depend on a thing which does not now exist; for there
is not [now] any thing outside the mind which, when posited, [would make
it so that] this [proposition] would be true. Therefore this way [of explaining
things] is not clear, nor do I believe that anyone [of this school] puts anything
clearly.
Five Doubts
Therefore there are five [matters] that must be inquired about here. First,
whether the [proposition] this one will be saved is true. Second, whether God
knows that this one will be saved. Third, whether God wills that this one should
be saved. Fourth, whether this one has been predestined from eternity. And
fifth, whether someone who is predestined can be damned.
On the First Doubt

D4041Q1 [8] As far as the first [matter] is concerned, I do not want to say
anything as though it were my opinion. In the foregoing I have recited certain
ways [of explaining things]. One of them59 saves [the principle] that a proposi-
tion about a future contingent is determinately true; the other (as, for example,
[the account] of Peter Auriol) posited that [it is] not [determinately true]. In
this part I shall recite the last-mentioned way, as I wish to explain both sides
of a contradiction in this matter: [that is, I shall explain] how it can be main-
tained that [a future contingent] is not determinately true. But let no opinion
be attributed to me, but rather to those whose [opinions] I recite.
D4041Q1 [9] When, therefore, it is asked whether the [proposition] this one
will be saved is true, a person could imagine this way of putting it, sc. that the
[proposition] I am sitting is true, and the thing is now actually so disposed as
the [proposition] I will sit, which is future-tense, previously signified[but]
in such a way that, before a, that [future-tense] proposition is never true, but
only then [i.e., at a] are things so disposed as that [future-tense proposition]
signified, and nevertheless, at that time [i.e., at a], things are not signified to be
59 That of Ockham.
thus by a future-tense proposition, but by a present-tense [one], since at that

time [i.e., at a], that future-tense [proposition] is not true.
D4041Q1 [10] To explain this, I say that a future contingent can be interpreted
in two ways. In one way, as we say that God, from eternity, contingently preor-
dains and determines that [the future contingent] shall beand this either in
general, as [for example] He has determined that the resurrection of the dead
shall take place or that he who is well-disposed shall be saved, and thus also
about other matters, according to general laws. Or specifically, and this either
absolutely, in the sense of determining and contingently preordaining that this
one shall be saved; or conditionally, in the sense of ordaining that, if the first
man should sin, then the Son of God will be born of a virgin, and so on. And
this is how such a truth is contingent: it is not contradictory that the opposite
[thing] should happen in the future; [but even] if this [thing] has not yet actu-
ally happened, it will determinately exist and not its opposite. And this is the
sort of contingency in which, if the opposite of this future [event] is posited, it
will be necessary to deny that it agreed with itself from eternity. Hence, in such
a consequence, [it is the case] both that the antecedent is necessary as-of-now
in Gods ordained power, and that the consequence is necessary, in the sense
that if this one sins and will not be saved, then it must be said that God did not,
from eternity, preordain this one to salvation. And [contingency] is what we
call the sort of thing because of whose positing one must deny the necessary-
as-of-now. However, that which God indeed ordained and determined is not
indifferently disposed to either side of a contradiction. And thus in such mat-
ters one side is determinately true, but also contingently true in the sense that
its opposite does not contain a contradiction.
D4041Q1 [11] For example, when God is the only determinant [of a given
event], if God predetermined from eternity that if the first human should
sin, then a virgin would conceive, then this consequence is valid: the first
human sinned, therefore a virgin will conceive. But if we speak about [cases] in
which a human being is the partial determinant, I say: liberty and contingency
are consistent with divine determination in the same way as [with cases in
which] God is the total cause, since in the former case God has determined
for himself the end, [namely] that this one shall be saved, e.g., because this one
will go to church, and on account of this will receive his reward. And speaking
thus, I say that, given a true future-tense proposition in a contingent matter,
which is determined toward truth by a superior cause, something is actually
the case [in virtue of] which that proposition is true. And what is that? It is the
determination of a superior cause, and that either absolutely or conditionally.
290 chapter 2
And in this direction run the remarks of Doctor Scotus in this matter, [i.e.] on
the determination of the will.60
D4041Q1 [12] In another way, we assume a contingent future-tense proposi-

tion concerning a contingent matter, where there was no inward determination
either in the first or in the second cause tending toward one side in a contradic-
tion rather than the other. And in that [first type of contingency], one would say
that when the truth depends not only on a future thing but on the determina-
tion of a cause, then there is something in fact because of which the proposition
is true. But in the second case, this is not so, because there is no cause before
the instant in which the thing is posited because of which [the proposition]
would have to be true, but only in that actual instant is the thing [so disposed]
as the future-tense proposition signified that it would be. And only then, when
in fact I am sitting, is the thing [so disposed] as the future-tense proposition I
will sit signified.
D4041Q1 [13] Those who hold this [doctrine] would respond to [the issue of]
the [proposition] this one will be saved [as follows]: either you speak of a
certain person, of whom God has ordained from eternity that he would be
saved, and then I say that this [proposition] is determinately true, [true] in the
same sense as the general law the resurrection will be [or] he who is well-
disposed will be saved. Why? Because something is already posited because
of which that [proposition] is true, namely the determination of the cause
in Whose power it is that this thing should be. But if you wish to speak of
some person of whom [some action] is not determinate, but rather is merely
relegated to general laws and left to the hands of [the persons] own judgement,
then neither side is determinately true, but rather: only in the instant in which
blessedness is given [are things] as the future-tense proposition signified them
to be; and then there is no further difficulty here, since, in this case, no future-
tense proposition is true before the instant in which the thing is contingently
posited in being; [in the other case,] I say contingency because it is not
opposed by any [logical] repugnancy of the opposite [thing], but [that other
kind of contingency] does not require deliberation and counsel.
60 The reference to Scotus seems not, pace Wey and Etzkorn, to be to Ordinatio i, d. 39, qq. 15,
but to Reportatio I-A, dd. 3940, qq. 13, nn. 1215 [r i-a vol. 2, pp. 468469], where Scotus
rejects Aquinas appeal to primary and secondary causes in explaining contingency. Sco-
tus argument is actually a reductio, from which he concludes that the divine action must
be contingent; Chatton, however, here takes it as genuinely establishing, for some events,
determinate truth and therefore necessity.
On the Second Doubt

But now it remains to resolve the second doubt: whether God knows that this
one will be saved.
D4041Q1 [14] If anyone would dare to propound the doctrine just recited,
which I do not dare to do, he would ask of his opponent: What do you
understand by Gods knowledge that this one will be saved? Either [you mean]
that that cognition by which now, in the instant in which I sit, He knows that I
sit, is in God from eternity; or [you mean that God knows] that the proposition
I am sitting is true, but in the sense that that cognition was not knowledge
from eternity, since knowing this [consists of] cognizing this and this is true;
which [copulative] was not [true] before this instant, by reason of its second
part. Thus it must be said that that same cognition, by which He cognized (that
is, apprehended) from eternity, is the knowledge of this thing when it is posited
in being.
D4041Q1 [15] Another way of understanding [this doubt] might [involve the
question] whether God can knowingly cause in you the assent to the [proposi-
tion] you will sit. And I say that He can cause this assent and [can] reveal
[things] however He pleases, in accordance with the [well-known] opinion
about [divine] attributes [which lets us say, for example,] that God is justice:
for it is He by whom each is given his [just deserts], etc.
D4041Q1 [16] A third way of understanding [this doubt] [involves the ques-
tion] whether God has assented from eternity that this will be. If by this you
understand God has cognized [this] from eternity and this has been true from
eternity, then the answer would be no, since this copulative is not true by
reason of its second part. If, however, [by this] you understand that the cogni-
tion of this [res] has been from eternity, [then the answer would be yes]; but
that cognition has not been knowledge from eternity, since that [proposition]
has not been true from eternity. But that proposition is now knowledge, since
that present-tense proposition is now true. Previously, however, it was not true,
neither as present-tense nor as a future-tense [proposition]; in this way, the
cognition by which God, from eternity, knew the thing simply, is the same cog-
nition by which He knows it as a complex. According to this opinion, it would
be said that certain arguments are valid, and they conclude, first, that if there
were a true future-tense proposition, there would be no need to take counsel,
etc. And whether or not you say that its truth depends on the future, the fact
that it is now actually true [means] that we need not take trouble to bring about
its truth.
292 chapter 2
D4041Q1 [17] [Their] second [conclusion] is: the [proposition] this was true:
you will sit is no more in my power than the [proposition] you sat. I do not
see how [the latter proposition] could remain [in my power]; similarly, they
[sc. the exponents of this argument] do not see how it could remain in your
power that this was true, and therefore also that the thing would take place,
since if the thing should fail to take place, then [the proposition] was never
true.
D4041Q1 [18] But you say always that it depends on the future. -- But I say that
it is a general [fact] about future-tense propositions that if [such a proposition]
is true, it is true [in a way that] leaves the [truth-making] thing out of the
account, since the thing by which the proposition would be true is not yet
posited.
D4041Q1 [19] Again, these [propositions] are mutually contradictory: this

one will be saved and this one will be damned. I ask, therefore, whether
this ones power is equal and indifferent to either side [of the contradiction],
and thus that one is not now more true than the other. If [they are] not
equally [true], then [this] is not indifferent contingency. And the [following]
conditional holds: God knew that this one would be saved, therefore this one
will be saved; and the antecedent is true in such a way that it does not need
any counsel, since its truth has crossed over to the past, from which it follows
that it has always been true.
D4041Q1 [20] Again, if God has determined it, a proposition is simply true,
even if the thing has not been posited, since the determination precedes the
cause. If, therefore, with respect to some acts of our free will, there is no such
determination, it is not clear by what [the proposition corresponding to such
an act] should be verified, since it is certain that no thing has been posited by
which it would be true; therefore if it is true, it is necessary that this be because
of the determination of a cause, and thus it is not indifferent, against the initial
assumption.
Objections to the Foregoing Account

D4041Q1 [21] But one can argue against this account [of the matter]. First,
because it could be true to say that things are now just as a proposition signified,
and nevertheless neither now nor ever has that proposition been true; for
example, let us accept that something will persist only for the instant [a]; [in
such a case,] the [proposition] a will be is not true, neither in this way nor
afterwards. This is certain; therefore, [the foregoing account must be rejected.]
D4041Q1 [22] Again, a disjunction of contradictories is true, therefore one of

the parts is true.
D4041Q1 [23] Again, if God had not known from eternity that a would be, and
now He knows a when it is posited in act, He would therefore undergo change.
D4041Q1 [24] Again, God caused assent in the prophets. Either this [assent]
was true, which was the propositum; or not, and then the [prophet] would be
deceived, or at least would not be confirmed.
D4041Q1 [25] Again, Scripture often shows future-tense propositions:

Behold, a virgin shall conceive,61 etc.
D4041Q1 [26] Again, the Apostle says: all are open and laid bare to the eyes of
him 62
D4041Q1 [27] Again, you do not preserve the providence of God: for how can
He provide for us for our acts,63 considering that He has no knowledge of them?
On the Objections Set Forth Above

D4041Q1 [28] Someone holding the aforesaid opinion would solve [the prob-
lem] thusand some other opinions run in this direction, for example, that of
Peter Auriol, which I have been recitingthat a future-tense proposition is not
true, since such [a person] says that it is in the nature of Gods knowledge to fol-
low the positing of the thing, but not to precede it. And if he understands that
divine cognition is, from eternity, such as when a thing is posited, God knows
it, then it is clear. If he understands that [God,] from eternity, assents to the
[proposition] this will be in the same way as to the proposition man is an
animal, it is not clear.
D4041Q1 [29] On the first argument (= [21]), therefore, I concede the con-
clusion, since more is implied by a future-tense proposition, namely that it
was true then, before the instant in which that [thing] which [the proposi-
tion] signified as going-to-be was posited, and this is not true, since neither
61 Isaiah 7:14.
62 Hebrews 4:13.
63 Provide for us for our acts presumably in the sense of reward and punish us appropri-
ately.
294 chapter 2
was [that thing] preceded by a determination of the cause, nor was there any-
thing actually existing because of which [the proposition] would have had to
be verified.
D4041Q1 [30] On the second [argument] (= [22]), I say that neither part of
such a disjunction is determinately true, but both are of an undetermined qual-
ity; this is [also the case] if you speak about the disjunction [as a whole]. If,
however, you speak of a categorical present-tense proposition about a predi-
cated disjunction, e.g., about the [proposition] you are the being who will sit
or will not sit, then it is different.
D4041Q1 [31] On the third [argument] (= [23]), I deny the consequence.

Why, indeed, does God create a stone now, and not before? Because, for the
[proposition] God creates a stone to be true, both the stone and God must
exist. [It is] just so here: in order for God to know this, it is necessary that
God cognize this and that this be true. However, previously, this was not true,
but now it is true by creaturely change [alone], since the divine cognition
afterwards was of the same complex as before, and vice versa. But if you wish
to speak of the copulative God cognizes this and this is true, the first [part]
is indifferently necessary, whether the complex is possible or impossible; but
the second part is neither true nor false. And many things that masters say
in Sentences [commentaries] tend in this direction. The cognition, therefore,
existed before, but it was not knowledge until the thing was posited; this is
when we are speaking of a case in which there is an equal indifference toward
both sides of a contradiction.
D4041Q1 [32] On the next [argument] (= [24]), it would be said, according to

the mode of interpretation [here being expounded], that that assent, which I
freely concede God can cause, does not have determinate truth until the instant
in which its [corresponding] present-tense [proposition] is verified.
D4041Q1 [33] But how, then, must [the prophet] foretell future things? I say
that that which he foretells can be false, nor will it be determinately true, nor
will there be any other kind of certainty in that proposition; but [the prophet]
has a sure assent by which, in a, he will assent to the [proposition] you are
sitting. You will expect [the state of affairs corresponding to the proposition
you are sitting] until instant a, and then you will assent [to the proposition].
What is to be expected until a, and what then is to be assented to by that
[act of] assenting, is not the [proposition] there will be a sea-battle, but the
[proposition] there is a sea-battle.
D4041Q1 [34] On the next [argument] (= [25]): it is indeed true that in many
[places] Scripture asserts those [things] which God has determined shall take
place; this is the case at least on the condition which, when posited, [makes it
so that] Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and the like, will take place, and such
a future-tense [proposition] is true. But there are other [things] that Scripture
predicts which have to do with our free decision, and [these things] are fully
in [the power of] our will; and in such [matters], you should expect a future
time, and then [i.e., at that time] you [will] have assented to the present-tense
[proposition], since no such future-tense proposition is true as literally stated.
This is how matters stand about the [proposition] of the first principal doubt,
this one shall be saved, which God has not determined. Such a [proposition]
is neither true nor false as literally stated until the instant in which blessedness
is given to [this one]. And the way in which contingency remains here is plain,
since there is no determination against contingency.
On the Third Doubt

D4041Q1 [35] On the third principal doubt (whether it must be conceded
that God wills that this one be saved), I say that [if we are speaking] about
the instant in which He gives him blessedness, [the answer] is obviously yes,
and there is no doubt. But [does He will it] from eternity? Here it seems that
we should speak as we do about [Gods] knowledge: (a) from eternity He has
the will through which He gives you blessedness in that instant, and (b) this
is true; for this [proposition] is a copulative, for whose truth both conjuncts
are required. If, however, He were to give you blessedness contrary to general
and special laws, it would not remain in your indifferent [power]. But can
God reveal [your blessedness] to you? He can do it in both of the two ways
mentioned: you can expect a future time, and then you will assent to this
proposition. This resolves the issue, since God, from eternity, has [obviously]
had the will by which He now gives blessedness.
On the Fourth Doubt

D4041Q1 [36] On the fourth doubt (whether this one has been predestined
from eternity), you should resolve this case into the equivalent future-tense
case, namely God will give you blessedness, even though according to its
grammar the [proposition] is present-tense. At that point it must be said,
as previously, that the proposition this one is predestined has never been
determinately true. If, however, you should speak about the person whom
God has determined to give blessedness by special determination, then it is
plain that the [proposition] is true; but not about the [case] in which there is
full indifference [and in which there is] no determination of any case. And if
296 chapter 2
Scripture and authorities should say such things, they [are to be] understood
thus: you should expect [blessedness] until a, and then blessedness is given to
you.
On the Fifth Doubt

D4041Q1 [37] On the fifth [doubt] (whether a predestined [person] can be
damned), in such [matters] we must distinguish according to composition
and division. In the composed sense, then, the [proposition] someone who is
predestined will be damned is impossible; and this would be the true sense, if
the proposition this one is predestined were determinately true. If the divided
sense is the true [sense], it would not be in this ones power not to have been
predestined.
Article 2. Whether the Act of Christ is in Some Way the Meriting

Cause of This Persons Predestination. Ockhams Opinion
The second article responds to the form of the question [as to] whether the act
of Christ is in some way the meriting cause of this persons predestination.
D4041Q1 [38] For consistencys sake, [the doctrine expounded] in this arti-
cle must [conform to] the opinion which this man64 wants to maintain in the
first [article]. But as to whether there is any meriting cause of predestination or
reprobation, this opinion distinguishes among [the different kinds of] causa-
tion, [focusing on] the kind [of causation] that obtains between propositions,
etc. Look in [the works of] Ockham.65

D4041Q1 [39] But against [this opinion], [it can be said that] by holding, as
they do, that the [proposition] this one will be saved has been true from
eternity, they cannot maintain any meriting cause of predestination. The proof
is that before [there was] any [such] cause, the [proposition] this one will be
saved was true; therefore, no [such] meriting cause is the cause of its truth.
D4041Q1 [40] Furthermore, the issue here is not causality between proposi-
tions, since God cares little about our propositions when causing human beings
to be blessed.
64 Presumably Ockham.
65 Ockham, Ordinatio i, d. 41, q. u. [OTh vol. 4, pp. 605607].
D4041Q1 [41] Similarly, against what they say, namely that there is a determi-
nately true future-tense proposition, there stand the arguments stated above,
even the ones they themselves make, nor have they been clearly resolved.
D4041Q1 [42] Further, against what they say by way of example about the
glorious Virgin,66 [namely] that there is no other cause or worthy source of
[her] predestination,67 then if the incarnation had not been valid for the
Blessed Virgin by reason of merit, there would have been no need for that
incarnation.
Another opinion must be set forth later.68
D4041Q1 [43] If someone who held the aforesaid opinion were to dare to
speak in the way expounded above regarding future contingentsthough only
as recitation, not as something asserted[he would ask:] what is signified by
the [proposition] this one will be saved? Not that this [proposition] is true,
but that you should expect [salvation] until a, and then the [proposition] this
one has been saved will be true.
D4041Q1 [44] [Objector:] But is there no meriting cause of his predestination

because of which this one will be blessed?[Chatton:] I say yes, understood
thus: in that instant in which blessedness will be given, then there will be a
cause because of which it is given.
D4041Q1 [45] [Objector:] But how then?[Chatton:] I say that when some-
thing has been promised conditionally, then the fulfillment of the condition is
in some way the cause because of which what is promised is then given, when
it is actually given. God, however, promises that he will give blessedness to him
who perseveres to the end. And thus, because someone perseveres and is finally
good, this final perseverance is the cause because of which his blessedness is
caused in the final instant in which blessedness is then given. And this is the
cause, just as the fulfillment of the condition on which something is promised is
the cause, and [this is] how, in what has been proposed, it can be that [blessed-
ness] in that instant is given just as, before, it was promised to be given, if you
will have persevered.
66 Ockham, Ordinatio i, d. 41, q. u. [OTh vol. 4, p. 606].

67 I.e., no other meriting cause of her predestination than Gods arbitrary ab aeterno choice.
68 See [46][51] below. Wey and Etzkorn indicate that this line is a scribal interpolation.
298 chapter 2
The Opinion of Peter Auriol

D4041Q1 [46] Now as to the second article, which responds to the form of
the question, I shall recite another opinion, namely that of Peter Auriol,69 who
posits that Gods [act of] predestining [someone] [amounts to His] willing to
confer blessedness [on that person] if no obstacle is posited. And therefore he
says that there is no positive cause of predestination, but only a negative one,
namely that no obstacle is posited. [This is so,] first, because it is a universal
law that everyone for whom no obstacle is posited is saved; second, because
a universal agent acts in everything, if there is no impediment; but there is
no impediment in the [divine] will unless an obstacle is posited; therefore the
positing of an obstacle is the only cause because of which this one might not
be saved; therefore from an opposite [there follows an opposite].
D4041Q1 [47] Again, by this way justice and mercy together are better pre-
served.
D4041Q1 [48] Again, everything positive follows predestination, and is the

effect of predestination.
D4041Q1 [49] Again, in this way the saying of the Master [Peter Lombard]70
is better preserved, [namely] that [predestination] issues out of hidden merits,
by a negative formulation, since it is not deserved.
D4041Q1 [50] On the cause of reprobation, they say that it is an affirmative

cause, namely that an obstacle is posited; for just as God predestines all for
whom no obstacle is posited, thus, from the opposite [assumption], He repro-
bates all for whom an obstacle is posited.
D4041Q1 [51] Again, a universal agent, when an impediment is posited, does

not act; but here the positing of an obstacle is an impediment.
Against the Opinion of Peter Auriol

D4041Q1 [52] But this is not obvious unless it is clearly stated. First, since they
hold that a future-tense proposition God will give this one blessedness is not
69 Peter Auriol, Scriptum i, d. 41, a.1 [Halverson 1993, p. 324, l. 633p. 325, l. 873].
70 Sententiae i, d. 41, c. 2 [Lombard 1971, p. 290, l. 23p. 291, l. 2]; Lombard is quoting Augustine.
The reference to Lombard here is an indication that Chatton is indeed simply reciting
Auriol, who himself cites this passage at Scriptum i, d. 41, a. 1 [Halverson 1993, p. 326, l. 778
p. 327, l. 792].
determinately true, it follows that it is not true that Gods predestination of this
one [amounts to] His willing blessedness for this one from eternity, since the
[proposition] this one will have blessedness is not true.
D4041Q1 [53] Again, I prove that there is some positive cause of predestina-
tion, since if we assume that someone not only avoids and omits to perform
things that must be avoided, but also fulfills those obligations imposed on him
by positive precepts, then the fulfillment of those [obligations] is the cause
because of which he will be saved.
D4041Q1 [54] Again, let us assume that anyone is baptized, or that at least
someone is; assuming that this has happened, if he should immediately die, he
is saved; therefore his baptism is passively the cause of his predestination and
salvation.
D4041Q1 [55] Again, anyone who is to be saved needs the Incarnation and
Passion of Christ; therefore there is a positive cause of his predestination.
D4041Q1 [56] Again, I prove that the cause of reprobation is not always
positive, since a person is damned not only because he performs forbidden acts,
but [also] because he omits [actions] that should be performed; and this is valid
if one assumes, at most, that a sin of omission does not require the inclusion of
any positive act.
Chattons Response
D4041Q1 [57] I respond, therefore, otherwise; and, first, I posit a way in which
contingency can stand in agreement with certainty. [My view] mediates
between the contradictory views I have canvassed above; it seems to me rather
more plausible, although I do not assert it. On the first day, I expounded71 the
opinion which posits how the future-tense proposition Socrates will sit in a
is, in its [proper] mode, eternally true, and [how] the assent corresponding to
it is eternally determinately true, and nevertheless contingentlynot because
the thing is posited because of which it is true, nor because of a determination
of the cause, as neither of these is the casebut because things will be just as
the proposition signifies that they will be.
71 Perhaps d. 38 [8], [15][26], [46], and [60], as well as d. 39 [20][34]; see commentary and
Chapter i, 10.1.4.1.
300 chapter 2
D4041Q1 [58] The second view, which I expounded on the second day,72 holds
that a future-tense proposition is not true about a contingent, nor is the cor-
responding assent true; rather, [one can say] only that the [corresponding]
cognition has been from eternity, since there is knowledge of a [thing] only
when that [thing] is, and not before, since, before, it was not knowable, assum-
ing that there has been no preceding determination of any cause.
D4041Q1 [59] But the middle way, which will now be expounded, holds that
the [proposition] God has eternally assented, for a, that Socrates sit is true.
We accept that the [proposition] in a, Socrates sits ought to be true, and that
always, before a, [he] is indifferent as to sitting in a or not sitting in a. Then I
want to say that God has eternally assented, for a, that Socrates sit. And thus I
say that He has eternally assented, for band let b be the total time before a
that Socrates be indifferent between sitting and not sitting in a. Therefore the
certainty of the divine cognition is for a, but contingency and indifference are
for b.
Against the Aforesaid View

D4041Q1 [60] [An objection is raised:] But I object to this view. Against it there
seem to be all the arguments given above against other [views], namely, that if
the [proposition] for a, Socrates sits is eternally true, then there is no need
for deliberation about this [matter], since it is already true that for a, Socrates
[sits]. [Chatton responds:] I say that this way ought to mediate between the
aforesaid [views], and therefore I distinguish between the complex Socrates
sits for a and the assent by which God assents to the thing signified by that
proposition. The first view holds that the future-tense proposition Socrates
will sit in a is true, and the assent is true. The second [view holds] that neither
the proposition nor the assent is true before a. But this middle [way] says that
no proposition that signifies a future thing is true, nor indeed is any proposition
[true] that signifies that such a proposition is true. It maintains, nevertheless,
that although that assent by which it is assented that Socrates sits for a is not
true before a, nevertheless that proposition is true which signifies now that that
assent exists by which the thing signified by that proposition is assented to. I
am not speaking, however, about a future-tense proposition in which there is
a determination of a created cause, [as when we say] e.g., that the sun will rise
tomorrow, or even of an uncreated [cause], e.g., when God has determined that
72 Perhaps d. 38 [12][14], [42][43]; dd. 4041 q. 1 [8][20], [28][37], [43][45]; see com-
mentary and Chapter i, 10.1.4.2.
[something] shall be, since in those cases there is already a thing because of
which such a proposition will be true. But in accepting such [a proposition as]
Socrates will sit, in which there is full indifference without the determination
of any cause toward either side of the contradiction, neither the [proposition]
Socrates will sit for a nor the proposition for a, Socrates sits is true, because
the copula is denotes that it is now true for this time. And therefore I say that,
however you may specify it, no such proposition signifying a future thing, when
there is complete indifference to either side, is truenot even if you should say
that the proposition for a, Socrates sits is true.
D4041Q1 [61] [Objector:] In what way, then, is there certitude? [Chatton:] I

say that [the certitude consists] in this: that God assents from eternity, for a,
to the thing signified by the complex Socrates sits; and similarly the prophet
firmly assents, for a, to the thing signified by the [complex] Socrates sits;
and, nevertheless, no such proposition as Socrates sits for a is true, since that
[would] imply more, as has been said.
D4041Q1 [62] [Objector:] But is this assent true? [Chatton:] I say that it is
neither true nor false before a, but only when the thing is posited is the assent
true, since that the assent is true implies that the assent [both] is and that it is
in the thing assented to.
D4041Q1 [63] According to this view, the arguments previously made against
other views have no force[viz.,] that if God assents, for a, that you shall sit,
then you shall necessarily sit in asince if you speak about the propositions
discussed above, they are not true unless you wish to say that the [proposition]
God assents for a that it is true is true. I therefore deny this consequence,
since He assents only for a, since then it is true, but He does not assent for b
that [someone] shall sit in a, but rather for b it is indifferent.
D4041Q1 [64] I say, therefore, that from eternity He has assented that you
should sit for now, but not only that: [He has] also [assented] that you were
indifferent [as to sitting now] for yesterday; therefore from the knowledge
[notitia] of God you should equally conclude indifference just as much as
its opposite, certitude.[Objector:] But has God known from eternity that I
would sit in a? [Chatton:] If you wish to call knowledge assenting that, for a,
you sit, I do not object.
D4041Q1 [65] You will say: Since He assents to the thing signified by the
proposition you sit for a, it seems that He should assent to the proposition
302 chapter 2
just as He [assents to] the thing.I concede that from eternity He has assented
that, for a, the [proposition] Socrates sits is true, but only the assent is present.
But if you were to assume that the [proposition] this one will sit is [thereby]
true, I deny [this]. I make a large distinction between propositions signifying
assent and [those] signifying a thing.
D4041Q1 [66] According to my account, when judgements conflict, the intel-

lect must be regulated by its own experience in the acts of human beings, and
not by that which is hidden from it.
D4041Q1 [67] You deny this: indeed, we dismiss experience and often follow
reason, as is clear from [the example of] the stick in the water, which we would
judge, by experience [alone], to be broken. I say that, in judging the stick to
be broken, the intellect would not be regulated by the experience of its own
acts.
D4041Q1 [68] This is what I want to say: when, considering the motion of
throwing, we [ask ourselves] what moves the stone after it has moved away
from that which first threw it, it is clear that we experience that it moves, and
yet it seems impossible to discover by reason alone what is moving the stone;
and yet, because of the experience that we have about this matter, we know
that it moves.
D4041Q1 [69] You will argue: the stone cannot, in that motion, be moving
itself; nor [is] that which first threw it [moving it];let us posit that it [sc. that
which first threw it] does not exist thenthus it is not moving.I deny the
consequence. What is the cause? I do not know.
D4041Q1 [70] Similarly, what pulls a stone upwards when it is moving [in such
a way that it does] not leave behind a vacuum? Someone relying on reason
alone would say that this was impossible. Since we nevertheless experience
things to be so, we are regulated by our experience against our reason, and we
say that it is moving upwards. What is the cause? I do not know.
D4041Q1 [71] Similarly with regard to insolubles. By experience, you hold that
someone can say the proposition I say what is false, while saying nothing
else.
D4041Q1 [72] But if you want to go by the judgement of reason, it will become
obvious to you that contradictions follow from this. It is the same way with
countless examples in which we experience, with certainty, that it is so, and

nevertheless the human intellect does not suffice to discover the cause of its
possibility. Matters stand thus with the proposed [thesis]. With the firmness
of assent, we experience that it remains in our full power to do this or not do
this. A prophet most firmly assents that you will do this, and nevertheless you
know by experience, and [this is also how] it appears, that the act is in the full
indifference of your power.
D4041Q1 [73] Thus I deny the [following] consequence: God firmly assents,
and a prophet firmly assents, that it will be so; therefore it cannot be false,
since I experience that it can be false. I do not, however, know how or by
what cause [it can be false], but I shall be regulated by my experience. In
the same way, one can deny the [following] consequence: this future-tense
proposition is determinately true; therefore one need not deliberate about it
from now on; but I do not know its cause or [why it is] possible [to deny
this].
D4041Q1 [74] [Matters] often [stand] this way with certain dreams when
someone dreams about monks or certain other people. After such a dream,
[such a person] often feels that something bad has happened to him; he firmly
assents that something unpleasant will happen to him; and nevertheless he
experiences contingency with respect to his own acts.73
D4041Q1 [75] Similarly, if God reveals a prophets own [future] acts to the
prophet, the prophet firmly assents that it will be so, and nevertheless he
73 Chattons remarks in [74] about monks refer to an apparent medieval topos to the effect
that dreams about monks portended ill fortune. For a late thirteenth-century parallel cf.
the De somniis of Boethius of Dacia:
Et cum fumi nigri terrestres ascendant, tunc somniat dormiens se videre monachos nigros,
et quidam fatui expergefacti iurant se in dormiendo vidisse diabolos.
boethius of dacia 1976, p. 388, ll. 199201
And when black and earthly vapors rise up, then the sleeper dreams that he is seeing black
monks [i.e., Benedictines]; and certain foolish ones, having awakened, swear that they
have seen devils while they were asleep.
Tr. wippel, in boethius of dacia 1987, p. 75
While Boethius of Dacia naturalizes the dream, attributing it to black vapors, Chatton
takes it as genuine prophecy; but, he insists, such prophecy does not cancel contingency.
304 chapter 2
experiences that he can freely and indifferently do and not do such [an act], but
he does not know the cause; nor is it inconsistent that [such a] person should
aver that he does not know the secrets of God.
D4041Q1 [76] When therefore it is asked whether [God] has certain knowl-
edge of future contingents, what do you mean by the knowledge of God? If [you
mean] the thing [signified] by the complex God assents, for a, that Socrates
sits, I say that this [thing] is consistent with contingency for b. However, since
God may not be deceived, these two [i.e., Gods assent and its object, namely
that Socrates sit in a] should agree. Consequently, the assent of the prophet is
not [logically] repugnant to the indifference of my power; and, in the same way,
regarding the assent of God, His assenting that it will be so can very well stand
with my being fully indifferent up to the time for which the prophet assents that it
will be so, since both prophet and God assent also to this, namely that I be fully
indifferent before a. [The fact,] however, that [n]either God [n]or prophet may
be deceived does not detract from my freedom, but is consistent with it in this
matter.
D4041Q1 [77] [Objector:] Again, secondly, one can argue against what has
been said [as follows]: if, in all of b, I am capable of not sitting for a, and it
cannot be simultaneously the case both that God assents that I sit for a and
that I do not sit in a, then it is in my power, for all of b, that God should never
assent to my sitting for a. [Chatton:] I concede this conclusion, nor can the
conclusion be avoided; not that I have [power] over God, but this [fact] derives
from the fullness of His perfection. God, therefore, assents firmly that I sit for
a.
D4041Q1 [78] [Objector:] But is that assent true, or not? [Chatton:] I say that
it is not, but you should await that instant, and then it will be true.
D4041Q1 [79] [Objector:] Against: [God] firmly assents; therefore, either that
assent is knowledge, and then it is veridical; or it is error, and then it is false.
[Chatton:] I say that it is neither knowledge nor error, neither true nor false,
but it is that by which [something] is firmly assented to, and when, in a,
the thing is posited, then the assent is true. For although I posit the assent,
nevertheless it is not true before a, because the truth of an assent means
more.
D4041Q1 [80] [Objector:] Again, thirdly, if He assents for a, then the assent
is true for a, and that proposition is true which [asserts that] you sit for a.
[Chatton:] I concede that God has eternally assented that the proposition is
true for a, but from this it does not follow that this complex is now true for a,
since more is implied by this, as has been explained.
D4041Q1 [81] [Objector:] Again, fourthly, if God has assented [to something]
for a, then I want to assent with Him, not to take any further trouble or counsel
about [that thing]. [Chatton:] Assent, by all means; nevertheless, with all of
this you experience yourself to be fully indifferent. Beware, however, lest you
be deceived in your assent.
D4041Q1 [82] [Objector:] Fifth, many authorities are opposed [to this doc-
trine], as it seems. [Chatton:] I SAY that that is because they cannot treat of
these [matters] except by means of propositions; these [latter], however, are
not literally true.
D4041Q1 [83] [Objector:] But what is it that causes firm assent? [Chatton:] It
is just as in cases in which I say assent, for a, that the king is sitting, etc.
D4041Q1 [84] Now, therefore, it is clear how one must respond to the question,
and how predestination must be described. For one must speak consistently
about these matters in accordance with the view one wants to hold. For [adher-
ents of] the first view74 must hold that divine foreknowledge is [the same as]
eternally assenting to future truths, and that predestination is [the same as]
willing blessedness for someone and willing any help for that [blessedness] for
[that person], and reprobation [means] that He wills punishment for someone
for his faults.
D4041Q1 [85] However, according to the second view, God does not assent to
the thing signified by a future-tense proposition, but the foreknowledge of God
is the cognition of God by which, at the time at which the thing is posited, He
knows it to be so, and predestination is the will of God by which, when you do
good, He wills to help you and [indeed] helps you, and by which He gives you
blessedness when you actually receive it.
D4041Q1 [86] But according to the third way, foreknowledge is nothing other
than the firm assent of God both that, for a, you have or shall have blessed-
ness, and that you shall do good deeds. And what is predestination [unless] it
74 I.e., the Day 1 view; see [57].

306 chapter 2
includes willing and knowing, and thus it is assent to your being, for a, finally
good. And what reprobation is [can be gathered from this].
D4041Q1 [87] But it is clear what should be thought according to [these]

diverse views. Nevertheless, those who ultimately would say that God firmly
assents that, for a, you sit, must necessarily say that it is in your power that God
should never have assented to this, and this is very much against [good] sense.
Chattons Response to the Question

D4041Q1 [88] To the question, I say yes, i.e., the mystery of the Incarnation
[is in some way the meriting cause of this persons predestination], because
the Incarnation and Passion of Christ exist; if we posit [the Incarnation and
Passion], reward is given, therefore there is a meriting cause, etc.
D4041Q1 [89] We must speak one way about the predestination of Christ,
another way [about the predestination] of children, another way [about the
predestination] of the Blessed Virgin and others sanctified in the womb, and
other ways about others. Thus, Christ was predestined because God willed
eternally that if the first man should sin, He Himself, without [the necessity
of] semen, would be born as a man who, in the first instant of His being, would
have blessedness. But [was this] because of [His] works? It is certain that it
was not because of any preceding [works]; rather, one can posit, along with
Master [Peter Lombard], who gives the example of the good soldier, etc.,75
it was because of works that would follow.76 It can at least be said that that
personal union was one cause of His blessedness, since the blessedness of
Christ was proportional to that union.
D4041Q1 [90] About baptized children, however, it can be said that the Pas-
sion of Christ is the merit and the cause because of which they are eternally
predestined, because just as there is [a state of affairs] which, having been
posited, [makes it so that] blessedness is given to them in time, so there was,
from eternity, a meriting cause of their predestination.
D4041Q1 [91] And, similarly, about the Blessed Virgin: Just as she needed the
redemption of Christ, so the Passion of Christ was the meriting cause of her
75 ii Timothy 2:310.
76 Peter Lombard, In Epistulam ii ad Timotheum, c. ii [P.L. 192, Opera omnia vol. 2, pp. 367A
369D].
predestination; but not only the Passion of Christ, but indeed her own good
works contributed in some way to her worthiness to be blessed; nor is it an
objection to this that she was sanctified in the womb, since her good works,
elicited by that mediating grace [that had been] poured into her, constituted
her worthiness to be blessed.
D4041Q1 [92] About others, however, the Passion of Christ [operates] as

previously [described], but it [is] not the total cause, but at the same time it
is required that, in the end, such a person be good.
D4041Q1 [93] On reprobation, however, I say that the sin of the first parent
and his own [sins] are the cause of reprobation.
Doubts about the Foregoing

D4041Q1 [94] But against what has been said there remain some doubts. First,
since Scripture says that it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, [but
of God that sheweth mercy],77 therefore [predestination] is in no way because
of works.
D4041Q1 [95] Similarly, the blessed Augustine,78 who had previously said that
[predestination] was because of works, then retracted [his statement], but
minimally, and then finally retracted both [statements], both his first state-
ment and his first retraction; therefore [predestination is in no way because
of works].
D4041Q1 [96] Again, this seems to be the reasoning of Doctor Scotus,79 since
he who wills rationally wills the end for something before those [things] which
are for that end.
D4041Q1 [97] Again, God can reveal to someone that he is predestined, and
He cannot lie, therefore this one cannot be prevented from being blessed.
D4041Q1 [98] Again, [the foregoing] does not preserve common opinion [on
this matter], which says that there is a cause of reprobation, but no cause of
predestination.
77 Romans 9:16.
78 See Lombard, Sententiae i, d. 41, c. 2 [Lombard 1971, pp. 289292].
79 Scotus, Ordinatio i, d. 41, q. u., n. 41 [Vat. vol. 6, p. 332]; Paris Reportatio, d. 41, q. u. n. 60
[r i-a vol. 2, p. 503].
308 chapter 2
D4041Q1 [99] Again, if [God] foreknew from eternity that someone was to be
damned, it was cruel to permit him to be born.
D4041Q1 [100] Again, there is another doubt [as to] how it can be compatible
with justice that God should give more of grace, and therefore of glory, [to some
than to others], when they are entirely equal from a natural [point of view].
D4041Q1 [101] Again, it does not seem that the Blessed Virgin was justified by
her works, since she had no good works before her grace.
Responses to the Doubts

D4041Q1 [102] On the first [doubt] (= [94]), I say that there are many things
in Scripture that support one side, and many [that support] the other. For
[the idea] that predestination is by grace alone is supported by the Apos-
tle, I will have mercy on whom [I will have mercy], and I will have com-
passion [on whom I will have compassion],80 and he gives the example of
the potter, who make[s] one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishon-
our,81 etc. Further, that He gives unequal gifts to those who are naturally
equal is supported somewhere by the saying I will give unto this last, even
as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with my own?82 On
[the side of] works, however, there is the [passage that runs] For whom he
did foreknow, he also did predestinate Moreover whom he did predesti-
nate, them he also justified,83 etc. But how [these passages can] be recon-
ciled, different glossators explain in different ways. One gloss is reasonable,
and I too support it, [namely] that good works are not worthy of blessed-
ness in the absence of grace, since it is established that good works come
to be through the mediation of grace, whereas evil workswithout anything
moresuffice for reprobation. And thus there is not a cause of predestination
in the same way in which there is a cause of reprobation, since, on the one
hand, evil works alone suffice, while, on the other hand, good works do not
suffice, but it is necessary that they come to be through the mediating gifts of
God.
80 Romans 9:15; tibi is a slip for cuius.

81 Romans 9:21.
82 Matthew 20:1415. Strictly speaking, of course, Christ is proposing to give equal gifts
to those who are naturally unequal; but I suppose an economist would view the two
situations as interchangeable.
83 Romans 8:2930, with some ellipsis.
D4041Q1 [103] Alternatively, one could say that predestination includes two
conditions. The first and principal [condition] is due to [the fact that] God,
in general, has willed that all who are finally good be saved, and [all who are]
finally evil be reprobated. And this part of predestination is not from works,
but from mere mercy; for this is the principal part of predestination, i.e., to will
blessedness to whoever is finally good, and this [is to be understood] under the
title of justice, because he is finally good; this is established by mercy alone.
But the other [condition][namely] that God has assented, for a, that this
one should finally be goodthis is due to works. And thus it is because of
your good works that He gives blessedness to you, who will finally be good,
rather than to another, and He foreknew that you, and not the other, would
have blessedness.
D4041Q1 [104] But [matters] are not like this regarding reprobation. For how is
it that that same thing that for you is predestination, for another is reprobation?
Because of evil works. But what is the difference between the two cases?
That there is no general reprobation without works, since He does not will
punishment to anyone unless because of guilt. And in what way are good works
the cause of predestination?I say that [they are the cause of predestination]
as the fulfilment of a condition under which blessedness was promised to
someone.
D4041Q1 [105] On the second doubt (= [95]), due to Augustine, his divergent
statements can be glossed by these two [foregoing] glosses. For if at some
time he understood that natural works, without grace, would be worthy of
blessedness, that statement indeed stood in need of retraction. But [the claim]
that works informed by charity and performed through mediating grace should
be worthy of blessedness did not need to be retracted. Or, put otherwise: why
is blessedness given to one rather than to another? Because this one has better
fulfilled the condition of the law.
D4041Q1 [106] On the argument about the end (= [96]), I concede that first,
i.e., more principally, He wills blessedness to whoever shall finally persevere,
since He wills that all human beings be saved, and [He wills this] not because
of any works; nevertheless, the assent by which He assents that you, for a, have
blessedness, is due to [your] works, since you are such [a person], etc.
D4041Q1 [107] On the next [doubt] (= [97]), I concede that God can cause such
an assent in you or in the mind of any prophet or anyone else. And I concede
that you can act [so that] that assent should be false.
310 chapter 2
D4041Q1 [108] On the next [doubt] (= [98]), it has already been shown that
natural works suffice for damnation; however, in an adult, [they do not suf-
fice] for salvation, if we posit baptism and the Passion of Christ. Similarly,
another reason [can be found] above in the second gloss to the first argu-
ment.84
D4041Q1 [109] On the next [doubt] (= [99]), I say that it does not follow; [it
would only follow on the assumption] that it would not be cruel to permit him
not to exist. But why did He permit him to be born? In order to display His
justice, and not only His justice, but also His mercy [in assigning] a punishment
less [severe] than [that which was] deserved.
D4041Q1 [110] On the next [doubt] (= [100]), I say that the two [i.e., justice and
Gods unequal dispensation of grace] are very well compatible, in accordance
with the [passage] from the Gospel [of Matthew], Is it not lawful for me to
do what I will with my own?85 Therefore it does not at all violate justice
that of [two] people who, from a natural [perspective], are equally good, God
loves one more than the other. Indeed, by the very fact that He does this, it
is just, since Gods willing is the rule of justice, [which] neither is nor can be
regulated.
D4041Q1 [111] On the next [doubt] (= [101]), I say that [the Blessed Virgins]
good works followed the infusion of grace; these good works were [part of] the
meriting cause of her [final] blessedness.

D4041Q1 [112] On the first principal argument (= [1]), I concede that on the
part of Christ, all have equal merit, at least all those who wish to live rightly.
Therefore, [the fact] that this [principle] does not hold for the one as [it holds]
for the other is not due to [any] partiality of Christs action. Indeed, it can
alternatively be said that that [partiality] was valid for all, even for the damned,
for the lessening of their punishment.
D4041Q1 [113] On the second [principal argument] (= [2]), I say that indeed
[predestination] is contingent in its [proper] mode.
84 See [102].
85 Matthew 20:15.

Distinctions 4041. Question 2. Whether It Can be Consistently
Maintained Both That God Wills That a Shall be Necessarily, and
That a Will Nevertheless Happen Contingently
Whether it [can] be consistently [maintained] both that God wills that a shall
be necessarily, and that a will nevertheless happen contingently.
D4041Q2 [1] It seems not, since in that case God could be deceived, since if
He necessarily assents that a shall be, then it is necessarily true that a will be.
But the opposite of this follows from as happening contingently, since from
a will happen contingently it follows that it is contingently true that a will
happen.
D4041Q2 [2] Against. The cognition of God is necessarily infinite; therefore,

[it is] necessarily [cognition] of every contingent.
On the Question
There shall be two articles. In the first, I shall respond to the question; in the
second, I shall raise and dispose of doubts.
Article 1. Response to the Question

D4041Q2 [3] In all these matters I have proceeded tentatively, and I want to
do so here as well. Nevertheless, it seems to me that it could be maintained
that God necessarily assents that a shall be, and yet that a will happen con-
tingently. And in order to explain this, I first suppose that which has been
explained in the Prologue,86 [namely] that an assent need not always be to
a complex, but it can be immediately to the thing signified by the complex;
and thus, in order that God assent to the thing signified by the [proposi-
tion] a is, it is not necessary that He assent to the proposition, but to the
thing. It is certain that there are no propositions in the mind of God, nor
does He assent to our propositions, therefore [He assents to the correspond-
ing things].
D4041Q2 [4] Secondly, I suppose that that same thing which is signified by
the [proposition] Socrates sits is signified by the [proposition] Socrates does
not sit; otherwise they would not be contradictories. And therefore it has
86 See rel prol., q. 1, a. 1, pp. 1845.

312 chapter 2
been said in the first question of this matter87 that that which is signified by
the [proposition] Socrates sits is necessarily true by the truth of the thing.
However, it is not necessary to prove that it will contingently happen that you sit
in a, since most certain experience teaches this. It suffices, therefore, to devote
ourselves to the task of investigating whether God necessarily assents to the
thing signified by the [proposition] Socrates sits in a.
D4041Q2 [5] And I prove this first in this way. It is impossible that God should
not assent to the thing signified by a true complex when the complex is true;
nor is it in your or anyone elses power, when you sit, that God should not
assent to your sitting; otherwise He would not know when any things are true.
Similarly, when the complex you are not sitting is true, God assents to the
thing signified by it, and [He does so] necessarily, in such a way that, if you are
not sitting, no [cause] can prevent God from assenting to your not sitting. But
it is necessary, and cannot be impeded by any cause whatsoever, that one of
the two [complexes], just as it is formed, should be true, and similarly that the
thing signified by these present-tense contradictories be true, i.e., you sit in
a, you do not sit in a. Therefore, no cause can prevent God from necessarily
assenting to the thing signified by those [contradictories], since the same thing
is signified by each of them.
D4041Q2 [6] Again, it does not argue less for change in God [to say] that, at
first, He did not assent to some thing, and afterwards assented, than [it does to
say] that at first He did not cognize, and afterwards cognized. But if no cause
can be effective if it implies change and imperfection in God, then the first
[kind] cannot.
D4041Q2 [7] Again, every infinite assent [has as its object] any true thing with
simple necessity; but a thing signified by contradictories is necessarily true,
since for a thing to be true means to be signified by a true complex and to
be such as can be signified by a true complex, if one is formed; but the thing
signified by the [proposition] you sit in a is of this kind, since it is signified
by contradictories of which, necessarily, one is [true], and thus the assent
to that thing is necessarily true, and this [is so] either by the truth of being
conformed to the affirmative complex or of being conformed to the negative
complex, through which [complexes] precisely the same thing is signified,
since otherwise they would not be contradictories.
87 See rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1 [60][65].

D4041Q2 [8] Again, every perfection is applicable to God with simple neces-
sity; but to assent to any true thing is simply perfection; therefore [God neces-
sarily assents to true things].
D4041Q2 [9] Again, that assent by which each of [two] contradictories would
be assented to simultaneously, if both were true simultaneously, in such a way
that it would be equivalent to two assents, of which one [pertains] determi-
nately only to one of the contradictories and the other to the other, is neces-
sarily true, just as, necessarily, one of those assents would be true, and I speak
of the assent which conforms to the present-tense proposition; but the divine
assent is like this; therefore, etc.
D4041Q2 [10] Again, otherwise it would be in your power that God now
assents to that to which He has assented from eternity, which is simply against
common sense.
D4041Q2 [11] Again, otherwise it would be in your power that the number of
the saved be greater than that which God has known from eternity, since it is
in the power of him to be saved of whom God has assented from eternity that
he be damned.
D4041Q2 [12] Again, otherwise it would be in someones power newly to

predestine himself; let us speak about someone of whom God has assented that
he shall be damned for a.
Chattons Solution
D4041Q2 [13] Those who would hold to the conclusion that has here been pre-
sented [in an] investigative [way] would say that a proposition about a future
contingent is in no way true: for neither is there a determination of the cause,
nor is there a thing posited for which it would have to be truewe speak of
where there is complete indifferencebut the thing corresponding to contra-
dictory present-tense propositions is true, because it is necessarily signified by
a true [proposition], but just as has been supposed, God does not assent to
a thing through the mediating assent to a proposition, but immediately to the
thing; therefore it can be said that God necessarily assents to the thing signified
by the proposition you sit for a. But how then is there contingency? Because
it is in your power not to sit in a.
D4041Q2 [14] But you will say: therefore let it be posited in being that you
should not sit in a; then God is deceived.I say that this does not follow, since
314 chapter 2
the same thing is signified by contradictory complexes, and God assents to this
thing. However, I freely concede that it is in your power that Gods assent should
be true by the truth conforming to the complex you sit, but [it is] not [in
your power to determine whether or not Gods assent will be] true by the truth
conforming to this complex or its contradictory.
D4041Q2 [15] What therefore is [meant] here [by] contingent, and what is
not? I say that [contingency is] this: that that unique necessarily true assent
is conformable to this complex, since now it can be conformable to it and
can be true by affirmative truth, while it was not before [so conformable], not
because of some change in assent, but because the thing is posited now, and
before it was not. Or, at least, this is what is [meant] here [by] contingent:
that it is in your power that that assent, which has been true and necessary from
eternity, be true by a truth conformable to this complex, or to its contradictory,
for a.
D4041Q2 [16] Against: From God necessarily assents that a shall be there fol-
lows a will be. The antecedent is necessary, and the consequence is necessary,
therefore the consequent is necessary; therefore it is not in my power, etc.
I say that the [following] consequence is not valid: God necessarily assents
to this thing signified by the [proposition] a, therefore a necessarily will be,
since although He necessarily assents to the thing signified by the [proposi-
tion] Socrates sits, nevertheless this thing is indifferently true, whether it be
signified by this complex or by its contradictory. Hence, it is consistent with
this assent that the [proposition] should be false, since the truth of the assent
is equally compatible with the contradictory of this complex being true. Hence,
if this complex is true, then the assent is true by affirmative truth; if not, then
it is true by negative truth.
Article 2. Doubts about the Foregoing

The second article will consider doubts about the foregoing.
D4041Q2 [17] First, God assents not only to things, but to complexes. So He
assents by different [assents] that now a complex is true, and that formerly it
was not.
D4041Q2 [18] Again, by the same reasoning by which you hold that the divine
assent is always true, you must say that it is always false, since He assents
to a thing which is always signified by a false complex, since one of [two]
contradictory [complexes] is always false.
D4041Q2 [19] Again, by the same reasoning our assent would always be true
with respect to the thing signified by a present-tense proposition, since we
immediately assent to the thing, and the thing to which we assent is always
signified by a true proposition, since one of two contradictory [propositions]
is always true.
D4041Q2 [20] Again, then the assent about the future would be true, since the
thing which is assented to is signified by contradictories.
D4041Q2 [21] Again, you cannot explain how Gods foreknowledge is compat-
ible with the contingency of things.
D4041Q2 [22] Again, you cannot explain how predestination is compatible

with contingency.
D4041Q2 [23] Again, you cannot explain providence, because, as He necessar-

ily assents, He will necessarily cause those things He views for [the purpose of]
governing things. And indeed, how does He foresee our actions, as they depend
on our freedom, and it is [in] our power that His assent should not be true with
affirmative truth, etc.?
D4041Q2 [24] Again, you cannot explain prophecy, since if the prophet has
certainty, it would not remain in my power to do the opposite.
D4041Q2 [25] Again, if it has been posited that in these matters it is always the
things themselves that are assented to, you cannot explain prognostications
nor even predictions in dreams, where there is nevertheless a firm assent,
sometimes, of a good event, sometimes of a bad one.
Response to Doubts
D4041Q2 [26] On the first [doubt] (= [17]). This is the main positive [objec-
tion]. Therefore those who say that the intellect assents to complexes only for
things must nevertheless speak otherwise than I. But let us assume that both
are immediately assented to, i.e., the thing and the complex, and not to the
thing alone by the mediation of the complex. Let us accept the [proposition]
Socrates sits. God assents to this complex eternally, and [He does] this by
an assent that truly and necessary assents to this [complex], since just as the
first contradictories, i.e., Socrates sits, Socrates does not sit, signify the same
thing, not only is that thing necessarily true by the truth of the thing, but, addi-
tionally, the assent is necessarily true by affirmative or negative truth, since [it
316 chapter 2
is an assent] to [propositions] signifying the same external thing by an affir-

mative or negative conforming complex. Matters stand thus only with assent
of God, which corresponds to the [following] contradictories that signify the
same thing in the soul: this is true: Socrates sits, this is not true [: Socrates
sits]. And thus I concede that it is impossible that God should not assent to
that thing in His soul by an affirmative or negative assent, just as has been said
previously about the assent to a thing outside the soul.88 And I concede further
that it is in my power that the assent of God should be affirmative or negative,
since, with no alteration in Him, it is equivalent at one moment to an affirma-
tive assent, [and] at another to a negative [assent], when the thing is otherwise
disposed.
D4041Q2 [27] On the second [doubt] (= [18]), I deny the consequence, since
what [does it mean] for an assent to be false or a proposition to be false? That
it not be true. It is now impossible that a thing should not be just as is signified
by one of [two] contradictories.
D4041Q2 [28] On the next [doubt] (= [19]), I deny the consequence, since
assent in us is caused by a mediating complex, and is varied and numbered just
as are complexes; and therefore the same assent does not apply equally to [the
two] contradictories. But the divine intellect applies equally to contradictories,
as has been said.
D4041Q2 [29] On the next [doubt] (= [20]), I say that a future-tense proposi-
tion is not determinately true; it signifies the same thing as [does] the present-
tense [proposition], since the [proposition] Socrates will sit equates with the
[proposition] Socrates is to sit, and this [latter], since here it indicates the
present tense, denotes that it is now true, which is not true, as (a) nothing is
[now] posited because of whose positing it is true, and (b) there is no determi-
nation of any cause, since we are speaking of fully indifferent [propositions].
D4041Q2 [30] On the next [doubt] (= [21]). It is not valid to say that because
[Gods knowledge] presupposes a thing, it is [therefore] certain that it precedes
the thing, on the grounds that [Gods knowledge] has been from eternity, and
the thing has not. But I say that there is contingency, not because it is in your
power that [God] should cognize or not cognize, but because it is in your power
that the thing be posited or not be posited; and if it is posited, then [Gods]
88 See [3][5].
assent applies to the affirmative complex, or is compatible with it; if not, [then
Gods assent applies] to the negative [complex]; in such a way, however, that the
assent is always the same, and to the same thing, whether the thing be posited
or not.
D4041Q2 [31] On the sixth [doubt] (= [22]), it is clear by the same [argu-
ment]89 and simultaneously by the description of predestination.
D4041Q2 [32] On the next [doubt] (= [23]), I say that divine providence does
not remove our freedom of will. The greater difficulty, however, is how He
has providence of chance effects and of sins and of our actions. Regarding
our actions, I say that He conditionally possesses ordained providence on
[the subject of] what [kind of] reward or punishment [they shall receive]. On
chance [effects], however, I say that they are ordained in respect of some cause.
Sins will be dealt with in [Book] ii.90
D4041Q2 [33] On the next [doubt] (= [24]), I concede that it is in my power

that a prophecy be false, if [the prophet] assents absolutely that I shall do this.
For I can do the opposite, which, if I do it, [would make] his assent to have
been false. And the reason is that his assent is such that it can be caused by a
mediating complex. But matters do not stand thus with God, but He assents by
the same assent [itself] [i.e., without a mediating complex], whether it is one
part or the other part of a contradiction that is true.
D4041Q2 [34] The same [argument] applies to the ninth and tenth [doubts]
(= [25]).

D4041Q2 [35] On the first principal argument (= [1]), [which claims that]
that which God knows [novit] to happen necessarily, happens necessarily, since
otherwise He would be deceived, I say that from He necessarily assents to the
thing it does not follow that [the thing] will necessarily happen; and this [is]
because He would equally assent if it were to not take place, since that thing
is necessarily true, since it is signified by contradictories, of which one must
necessarily be true.
89 I.e., by [30] immediately preceding.

90 Chatton returns to this question in rss ii, dd. 56, q. un., [8][15] and d. 7, q. 1 [23][27];
see commentary.
318 chapter 2
D4041Q2 [36] On the second [argument],91 when it is said that the thing
is contingent for instant a, I reduce [this] to a present-tense proposition,
therefore God knows [the thing] contingently. If you want to understand
that He assents contingently to that thing, I deny [this], for the reason already
given.
Quodlibet:92

Contingent
Whether any creature could be apprised of a future contingent.
Q27 [1] That it could not [can be argued on the grounds] that [such knowl-
edge] would seem to be able to come from God. But it cannot, since if it is
posited that God has made you believe that a will be, then a will be. The
antecedent is necessary in the same [sense] as the [proposition] God made
the world, and the consequence is necessary because the opposite of the con-
sequent conflicts with the antecedent. Otherwise, it would be possible both
that God made you believe that a would be and that nevertheless a would
not have been going-to-be, and thus it would be possible that He has deceived
you.
Q27 [2] The opposite [case, i.e., that a creature could indeed be so apprised, can
be made by reference] to the prophets.
91 The reference might be to the last sentence of [1]; see commentary on [36].
92 My translation of qq. 2729 of Chattons Quodlibet is based on the Latin text kindly sent
to me by Rondo Keele in August 2010, an excerpt from Etzkorn and Keeles forthcoming
edition of Paris BN MS lat. 15805, ff. 54ra60rb. I use here the same conventions adopted
for rss i, dd. 3841: The use of bold indicates titles and headers of sections provided
by Etzkorn and Keele (e.g., Article 1. Two doubts, etc.). Square brackets indicate textual
interpolations on my part (e.g., The antecedent is necessary in the same [sense] as the
[proposition] God made the world, ). I have gratefully taken over Keele and Etzkorns
cross-references within the text as well as some references to other texts, with some
occasional silent emendations.
Article 1. Two Doubts

Regarding the first article, two doubts must be considered.
Q27 [3] The first concerns the proposition in the mind which signifies some-
thing [which is a] future contingent. Is it in the power of free choice that that
proposition should never have signified that this would be? etc.93
Q27 [4] The second doubt concerns the [question] whether it is in the power
of any free agent to make sayings and oaths and utterances of God false, and to
[bring it about] that God deceives human beings and has made them believe
that some things would come about which will not happen and which He
Himself knows will not be.
Response to Doubts
Q27 [5] On the first of these doubts, the opinion is that that it is so [sc. it is
in the power of free choice that that proposition should never have signified
that this would be]. [Otherwise,] it would be argued thus: Christ said that
Peter was going to deny Him; therefore Peter was going to deny Him. The
antecedent was necessary during the time between [Christs prediction and
Peters denial], since it was a true past-tense proposition, and the consequence
was necessary because, otherwise, it would have been possible for the opposite
of the consequent to be true with the antecedent, and thus it would have
been possible that Christ said something true which would not have been true,
which is absurd.94 Therefore it follows that the consequent was necessary and
thus that Peter would not have sinned by denying [Christ] afterwards.
The First Opinion. The Consequence is Contingent

Q27 [6] Therefore these [people] say95 that the consequence is contingent, and
that the opposite of the consequent is consistent with the antecedent, i.e., that
Christ would have said that proposition and nevertheless that Peter would not
have been [in a state of] being going to deny Christ. Nor does it follow from
this that the [proposition] Christ spoke a falsehood would be possible. For,
conceding that it was necessary that Christ said that proposition, nevertheless
93 This is the doctrine I call the Contingency of Signification (COS). See commentary for
discussion. A good (though post-Chattonian) exposition of this doctrine can be found in
Thomas Buckingham, Determinatio de contingentia futurorum, fourteenth and fifteenth
conclusions, in Genest 1992: 284290.
94 Reading inconveniens for Etzkorn and Keeles inveniens.
95 Reading dicunt for Etzkorn and Keeles dicant.
320 chapter 2
that proposition [was said] contingently, both in voice and in mind; it signified,
therefore, that it was in Peters power that it [the proposition] should never
have meant that Peter would deny Christ, but that it should signify the opposite
of this, since it was in Peters power not to deny Christ. And thus it is clear that it
does not follow that the [proposition] Christ spoke a falsehood was possible.
Against the First Opinion

Q27 [7] Against this opinion I argue first thus: this response entails many
absurdities, e.g., that it would be possible that the article of faith96 God is
three and one should be false, since it is possible that the concepts in the mind
from which this proposition is composed diverge from the [things] they signify,
and signify the same [things] as do the terms of the proposition a man is an
ass. Indeed, it follows that any of the articles of faith in the mind can be a
proposition that was never possible, and thus it follows that faith, with respect
to each of the articles, can be heresy, and that first principles can be false, and
that knowledge can be error, and that love can be idolatry, and that there is no
possible certainty about anything that cannot also be asserted about its own
contradictory, etc.
Q27 [8] Again, if Socrates apprehends the stone and if Plato then forms any
kind of very similar apprehension which is nevertheless not of the stone, just
as you claim is possible, then the indefinite proposition a human being appre-
hends the stone is true for Socrates and not [true] for Plato. But [I respond:]
the passing of time is not the cause because of which [this proposition] is not
true for Plato, since they are [ex hypothesi] simultaneous; nor is local move-
ment the cause, nor the generation or corruption of any thing belonging to the
one but not to the other. For I suppose that on both sides things are very similar
in every respect; therefore no reason, it seems, may be assigned for which that
proposition is not [also] true for Plato. And it is posited that [the proposition]
is not true for Plato; therefore it is posited thus without any possible reason.
Q27 [9] If it is said that Platos apprehension does not represent the stone in just
the same way as Socrates apprehension represents the stone, and therefore it
is not similar;
Q27 [10] Against: I argue just as before. The indefinite proposition a human
beings apprehension represents the stone is true for the apprehension of
96 Reading articulus fidei for Etzkorn and Keeles articulus fori.

Socrates and not for the apprehension of Plato; therefore, some reason [for the
difference in truth-value] must be adduced; etc.
Q27 [11] Again, it seems that this [reason] could be accessible only to divine
knowledge, since, from the infinity [of Gods greatness], it comports with [such
knowledge] that it exists distinctly with respect to everything cognizable, etc.
Q27 [12] Again, the term Socrates signifies just as essentially in the proposi-
tion Socrates will run tomorrow as in the [proposition] Socrates is Socrates.
But it is not in any human beings power that the term Socrates should
diverge from its referent in the latter; therefore not in the former. And I rea-
son in the same way about the term run and about the term tomorrow.
Therefore it is in nobodys power that the mental proposition Socrates will
run tomorrow should diverge from its referent either in the latter or in the
former. And even on this assumption, it is still not in anybodys power that
[the proposition] should never have signified these things, since it no more
depends on the future that the proposition Socrates will run tomorrow has
signified that Socrates will run tomorrow, than that the [proposition] Socrates
will exist tomorrow has signified that Socrates will be Socrates tomorrow.
But the latter is not in [anyones] power, therefore also not in the proposed
case.
Q27 [13] It may perhaps be said that the proposition in question cannot diverge
from its referent, but that knowledge in the Word can [so diverge].
Q27 [14] Against: [Suppose that] he who looks in the Word forms a proposition
conforming to that which he sees in the Word, and that some argument involves
this proposition, or he informs a prophet about the things that have been seen
in the Word. It must be remarked that, although a name can diverge from
its secondary and accidental referent, as, e.g., white, nevertheless it cannot
[diverge] from its primary and per se referent, etc.
Q27 [15] Again, given that a term can diverge from its referent, even in this
way the difficulty of the argument is not evaded. Given that the proposition
which was in Christs mind could have remained [the same] while not sig-
nifying that Peter was going to deny Christ; nevertheless, it was then neces-
sary that that proposition at one time signified that Peter was going to deny
Christ, and Christ then asserted it. Therefore Christ asserted that Peter would
at some time deny Him; and then the argument is as [explained] before,
etc.
322 chapter 2
The Second Opinion. From the Knowledge of Things in the Word

Q27 [16] The second opinion is [that] of others who say that, although it is
not possible for all knowledge that it diverge from its referent, nevertheless
this is possible for the knowledge of things in the Word, which [knowledge]
is a created act informing the soul, because of which the soul sees the divine
essence and the divine wisdom and those [things] which are reflected in it.
For that created vision does not represent anything as going-to-be unless it
represents it as going-to-be in the divine essence. If, therefore, it is in my power
now that [the fact that] a [is] going-to-be will never have been represented in
the divine essence, it follows that, now, it is in my power that [the fact that] a
[is] going-to-be will never have been represented [at all].97
Against the Second Opinion

Q27 [17] But the same objection can be raised against this as against the
previous opinion. First, if this [assumption] be granted, then that vision would
be just as essentially true as the divine essence, with the result that it would
be just as impossible that that vision should represent something as existing
which was not, or being going-to-be which was not going-to-be, as [it would
be for] the divine essence [to represent things falsely in this way]. For, since
the divine essence is essentially the truth, the [following] consequence is
necessary: the divine essence represents a as going-to-be, therefore a will be.
If, therefore, the [consequence] this created vision represents a as going-to-
be, therefore a will be is equally necessary, then it must be posited (at least
proportionally) that the truth [of this consequence] exists so essentially that
in no vision by which a creature sees God can anything appear going-to-be
which will not be. This is false, since nothing can be denied of the power of God
in which there appears no contradiction. But no contradiction appears unless
there is represented by some creature, in some vision by which the creature
sees God, something as being which is not and as being going-to-be which will
not be.
Q27 [18] Again, if this [assumption] be granted, it follows that the vision would
contingently represent those [things] that it represents. Indeed, [it follows]
that it would be in my power that those [things] that were represented in that
vision were never, for a thousand years, represented in it. But this is false, [as it
contradicts accepted doctrines regarding] abstractive and sensitive vision, etc.
97 Reading the second occurrence of in essentia divina as dittography; see commentary.

Q27 [19] Again, [with regards to] representing a as going-to-be: either [such
representation] belongs to the vision of God immediately through [that
visions] own nature, with a necessity equal [to that in which] it belongs to
the nature of sensitive vision to represent whiteness in such-and-such a place,
or it does not. If [the necessity is] thus [equal], then the proposed [thesis
is confirmed], since, notwithstanding the fact that this vision would not be
caused (nor, in consequence, represent [its object]) unless there were, [in fact],
whiteness in such-and-such a place, nevertheless, because such representation
belongs to [sensitive vision] from the necessity of [that visions] own nature, it
follows that, after [whiteness] is [no longer present], it necessarily represents
whiteness as being in that place, whether or not whiteness is in that place. For
otherwise God could not cause in us a sensitive vision that would represent
whiteness as being in that place when whiteness was not in that place, and
in consequence, according to [the thesis here] proposed, God would be more
powerful when whiteness was in that place than when it was not in that place,
etc.
Q27 [20] If, however, it be said that it less necessarily belongs to His nature
that it represents a as going-to-be than it belongs to sensitive vision that it
represents whiteness as being in such-and-such a place, then the soul, seeing in
[divine vision] a as going-to-be, is made less certain that a will be than someone
seeing whiteness in such-and-such a place is made certain by sensitive vision
that whiteness is in that place, which is false. For then, just as deceptions can
destroy sensitive certainty, so [deceptions can more easily destroy certainty
which comes from the divine vision, which is absurd and impious].
Q27 [21] Again, the vision by which the divine essence is seen, if it represents a
as going-to-be, is not any less necessary in its representation of a as being going-
to-be than that willing by which the divine essence is loved is necessary with
respect to a being going-to-be, if [the divine essence] should will through it
[i.e., through that willing] that a shall be. But that willing by which the essence
is loved, and by which the blessed one wills that a shall be, is so necessary
with respect to a being going-to-be that it is not in the power of any creature
that [that willing] should not be with respect to a being going-to-be, since
otherwise it would be in the power of a creature that that willing should lack its
appropriate object, at least [its appropriate] secondary [object], and it would
be a disordered act with regards to its secondary object, therefore etc.
Q27 [22] Again, God cannot arrange that there was such a vision, and that
a is going-to-be, and that nevertheless the unrepresented vision should have
324 chapter 2
been going-to-be. Therefore this vision necessarily represented a as having

been going-to-be. The consequence is clear. I prove the antecedent: since, if the
affirmative proposition this vision represented a as having been going-to-be
has been demonstrated, then God cannot arrange [matters so that] the things
signified by that proposition were actual, with regards to all the conditions
according to which the proposition signified that they were actual, and that
nevertheless the formulated proposition should not have been true. For [the
circumstances just described] amount to the formulated proposition being
true in its signifying. Therefore He cannot arrange matters so that that vision
took place, and that a should have been going-to-be, without its being true to
say that vision represented a as having been going-to-be, since the proposition
this vision represented a as having been going-to-be signified just that this
vision took place and that a was going-to-be.
Q27 [23] Again, if this vision does not determine for itself, by natural neces-
sity, that it represents a as going-to-be, then by the same reasoning it does
not determine for itself that it represents a as not going-to-be, and in con-
sequence God can arrange for this vision to have existed, and [can arrange]
that it has not represented a as going-to-be, whether or not a is going-to-be.
This is false, since the proposition this vision represented a as going-to-be
signifies that that vision took place and that a was going-to-be. Therefore if
[matters] stand thus in fact, all other things being equal, then it is true to say
this vision represented a as going-to-be, at least if [the vision] informed the
intellect.
Third Opinion. The Vision in the Word is an Uncreated Vision

Q27 [24] The third opinion is that of others who say that the vision by which an
angel or a soul sees creatures in the Word is nothing other than that uncreated
vision which is God. Therefore, just as God has eternally seen, through that
vision which is his essence, that a will be, although it is still in my power that
He should never have seen that a will be, so it is possible that an angel or a soul
should have seen, through that uncreated vision, a as going-to-be, and that it
is still in my power that [the aforementioned angel or soul] should never have
seen a as going-to-be.
Against the Third Opinion

Q27 [25] Against: if this [assumption] be granted, it follows that any blessed
nature would be unified hypostatically with deity, since it would be unified
by such a union with the divine nature. The knowledge by which that blessed
creature would cognize would be thus truly uncreated, just as the soul of Christ
is unified with the divine nature, [a unification because of] which it is true to
say that this man cognizes with an uncreated cognition.
Q27 [26] Again, secondly: uncreated knowledge is deity, and in consequence it

is the Son and the Holy Spirit. If, therefore, the beatific union is such that the
blessed one, because of this union, cognizes with uncreated cognition, then
that union is such that that deity, through the union, is just as truly the deity
of that blessed creature as [that] deity is the deity of the humanity of Christ,
etc., and the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are blessed in this way, and
[each] person [of the Trinity], by the personhood of [each] of them, just as the
humanity of Christ, etc.
Q27 [27] Again, thirdly I argue thus: if this [assumption] be granted, it fol-
lows that all blessed ones would be equally blessed, etc., which is false, since
to see with such a vision and to enjoy the fruits of such an enjoyment, i.e.,
an uncreated [vision and enjoyment], do not fall into the category of merits,
though they exceed, beyond all proportion, any reward by merit of propor-
tion.
Q27 [28] Again, fourthly it follows that every beatific vision would be a hypo-
static union. For I ask: what conditions are required for the [following proposi-
tion] to be true: William sees by an uncreated vision? Either it is required
that the divine nature be unified with Williams nature hypostatically, and
the proposed [undesirable] thesis is secured; or a hypostatic union is not
required for this, and if not, then the other presences by which God is present
to a rational creature by such a hypostatic union suffice for the truth of such
a proposition. In consequence, when, according to [those presences], He is
present to every rational creature who is pleasing to Him, i.e., according to
every presence and power and gratuitous gift of the love of God, it follows
that He is present to every rational creature who is pleasing to Him by a pres-
ence sufficient to verify the proposition this one loves God with an uncreated
love.
Q27 [29] Again, if [matters stand] thus, then by the same argument uncreated
love could be the love by which the wayfarer would love things other than
[God] Himself, and in consequence uncreated love could be the worthiness
and the unworthiness of the wayfarer, and [uncreated love could be] the sin
of idolatry and avarice, and similarly with other [sins]. Again, by the same
argument, uncreated love could be the love by which the damned one would
know or will, and thus [it] would be the height of misery.
326 chapter 2
Response to the First Doubt

Q27 [30] Therefore we respond to that doubt (= [3]) by saying that when a
proposition which at one time signified that a would be has been formed in the
mind, it is not in the power of free choice that [that proposition] never signified
that a would be, since [that proposition] is composed of concepts that always
represent uniformly, whether or not a is going-to-be, although it is in the power
of free choice that a should never have been going-to-be, etc.
Second Doubt
The second doubt (= [4]) is, etc.
Q27 [31] And the opinion of many is that yes, [it is in the power of free agents
to falsify Gods statements and to make Him deceive humans,] since if God
has made someone believe that a would be, it would be argued [for reductio]
thus: God made this one believe that a would be, therefore a will be. The
antecedent is necessary and [so is] the consequence, therefore [the consequent
is necessary, which destroys freedom of choice].
Q27 [32] These people would [therefore] say that the consequence is not
necessary but contingent. And therefore the opposite of the consequent is
compatible with the antecedent, and thus God could deceive humans and
make them believe some things to be true which nevertheless are false.
Against this Opinion

Q27 [33] Against. First, because this opinion must concede that it is in the
power of any human to make sacred Scripture inauthentic, and to make [it so]
that God is not to be believed, and that any human can deceive God and all of
His saints.
Q27 [34] The first [point] is clear, since if we posit that possibility98 as actual,
then Sacred Scripture would not be authentic in any way, since if it were
[authentic], it would be so in virtue of this [very] consequence: God asserted
this, therefore it is true. But if we posit the possibility as actual, this conse-
quence is not valid, therefore [Sacred Scripture is not authentic].
Q27 [35] Secondly, if we posit this possibility, it follows that God is in no way to
be believed, since if [He is to be believed], then He is believed either because of
98 That is, the possibility that a will not be, or that a will be is false (see [31]).
the authority of the speaker, or only for some other [reason]. The first is not [the
case], since if we posit [the aforementioned possibility], He Himself would be
found to be false, hence He would not be an appropriate authority. If the second
is granted, then it is compatible with that [assumption] that God is in no way
to be believed, nor [is] any proposition [to be believed merely] on the grounds
that it is said by God.
Q27 [36] These two arguments are confirmed. If any part of Scripture were
found to be false, no part of Scripture would be authentic, etc., since we would
not know when it spoke the truth and when falsehood, etc.
Q27 [37] Third, I prove that if [these matters] are so, then not only is it possible
by Gods absolute power, but also by the power of the creature, such that it is in
the power of any human to make [it so] that Sacred Scripture is not authentic
and even that God is in no way to be believed, since in the above-mentioned
time99 it was in Peters power that the saying of Christ should be false, when
Christ said it. Therefore it was in Peters power that Christ should have asserted
[something] false.
Q27 [38] If it be said that it is not absurd that this should be fitting for God
through [His] human nature,Against: I prove that a man could make it so
that this would be fitting for God through [His] divine nature, since the Deity
has asserted to you that you will sit tomorrow. It is still in your power that this
assertion should have been false at the time of its assertion, and it is not now
in anyones power that this assertion not have been [in the] past, therefore it is
in your power that He asserted [something] false to you.
Q27 [39] Fourth, I prove that it is in the power of a human to deceive the
Deity and to make Him err in His own knowledge, since [the following con-
sequence] is valid: God made me believe that Peter would sin, etc., there-
fore Peter was to sin. The antecedent of this consequence is simply necessary,
according to the response, since it is true about the past. And the consequence
is contingent, according to them. Then I argue: it was in Peters power that
the antecedent should have been true without the consequent, therefore it
was in Peters power that God should have been deceived in His own knowl-
edge.
99 I.e., the time between Christs prediction and Peters threefold denial.
328 chapter 2
Q27 [40] Again, [the following consequence] is [valid]: the divine cognition
represented me as going-to-sit-tomorrow, therefore I shall sit tomorrow. The
antecedent, according to them, is simply necessary, since [it is] a past-tense
truth and it is in my power that the opposite of the consequent should be [the
case along] with the antecedent, and in consequence it is in my power that the
divine cognition should represent a falsehood to be the truth.
Q27 [41] Again, according to their response, these two propositions are equally
necessary: the divine cognition represented me as going-to-sit tomorrow
and the cognition which He created in me represented me as going-to-sit
tomorrow. But the second is simply necessary; therefore [so is] the first. That
they are equally necessary is clear: since they are equally true in the past
tense. For if the latter were now necessary and the former were contingent,
then the latter could be true if the former were assumed to be false, and in
consequence it would be possible for God to have lied, i.e., to have asserted
to me, against His own knowledge, the opposite of that which His cognition
represented.
Q27 [42] Again, I prove that, when the truth of a past-tense proposition nec-
essarily depends on a future contingent, that past-tense proposition must be
posited to be contingently and not necessarily true, since I desire that it should
be maintained that the [following] proposition is necessary: The divine cog-
nition represented Peter as going-to-sin, therefore Peter was going to sin. For
if this consequence were not necessary, the opposite of the consequent could
be compatible with the antecedent, and thus God would be deceived. I ask
therefore whether or not it is compatible with [the necessity of this conse-
quence] that the divine cognition represents Peter as [contingently] going-to-
sin. If [the two are] not [compatible], then by positing something possible,
[namely Peters future and contingent sin,] you concede [something] impos-
sible, namely that God does not cognize future contingents. If [the two] are
[compatible], then let [the possibility of divine cognition of Peters future and
contingent sin] be posited in being. Then I argue: if the divine cognition rep-
resented Peter as going-to-sin, then Peter will sin; but the divine cognition
represented Peter as going-to-sin; therefore Peter was going to sin. The conclu-
sion was contingent before Peters denial; therefore so was one of the premises.
It cannot be the major [premise that was contingent], by hypothesis; thus [it
must be] the minor [premise]: [the divine] cognition [itself] was contingent.
And this is clear, since unless [Peter] had done this contingently there would
be no sin there.
Q27 [43] Again, it was not in Peters power that the antecedent be true without
the consequent, and it was in his power that the consequent not be true,
therefore [it was] similarly [in his power] that the antecedent not be true.
Q27 [44] Again, from the aforementioned response it seems to follow that God
could cause many heresies in the mind of a human, and could make him believe
that God must be hated because of Himself, etc., and in consequence will cause
an invincible conviction about these things, by right reason,100 in a rational
creature and in any creature at all, such that He should not be held to be the
God of the universe, and He could arrange that hatred toward Himself because
of Himself be good for the one having such an invincible conviction, and that
love toward Himself because of Himself be bad for the one having an invincible
conviction conforming to His will.
Q27 [45] Again, the Apostle proves the opposite of this in Hebrews 6 at the end
of the chapter.101 For there, he removes an unspoken objection [regarding the
question] why God wanted to swear by Himself to Abraham that, Himself doing
the blessing, He would bless him and multiply his seed. The Apostle removes
this unspoken objection, saying that God swore by Himself because He did not
have anyone greater than Himself by whom to swear. Why then did He swear?
[Paul] says that, first, [God swore by Himself] in order to destroy quarrelsome
tendencies, since an oath destroys all contentiousness; secondly, in order to
show the immovability of His promise; third, so that by means of these two
together, i.e., His promise and His oath, He would strengthen our consoling
hope concerning the future; fourth, in order to show that He could not lie. And
that is why the text is this [way]; Gods oath represents an end to all controversy,
confirming [His promise]; seek [in the text].
Q27 [46] Again, Augustine, 83 Quaestionum, Question 14,102 proves that the
body of Christ was true and not fraudulent because otherwise it would have
deceived people, and in consequence He would not have been the truth.
100 Reading recta ratione for Etzkorn and Keeles et qua ratione; cf. rss i, d. 1, q. 3 [38], ll. 1617;
cf. also Ockhams references to recta ratio in similar contexts, e.g., Reportatio iv, q. 16 [OTh
vol. 7, p. 350, l. 23] and De connexione virtutum q. 7 a. 2 [OTh vol. 8, p. 338, ll. 203, 205].
101 Hebrews 6: 1320.
102 Augustine, De diversis quaestionibus, q. 14, p. 20: Si fantasma fuit corpus Christi, fefellit
Christus; et si fallit, veritas non est; est autem veritas Christus. Non igitur fantasma fuit
corpus eius.
330 chapter 2
Q27 [47] Again, if God instructed that spirit about whom it is said in the Book
of Kings that he was a liar,103 then He consented in sin, according to Augustine,
Enchiridion, Chapter 17, and i De doctrina christiana, Chapter 41.104
Q27 [48] Again, [according to the doctrine here criticized,] this [statement]
is contingent: God mendaciously deceived [someone], since He said to him,
against His own knowledge, that something was happening which was not
happening.105
Q27 [49] Again, it follows that a person who knowingly said [something] false
would be excused [from the guilt] of lying, because of the 20th [chapter of the
Book of] Maccabees, as though because of the ends [in view].106
Q27 [50] Again, whoever knowingly says a falsehood [even] in order to save a
life lies and sins, according to Augustine De libero arbitrio chapter 5.107
Q27 [51] Again, iiTimothy 2: He abideth faithful: He cannot deny Himself.108

Gloss: Since Christ is truth, He cannot deny Himself, which, however, He would
do if He did not fulfill His own words.109 This [applies] here.
Q27 [52] Again, Anselm, in ii Cur Deus homo, chapter 10, says that Christ was
not able to lie, etc. [He says] the same in Book i of Cur Deus homo, chapter 10,
and in the Proslogion, chapter 7.110
103 1 Kings 22: 2122.

104 The references to Enchiridion and De doctrina christiana are problematic; see commen-
tary.
105 [T]his [statement] is contingent: and therefore possible, which is precisely the position
Chatton is attacking.
106 Etzkorn and Keele remark that the reading is dubious. See commentary for a possible
source in 2 Maccabees 7.
107 De libero arbitrio contains no discussion of lying; this is probably a reference either to De
mendacio, cc. 58 [Opera omnia, vol. 6, pp. 491497] or to Contra mendacium nn. 3334
[ibid., pp. 539543].
108 ii Timothy 2:13.
109 Peter Lombard, In Epistulam ii ad Timotheum [P.L. 192, Opera omnia vol. 2, p. 370A]: Et
vera fidelis est [Christus], quia non potest negare se ipsum, qui est veritas, quod faceret si
dicta sua non impleret.
110 Chatton refers to Anselm, Cur deus homo, ii c. 10 [Anselmi opera omnia vol. 2, pp. 106108],
i c. 10 [ibid., pp. 6467], and Proslogion c. 7 [Anselmi opera omnia vol. 1, pp. 105106]. For
discussion of his use of these sources, see commentary.
Q27 [53] It is said regarding these [considerations] that the saints understand
that God has never deceived anyone, although He could deceive, and there-
fore His sayings are authentic, since He has never deceived anyone immedi-
ately.111But this is not sufficient, since, in this mode, any saint who had never
sinned would be of such authority [as God], and in consequence no more faith
would be owed to God than to this [saint], since God, equally, could deceive
humans just as [could this saint], and [He could do so] immediately, just as
they prove the arguments because of which they concede those things about
the revelations made immediately by God.112
Response of the Author to This Article

Q27 [54] Regarding this article, I do not now concede that God can immediately
deceive others. For this now appears to me more irrational than it appeared
elsewhere.
Besides these things, I ask:

Contingents is Compatible with Their Contingency
Whether the certainty of revelation of future contingents is compatible with
their contingency.
Status of the Question: The First Opinion

And there are fifteen ways of answering [this question].
Q28 [1] One opinion saves the certainty of revelation along with the freedom of
choice in this way: that, although it is impossible for us to have done something
or to have said something without it being necessary for us to have done or
said [it], this is nevertheless not impossible for God. For, by the same power by
which He was able to make the world from nothing, He can, up to this point [in
time], not have created it, and He can not have said something which He said.
And if a will not be, then God did not reveal a as going-to-be.
111 Immediately: i.e., as opposed to His indirect or merely permissive action in 1Kings 22:21
22 (cf. [47] and commentary).
112 The meaning of the final clause is unclear.
332 chapter 2
On the First Opinion

Q28 [2] But it seems that this opinion is inadequate unless more is said. For,
[even] on this account, it does not appear more in the power of a creature that
God did not say to Isaiah that a would be than [does the proposition] God
did not create the world. Indeed, it does not seem more possible for God that
this should not have been said than [it seems], regarding a slain person, that
he never have been slain. But let it be posited that God promised you that He
would not permit you to slay an infidel, unless you are a future sinner; [and]
afterwards, you [in fact] slay an infidel. Then I argue: you have slain an infidel,
therefore you will sin. The consequence is necessary, according to you, and the
antecedent is now necessary because it is not in anyones power never to have
been slain, therefore [the consequent is necessary].
The Second Opinion

Q28 [3] The second opinion is that no revelation of God about those [things]
which are contingently future [and] in our power, such as Peters denial, is
assertoric or judicial, but [rather is] merely comminatory or informative or
instructive, [made with the intention] that such a [thing] not happen, as in
[the revelation] Beware, Peter, lest you deny me. Therefore the [consequence]
God said this, therefore it will be thus is not valid, since that saying was not
assertoric.
Against the Second Opinion

Q28 [4] Against: it does not seem that this [doctrine] suffices, since it denies
that God can inform someone or reveal futures in the prophetic sense; the Faith
holds the contrary of this.
The Third Opinion

Q28 [5] The third opinion is that no revelation by God of a future contingent
takes place unless [that revelation is to be understood] beyond the sense
that the series of words literally expresses, just as other meanings are to be
understood there113 to one of which the expression [locutio] must be referred,
if the literal sense is not true. For sometimes an expression is understood
literally, sometimes parabolically, sometimes tropically, and sometimes simply
and absolutely, and sometimes conditionally, as in the Gospel of John where
God says to the Jews: Ye shall die in your sins.114 For this was not to be
113 there: perhaps a reference to Biblical exegesis in general; see commentary.

114 John 8:21.
understood simply, but on the condition that He expressed afterwards, saying,

for if ye believe not,115 etc.
Against the Third Opinion

Q28 [6] Against: this, too, does not suffice, since it denies that God can reveal
future contingents in a literal sense absolutely; [according to the Faith,] we
must hold that the contrary of this has been performed with the prophets, and
that indeed it can be performed by God, [as He is] omnipotent.
The Fourth Opinion

Q28 [7] The fourth opinion is that no revelation by God of a future contingent
takes place unless it is of the sort of future that is the sequel of some voluntary
precedent. And this can refer both to those futures which are the punishments
of preceding sins and to those goods which come from preceding good works.
And therefore, when it is revealed that a will be, it is just the same as though
it were revealed to [the recipient of the revelation] that he has deserved that a
would be. And thus when Christ said to Peter, Thou shalt deny me thrice,116 He
meant to signify to him that, based on his own presumption, he had deserved
to fall into [the sin of his] threefold denial of Christ.117 This kind of example is
clear[ly applicable] to Hezekiah118 and to the subversion of Nineveh.119
Against the Fourth Opinion

Q28 [8] Against: it does not seem to suffice, since it denies that God can reveal
futures which are [themselves] the first basis of praise or blame. For God is
powerful enough to reveal such [matters] just as [He can reveal] their sequels,
as, [for example, He could reveal] the first sin of an angel, or [He could reveal
the first sin] of a human to some angel that He was able to create beforehand.
The Fifth Opinion

Q28 [9] The fifth opinion is that one and the same future effect is contingent
with respect to inferior causes but necessary with respect to superior causes,
etc.
115 John 8:24.

116 Matthew 26:34.
117 Ex praesumptione propria seems to mean something like based on his own (bad) charac-
ter, opinions, etc.
118 2 Kings 20:16.
119 Jonah 3:410.
334 chapter 2
Against the Fifth Opinion

Q28 [10] Against: all things will take place according to the necessity of superior
causes, inasmuch as necessity excludes contingency, etc., from which it follows
that [contingency, in this sense, does not pertain to] inferior causes [either].
For the effect, if it will happen necessarily with respect to superior causes, [will
occur] either only by conditioned necessity, i.e., on the assumption that it is not
impeded by an inferior cause, or by absolute necessity, i.e., whether or not an
inferior cause acts. If the first is assumed, then there is a contingent with respect
to a superior cause, since then it is not from a superior cause unless an inferior
cause [should act], and an inferior cause does not [act] except contingently.
Therefore it does not [take place] from a superior cause necessarily, but only
by the mediation of a contingent cause. If the second is assumed, then the
effect [takes place] from a superior cause necessarily, whether or not an inferior
[cause] acts; therefore it is in no sense contingent.
Q28 [11] I confirm [this]: [the effect] either [takes place] necessarily by a
superior cause by absolute necessity, and thus in no sense is it contingent, as
has been said; or by conditioned necessity, and I ask about this condition: either
that necessary condition [obtains in the] future by absolute necessity, and thus
is wholly necessary, or it [obtains] by conditioned necessity, and then we must
ask as before, etc.
Q28 [12] Again, if we assume [that one and the same future effect is contingent
with respect to inferior causes but necessary with respect to superior causes],
the [same] question remains just as before, since if [we are dealing with] con-
tingency with respect to inferior causes, i.e., with necessity excluding contin-
gency with respect to superior causes, it [may be] asked how that contingency
is compatible with the certainty of revelation, since necessity with respect to
superior causes, even when occurring together with a revelation of the future,
does not destroy that contingency. Therefore it does not destroy uncertainty
with respect to that future. Or if it does, it [may be] asked in what way, as before.
The Sixth Opinion

Q28 [13] The sixth opinion is that with respect to a future contingent there is
the necessity of the consequence, but not the necessity of the antecedent, nor
of the consequent, etc.
Against the Sixth Opinion

Q28 [14] Against: this does not suffice either, since, unless more is said, it is not
clear how the [proposition] God said that a would be is now contingent [and]
in my power any more than the [proposition] I said that a would be, and [the
same goes for any] other antecedents, just as is argued against the first opinion
(= [2]).
The Seventh Opinion

Q28 [15] The seventh opinion is that with respect to a future contingent there
is conditioned necessity and not absolute [necessity]. For when it is argued:
God said that a would be, therefore a will be, they say that the antecedent is
necessary by conditioned necessity and not absolute necessity, and [the former
kind of] necessity is compatible with contingency. For if you sit, then it is
necessarily true to say that you sit, and nevertheless you sit contingently.
Against the Seventh Opinion

Q28 [16] Against: it does not seem that this opinion is adequate. First, because
they deny the contingency of futures in that they posit that all futures take place
necessarily [in the sense of] conditioned necessity, since the [proposition]
God said that a would be is now necessary, and this is not adequate unless
more is said.
Q28 [17] Secondly, because there remains a question about that condition. For
if, with respect to that [condition], there is another conditioned necessity, [our
account] will fall into an infinite [regress] of conditions.
Q28 [18] Third, because the [same] question remains as before (= [12]): how
the certainty of revelation is compatible with the contingency of that condi-
tion.
The Eighth Opinion

Q28 [19] The eighth opinion is [the following:] if we posit a false contingent
with respect to a future contingent, it is to be denied that it is necessary as-of-
now, and it is to be conceded that it is impossible as-of-now; and if we posit
a false contingent [with respect to the present], it is to be denied that it is
[currently] the present instant,120 according to the Master of obligations.121
When, therefore, [the following] argument is made: God said that a would be,
therefore a will be, they say that the consequence is necessary. And therefore
120 instans] Etzkorn and Keele remark that the reading is dubious.
121 Walter Burleigh, De obligationibus [Green 1963, vol. 2, p. 59, ll. 2031; translated in Kretz-
mann and Stump, eds., 1988: 394].
336 chapter 2
if it will not be, it is to be denied that God said this. For this proposition is
necessary only as-of-now, and its opposite is impossible only as-of-now.
Against the Eighth Opinion

Q28 [20] Against: because if [this opinion is true], then a future contingent is
no more in our power than is that [which is] impossible as-of-now, just as [a
future contingent is] no more [in our power] than the [proposition] God has
now said that a will be.
The Ninth Opinion

Q28 [21] The ninth opinion is that the [proposition] God said a falsehood is
possible, etc.
Q28 [22] Against: as in what was said in the second doubt about the preceding
question.122
The Tenth Opinion

Q28 [23] The tenth opinion is that although God could cause a vocally false
proposition in order to be able to preserve any [proposition] so as not to be
deceived by it, nevertheless God cannot make a human believe [something]
false or deceive him, since He cannot deny that He Himself is the Most True.
Therefore it is said that every mental proposition [which is] caused by God to
signify a as going-to-be [is such that] it is in my power that that proposition
should never have signified a as going-to-be, etc.
Q28 [24] [I have] argued against this opinion in the first doubt of the preceding
question.123
The Eleventh Opinion124

Q28 [25] The eleventh opinion is that a future contingent is necessarily present
to eternity, but is contingently future with respect to some part of time. And
just as its being necessarily present to eternity is nevertheless consistent with
its being contingent with respect to the determination of time, so its being
contingent is consistent with its nevertheless being certainly revealed. And
therefore when it is argued that God knows a as going-to-be, therefore a
122 See q. 27 [33][52].

123 See q. 27 [5][29].
124 The Consolation of Philosophy, v. pr. vi [Boethius 1973, p. 426, 428430]; Aquinas, De
veritate, q. 2, a. 12, ad 7 [aoo vol. 3, p. 18], st i, q. 14, a. 13, co. [aoo vol. 2, p. 209].
will be, the antecedent is true in eternity and is understood as contingent,

and therefore [this consequence] should not be considered good, but [rather]
invalid.
Against the Eleventh Opinion

Q28 [26] Against: because either this opinion posits that a future contingent
has some sort of diminished being that eternally coexists with divine eternity,
[a being] that is distinct [both] from God and from the future thing, or it does
not. If it does not, then only God existed from eternity, and, in consequence,
those futures were present to eternity no differently than were possibles that
were never going to be. If it does, then nothing is a future contingent, since if
some future contingent is demonstrated, [the following consequence is valid]:
this [future contingent] had some [kind of] being from eternity of the sort that
it was not possible that it should not be going to be; therefore this is future. The
antecedent is necessary now, according to you, since [the future contingent] is
necessarily coexistent with eternity, and the consequence is necessary, because
it is not possible that that which will not be should be present, according to you;
therefore [the future contingent is not contingent but necessary].
Q28 [27] Again, a difficulty remains as before, since if it is consistent that

something be present to eternity while it is also contingently future, then
the question remains: how is that contingency compatible with certainty of
revelation?
The Twelfth Opinion

Q28 [28] The twelfth opinion is the hypothesis of Scotus:125 that with regards to
every past-tense proposition which is true but whose truth depends on a future
contingent, it is both true to say that this proposition was true and nevertheless
that up to [this moment] its having been true is contingent, since it was true
about a future thing which up to [this moment] is in someones power as to
whether or not it shall take place. Since it nevertheless will take place, that
proposition was true. For it signified a as going-to-be, and since [things] will
be just as it signified, therefore the proposition was true; and therefore, up to
[this moment] it is contingent for the proposition not to have been true, since
up to [this moment] it is contingently possible that [things] will not be, in fact,
as that proposition signified they would be. [Scotus] speaks the same way about
a present-tense proposition whose truth depends on a future contingent, and
125 For the attribution of this doctrine to Duns Scotus, see commentary.
338 chapter 2
just as the truth [of such a proposition] is compatible with the contingency
[of the thing] following it, so the certainty of revelation is compatible with
contingency with respect to the future.
Against the Twelfth Opinion

Q28 [29] Against: for there is a doubt. How is it possible that such past-tense
propositions should be true by a truth which requires that a be future and yet
that a be contingently future? For propositions such as God said that a would
be, God made you believe that a would be, You have slain a person, and
similar [propositions], are of this kind.
The Thirteenth Opinion

Q28 [30] On the thirteenth hypothesis, i.e., that every proposition about a
future contingent is false with regard to the sense which it signifies: But beyond
the sense which it signifies is another sense which its author intends to signify
by the proposition. For a proposition about a future contingent asserts itself
to be true for the time of its utterance, and it does [this] in the sense that it
indicates. But in the sense that the author intends by it, it asserts only that its
present-tense [form] is going to be true. In the same way, if you were to ask
about the proposition a will be asserts that its present-tense [form] is going
to be true, it would be said that this and any further such proposition, [even]
extending to infinity, asserts itself to be true, and so is false. And it asserts that
its present-tense [form] is going to be true, and in that sense its author intends
to signify [something] true, and in that way every prophecy about the future has
truth according to the sense which its author intends, i.e., [in the sense that]
its present-tense [form] is going to be true.
Q28 [31] I confirm this in one way: let us accept the proposition Antichrist will
run in a; if [this proposition] is propounded before a, then in the time before
a, the proposition asserts itself to be true before a; and in consequence, after a
passage of time, [it asserts] that it has been true before a; and in consequence
[it asserts] that it has necessarily been true before a, since every true past-
tense proposition is necessary. But inasmuch as [the proposition] asserts that
its present-tense [form] is going to be true, although it could not assert this
except by simultaneously asserting itself to be true, at least in the sense that it
asserts that its present-tense [form] is going to be true in a, [the proposition]
itself is true.
Q28 [32] Secondly, I confirm this as follows: philosophy posits that in matters
concerning a future contingent, there is no determinate truth; but theology
posits that there is certain truth in [these matters], since it is an article of faith
that the Holy Spirit spoke through the prophets. But if [these] two propositions
are [to be understood as] not mutually contradictory, philosophy must under-
stand that a future-tensed proposition about a contingent matter is not true
insofar as it asserts itself to be true, and theology understands that that propo-
sition, insofar as it means that its present-tense [form] is going to be true, is
true.
Q28 [33] Thirdly, I confirm this as follows: That a proposition is true means
either (a) things are [now] just as the proposition signifies, or (b) things were
just as the proposition signifies, or (c) things will be just as the proposition
signifies. Therefore, if the proposition Antichrist will run in a asserts itself
to be true, [and if it does so] neither in the first nor in the second mode,
[it does so] in the third mode. And this is why I say that that present-tense
[proposition] is going to be true can be an actus exercitus, although the actus
signatus first asserts itself to be true, and thus is false. In the other, [former]
way, [i.e., considered as an actus exercitus,] it is an act which the speaker of the
future-tensed proposition intends to signify by [that proposition], and many
considerations which are [generally] accepted about future contingents tend
in favor of this analysis.
Q28 [34] Against: First, because [this opinion] posits that all writings in Scrip-
ture are false. Second, because the two senses which [this analysis] distin-
guishes seem to coincide. For it comes to the same thing to say that a future-
tensed proposition is true now and that its present-tense form is going to be true.
Q28 [35] Again, if this is granted, there remains a difficulty, namely: how a rev-
elation that says that present-tense [proposition] is going to be true is certain,
while nevertheless it is thus far in the [scope] of the free [choice] of some crea-
ture that that present-tense [proposition] not have been going to be true.
The Fourteenth Opinion

Q28 [36] The fourteenth opinion is that a revelation is not perfect unless by
seeing things in the Word and according to the circumstances upon which it
follows infallibly and inevitably that the thing is going to be. And therefore
such a revelation does not occur except about those things which are going
to be because of merits and faults which have preceded a revelation of this
kind. Nevertheless, an imperfect revelation, they say, concerns a thing which
is avoidably going to be, and therefore it is a fallible revelation, and [such a
revelation does] happen to the wayfarer.
340 chapter 2
Against the Fourteenth Opinion

Q28 [37] Against: because [this opinion] denies that God can inform a sinner
who is not seeing God about a future contingent.Again, it denies future
contingents, since it posits that if a revelation has been made in the Word, the
[event] is inevitably future.
The Fifteenth Opinion

Q28 [38] The fifteenth opinion is that God never reveals [anything] except
conditionally, i.e., [He reveals] that a will happen if [someones] will does not
impede it, and thus with similar matters.
Against the Fifteenth Opinion

Q28 [39] Against: because then God cannot give more certain assurances about
a future contingent than I can.Again, either He can give absolute assurances
about that condition, and then we have the proposed thesis; or [He can give
assurances] only conditionally, and then [this account] will fall into an infinite
[regress] of conditions.
On the Question
Q28 [40] From these kinds of hypotheses, it is clear in what diverse ways
[various writers] respond to the forms of arguments in the matter of future
contingents. For when it is argued: God said that a would be, therefore a will
be, some respond to the antecedent, [claiming] that it is contingently true,
and therefore the consequent is contingently true, although the consequence
is necessary. And this is the tendency of the first, sixth, seventh, eighth, and
twelfth opinions.126
Q28 [41] Others respond to the antecedent by distinguishing it according to

diverse senses. And the prophetic sense, if any such [sense] should be assigned
there, they posit as contingent. And the other sense is not against the [pro-
phetic senses]; and thus proceed the third and thirteenth opinions.127
Q28 [42] Others deny that the antecedent, in the philosophical sense, [con-
cerns] a future which is simply contingent, as in the second, fourth, fourteenth,
and fifteenth opinions, etc.128
126 See [1], [13], [15], [19], [28].

127 See [5], [30].
128 See [3], [7], [36], [38].
Q28 [43] The second principal way of responding focuses on the consequence,
[saying] that it is contingent, and that the antecedent is necessary, and the
ninth and tenth opinions respond in this way.129
Q28 [44] The third principal way of responding is to tacitly concede the con-
clusion that everything that happens, happens necessarily. For this is what the
fifth and eleventh opinions must posit.130
The Solution of the Question

Therefore, with regards to this article, the response to the question is to inquire
whether a rational creature can be apprised of the outcome of a future contin-
gent.
Q28 [45] [The question] must be answered in the affirmative, because nothing
can be denied of the power of God about which there is no demonstrable
contradiction, etc. Again, this in fact happened with the prophets, etc. And
it can be said that a creature can be apprised [of a future contingent] (i) by
an utterance proceeding from the fact that God knows a as going-to-be; (ii) in
another way, by an utterance proceeding from the fact that God knows that
the cause under discussion is of such a character that, from [that cause], a will
proceed by the common law of such a cause. For in order that a creature be
apprised that a will be, it is enough that an utterance be made to him in [one of]
these [two] ways. But these two ways of apprising a creature that a will be are
compatible with a being contingently going-to-be, as will be clear by resolving
the arguments.131
Q28 [46] In accordance with this way of putting it, [some of] the other opinions
discussed above can be grouped together, i.e., the sixth, seventh, eighth and
twelfth,132 since if an utterance proceeds from the fact that God knows a as
going-to-be, then the antecedent is equivalent to a proposition one of whose
parts is a future-tensed proposition; thus the antecedent is contingent. [Such a
proposition] amounts to this: God said that a would be because He knew that
a would be. And in this way, any necessary past-tense proposition, according
to the referent of the terms it has, for every new case posited, if a new case
is posited because of which its truth should depend on a future contingent,
129 See [21], [23].

130 See [9], [25].
131 See q. 29 [3] below.
132 See [13], [15], [19], [28].
342 chapter 2
is in this way to be resolved into a proposition one of whose parts is about a

future contingent, and by reason of [that part], the proposition [as a whole] is
contingent, etc.

Occur in This Matter Can be Resolved
Whether all forms of the arguments which normally occur in this matter can
be resolved.
Q29 [1] And regarding this [question] I say that, whether or not the [arguments]
can [be resolved] by a mere wayfarer, it must nevertheless be firmly held [by
faith] that they are not conclusive, but that they are faulty either in matter
or in form. For it is to be held by firm faith that God is certain about future
contingents, and Christ, and the prophets, etc. And [in order to show] how they
are to be resolved, I recite the arguments below.
The First Argument and Chattons Response

Q29 [2] First, it is argued as follows. [Let us consider the following conse-
quence:] God made you believe that a will be, therefore a will be. [This] conse-
quence is necessary, since otherwise the opposite of the consequent would be
compatible with the antecedent, and in consequence it would be possible that
God made you believe something false. And the antecedent is, in the present
moment, just as necessary as the past-tense [proposition] God created the
world. Therefore the consequent is just as necessary.
Q29 [3] To this I reply by distinguishing [two ways of analyzing the antecedent],
since either it is understood (i) as [an act of] making proceeding from the fact
that He knew a as going-to-be, and thus the antecedent is contingent, since it
amounts to the [proposition] God made you believe that a would be by [an
act of] making proceeding from the fact that He knew that a would be, and
the consequence is necessary; or (ii) as [an act of] making proceeding from the
fact that God knew that the cause would be of such a character that, from that
[cause], by the common law, a will follow, and thus the antecedent is necessary
and the consequence is contingent, and the opposite of the consequent can be
made true along with the antecedent. And thus it does not follow that God
made you believe something false.
The Second Argument, and the Response of the Author

Q29 [4] Second, regarding Peters denial during the time between the predic-
tion of Christ and Peters denial, it is argued thus: Christ asserted that Peter
would deny Him, therefore Peter was going to deny Christ. The antecedent
was then a necessary past-tense [proposition], just as the [proposition] God
fasted, and the consequence was necessary, since the opposite of the conse-
quent is not compatible with the antecedent, etc.
Q29 [5] On this argument, [I proceed] in the same way, by distinguishing the
antecedent, since either (i) that denial of Peters proceeded from the fact that
God knew that Peter would deny Him, or (ii) it proceeded from the fact that
God knew that Peters soul was in such a condition that such a denial would
follow by common law from [such a soul] in such a case. In the first mode, the
antecedent is contingent and the consequence is necessary. But in the second
mode, the antecedent is necessary and the consequence is contingent. Nor,
therefore, does it follow that Christ asserted something false, since it does not
follow follow
Thus ends Walter Chattons text in this codex.
chapter 3
Commentary
Reportatio super Sententias i

Distinction 38. Unique Question: Whether the Contingency of Futures
is Consistent with Gods Knowledge of Future Contingents
Summary: In this Distinction, Chatton is concerned above all with develop-
ing his distinctive set of conceptual devices, a toolkit which he will then use
to attack the problem of future contingents from various angles and respond
to rival theories in flexible ways. His primary instruments in d. 38 are: (a) the
Copulative Analysis of Divine Foreknowledge; (b) the Wylton Scope Analysis,
related to (a); and (c) the appeal to the status of the truth-makers associated
with future-tense propositions as still not posited in being, and thus in no
danger of entailing necessitation. (The other two main instrumentsthe invo-
cation of res as guarantors of truth and reference, and the Doctrine of Con-
tradictories, cf. Chapter i, 10.1.2.310.1.2.4are hinted at here under (c), but
developed more fully in later Distinctions.)
Article 1 (consisting of sections [4][29]) should, according to Chattons
plan, concern the modus loquendi with regard to divine knowledge of future
contingents; in fact, as will become clear, it inevitably deals with philosoph-
ically substantive issues. In the first few sections, the problem is set forth in
a purely schematic way; refinements come later. Nevertheless a number of
themes are highlighted which will indeed prove central in the discussion to
come: a scope ambiguity of the necessity operator (as in [1], whose plausibility
depends in part on this ambiguity), the necessity of the past as an intuitive but
dangerously strong principle (as in [2]), and what one might call the pressures
of obvious truth, both intuitive and doctrinal (as in [3]). In [5][7], Ockhams
approach to the problem of future contingents is presented; in [8][11], it is
shown to be incoherent. Peter Auriols theory of indistant divine cognition
is then presented, though in a crucially distorted form, in [12][14]; Chatton
presents his suggested improvement in [15]. Having dealt (albeit obscurely)
with the main truth-theoretical issue, Chatton then presents, in [16][21], an
array of issues that his own approach deals with more satisfactorily than does
(his version of) Auriols, including prophecy, taking trouble, divine knowledge,
and the preservation of contingency. [22][23] represent a detour into Thomas

commentary 345
Wyltons theory of truth, which Chatton effectively assimilates to his own; then
[24] and [25] concede some differences between Wyltons approach and Chat-
tons. [26] introduces an alternative, more orthodox approach, which readers
are invited to embrace should they find Chattons solution too heterodox. [27]
appeals to Chattons objectual theory of reference (according to which things,
i.e., substances and accidents, are the ultimate objects of cognition, reference,
and propositional verification); [28] reformulates Chattons ideas in terms of
the copulative propositional analysis: propositions about Gods foreknowl-
edge can be true while remaining contingent because they consist of two parts,
only one of whichthe part referring to Gods cognitionhas the status of
necessary; and [29] repeats the offer of an alternative, tamer analysis for the
weak of heart.
Article 2 ([30][54]) returns to some of the material dealt with in Article 1
(e.g., the difficulty brought up in [1] and [2]), though much new material is
discussed. Highlights among the oppositions views presented here include a
mention of Peter Auriols truth-to-omnitemporality argument in [32], several
interrelated appeals to logical determinism in [33], [34], [36], and [37], and
some attempts to secure an intermediate truth-value in [33], [35], and [38].
Chatton responds to these challenges first by invoking the Copulative Analysis
of Divine Foreknowledge in [40] and [41]; then, in [42][47], he shifts from
analysis based on truth-bearers to analysis based on truth-makers, appealing
to the (as yet) unposited future thing, event, or state of affairs a in order to
secure both contingency and harmless in-advance truth. [48] concedes that
some propositions are, indeed, true from eternity in the sense claimed in [34].
Then, in [49][54], Chatton shifts back and forth between truth-maker-based
analysis (i.e., references to future positing-in-being, as in [49] and [54]) and
propositional analysis (e.g., [51] and [52]).
Article 3 ([55][68]), which ostensibly focuses on the question of the cer-
tainty of divine knowledge given contingency, is in fact more concerned with
making room for contingency against an assumed background of divine knowl-
edge. Much of this article (specifically [56][59] and [62][66]) is devoted
to reviewing and rejecting an argument made by Ockham against the Scotis-
tic doctrine of synchronic contingency; Chatton, who needs to endorse some
form of that doctrine in order to secure the kind of strong conative contin-
gency that he wants, makes it clear that he thinks his own methods (both
res-based, as in [60], and propositional, as in [61]) suffice to parry Ockhams
attack.
D38 [1][2]: The introduction of a syllogism of this form (or an associated

consequence), along with an appeal to the authority of Aristotle (lacking in
346 chapter 3
Chattons version), is a commonplace in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century

discussions of future contingents; it is one variant of the argument-form that
I call Divine Foreknowledge Necessitates in Chapter i, 3.1. Solutions vary;
Aquinas appeals to the de re / de dicto distinction, while Bonaventure notes
that the syllogism is valid only if we take the minor premise as de inesse
simpliciter, i.e., as timelessly and therefore necessarily true, a solution that
works if we assimilate omnitemporality and necessity. Scotus considers the
converted form of the syllogism, {BGL, L} ()(BG ); he adopts
Bonaventures approach, as does Ockham, who follows Scotus closely. All of
these approaches depend on disambiguating the scope of the modal operator.1
Chatton, whose final response in this Distinction appears in [67][68] below,
takes a different line, one in keeping with his analysis of future truth.
D38 [3] An assertion of two truths both of which we must accept: (i) the exis-
tence of contingency as something primitively known or necessarily believed,
and (ii) Gods omniscience.
D38 [4]: For the division of the Distinction into articles, see the introductory
section on this Distinction.
D38 [5][7]: The thinker whose views are presented here must be someone
who [5] reads Aristotles De Interpretatione, chapter 9, according to the tradi-
tional interpretation (for which see commentary on [5] below), [6] adheres
to strict bivalence as a consequence of faith, and [7] views Gods knowledge as
necessary while allowing an adverbial escape clause that prevents the neces-
sitation of future contingents. Ockham fulfills all three criteria.2
1 Aquinas, i S., d. 38, a. 5, ad 5, co. [aoo vol. 1, p. 102]; Bonaventure, Commentaria i, d. 38, a. 2,
q. 1, co. 2 [Opera omnia vol. 1, p. 675]; Scotus, Ordinatio i, d. 38, p. 2, et d. 39, qq. 15 [Vat.
vol. 6, p. 433, l. 11p. 434, l. 5]; Ockham, Tractatus, q. 2, a. 2 [OPh vol. 2, p. 522, l. 68p. 523,
l. 81]. See Chapter i, 3.13.2.2 and 5.2.3 for a discussion of scope disambiguation in this
context.
2 For [5] and [6], see Ockhams commentary on De Interpretatione 9 [OPh vol. 2, p. 421, l. 7
p. 422, l. 17]; note that after giving the traditional interpretation of Aristotle, Ockham rejects
its substance on the grounds that secundum veritatem et theologos aliter est dicendum, quia
dicendum est quod Deus determinate scit alteram partem. For [7], see Ockham, Ordinatio i,
d. 38, q. u. [OTh vol. 4, p. 587, ll. 519], and Tractatus, q. 2 [OPh vol. 2, p. 529, l. 258p. 530,
l. 271]. For further evidence that Ockham is the intended target here, see notes to [9][10]
and [11] below.
commentary 347
D38 [5]: The interpretation of Aristotles doctrine of future contingents here

expounded is the traditional one, according to which Aristotle, in the ninth
chapter of De Interpretatione, admits exceptions to the principle of bivalence.
On this reading, Aristotle countenances a truth-value gap between True and
False for future-tense statements dependent on human decision. The alterna-
tive or nontraditional interpretation reads Aristotle as admitting no excep-
tions to bivalence but as attaching the qualifier indeterminately (sometimes
interpreted as a modal operator, i.e., contingently) to the truth-value of such
future-tense statements. Both interpretations have had adherents from late
antiquity to the present.3
D38 [8][11]: The argument aims to show that the opinion set forth in [5][7]
is internally inconsistent. Either contingency or divine omniscience will have
to yield.
D38 [8]: Aristotles approach in De Interpretatione 9 is clarified. Since the

unnamed adherents of the mode laid out in [5][7] themselves reject what
they regard as Aristotles approach, the clarification in [8] is in the nature of a
propaedeutic rather than a direct response to the position of these opponents.
Note that the clarification given here broadly anticipates Chattons own solu-
tion given in [15] and [22][25].
Two terminological points are in order here. First, notice the introduction
of the modifier determinately: in [5], Aristotle was held to have denied that
future contingents were true, whereas in [8] he is reported as having denied
that they are determinately true. Given that there seems to be no reason to
use or omit the operator, Chatton seems to be using determinate as a rhetor-
ical intensifier rather than as an operator with modal force.4 This will change
in dd. 4041, in which determinate will come to be associated with things,
events, and states of affairs which God has specially ordained. Second, this is
the first time the phrase posited in being (posito in esse) is used in the sec-
tions presented here.5 As will become clear, by positing [something] in being
Chatton may intend a logical or an agentic gesture; that is, he sometimes uses
the expression to make a formal move in a logical argument, and sometimes in
3 See Chapter i, 2 and footnotes for discussion and references.

4 See Chapter i, 4.6.3 for the different uses of in/determinate in discussions of future
contingents.
5 For a brief discussion of the different meanings of this phrase in scholasticism, see Chapter i,
88.5.
348 chapter 3
order to describe an event taking place or being arranged for by God or creature.
Clearly, it is the latter meaning that is intended here.6 In any case, this section is
crucial in that it proposes (though without describing in detail) a way in which
claims about future contingents can after all be true if rightly formulated and
conceptualized.
D38 [9][10]: Chatton tries to show that the adherence of these opponents
to determinate truth as in [6] will force them to give up the contingency
they aim to safeguard in [7]. [9] invokes De Interpretatione 9 (18b31 ff.) to
cancel the value of merit, rewards, and taking trouble, while [10] notes that
the necessity of the past, and specifically the opponents commitment to a
limitation on Gods power (He cannot change the past), imposes necessity on
the future. The formulation used here is important: Chatton insists that if it was
determinately true that Socrates will sit, then past-necessitation will cancel
Socrates freedom to do otherwise in the future.
D38 [11]: The opponents interpretation of Aristotle, which bases a rejection

of bivalence on the lack of a specific disposition of the created will in either
direction, is held to erode their own [position]. How can this be, when they
themselves reject Aristotles doctrine? The answer, apparently, is that Chatton
sees their rejection of Aristotle as unearned. They believe that Socrates will
is genuinely indeterminate at the present instant; hence, they ought in good
conscience to reject bivalence, as does Aristotle.
On this horn of the dilemma, the imperiled aspect of the doctrine outlined in
[5][7] is divine omniscience. The lack of an exclusive and determinate truth-
value for the proposition Socrates will sit in a means that God cannot have
knowledge about this proposition. Divine omniscience is not explicitly men-
tioned here, but the implication is clear, and it is supported by the presumably
Ockhamist provenience of the doctrine here attacked. Ockham writes the fol-
lowing:
And I say that the Philosopher would say that God does not evidently and
certainly know any future contingents. And that is for this reason: that
which is not in itself true cannot be known at the time in which it is not in
itself true. But a future contingent, simply dependent on a free power [of
choice], is not in itself true. For, according to [Aristotle], there cannot be
6 The usage in this passage can thus be characterized as sense ii in the typology of Chapter i,
8.38.4.
commentary 349
found any reason why one part [of the contradiction] is more true than
the other, and thus both parts are true or neither part is true. And it is
not possible that both parts are true; therefore neither part is true, and in
consequence neither is known.7
Ockham proceeds (ll. 20ff.) to outline his notorious position that God never-
theless knows future contingents evidently, although Ockham himself does not
know how He knows them (sed modum exprimere nescio). If we assume that the
source of [5][7] is indeed Ockham, we can construe Chattons point in [11] as
a claim that the Venerable Inceptor has no right to this move: given that he
really believes in an open future, his own interpretation of Aristotle decisively
refutes him. Taken together, [10] and [11] are an astute critical analysis of Ock-
hams strategically ambiguous treatment of future contingents (for which see
Chapter i, 7.2.3).
D38 [12][14]: The solution here presented is approximately that of Peter

Auriol.8 However, as Schabel 2000: 232 notes, Chatton seriously misrepresents
Auriols position in one important respect: nowhere in the latters treatment
is divine knowledge equated with or likened to knowledge after the thing.
Rather, Auriol considers Gods knowledge of futures (indeed of all temporal
events) to be indistant to those futures in an atemporal or extratemporal
sense. For Chattons motive in thus distorting Auriols position, see Chapter i,
10.1.4.5. Cf. also dd. 4041 q. 1 [58] below.
D38 [15]: Chatton takes up the thread of [8], fleshing out an approach to
future truth which he presents as superior to Auriols. His formulation sounds
rather like (and may have been influenced by) that of Ockham, whose account
of the truth-conditions of tensed propositions can be expressed roughly as
follows:
7 Ockham, Ordinatio i, d. 38, q. u. [OTh vol. 4, p. 584, ll. 311]: Et dico quod Philosophus diceret
quod Deus non scit evidenter et certitudinaliter aliqua futura contingentia. Et hoc propter
istam rationem: quia illud quod non est in se verum, non potest sciri pro illo tempore quo
non est in se verum. Sed futurum contingens, dependens simpliciter a potentia libera, non
est in se verum. Quia non potest, secundum eum, assignari ratio quare plus est una pars vera
quam alia, et ita vel utraque pars est vera vel neutra. Et non est possibile quod utraque pars
sit vera, igitur neutra est vera, et per consequens neutra scitur.
8 The full argument appears in Auriols Scriptum i, d. 38, a. 3 [Schabel 1995, p. 126, l. 840p. 131,
l. 930]; see Chapter i, 6.2.2 for an analysis.
350 chapter 3
(1) S is P is true just in case S stands for what P stands for

(3) S will be P is true just in case S is P will be true9
The point, or at least the general tendency, of Ockhams analysis is to explain

how tensed (and modal) statements can be unproblematically true.10 At first
reading, Chatton may seem to be doing the same thing. Indeed, given the
Boethian pedigree of his reference to nature in [8],11 he may simply be saying
that although there are currently no necessitating causes for Socrates future sit-
ting, there is nevertheless an eternal matter of fact, known to God, as to whether
he will sit or not, and the future-tense proposition Socrates will sit is currently
true (or false) in virtue of that fact. On the other hand, he may be suggesting
that while we can claim a kind of colloquial or pretheoretical truth for the
future-tense statement, it is, strictly speaking, not yet true; rather, it will be true.
There is a more than merely formal distinction at stake here; indeed, Chattons
entire world-model depends on how we read the phrase once posited in due
time (qua posita in sua mensura). Is there no frame or world, even if one known
only to God, in which the issue of Socrates sitting is (timelessly or, in Auriols
expression, indistantly) decided? Must the truth sensu stricto of the proposition
Socrates will sitand Gods knowledge with itactually await the outcome
of Socrates sitting, an outcome which Socrates (with Gods help or permission)
will posit in the strong sense of enacting? The rest of dd. 3841 consists of a
kind of extended, and not always openly acknowledged, debate on this issue.
D38 [16]: Prophecies are true because their propositional content is true, and
the latter is true even though it lacks a current truth-maker, since some thing
will be which, once posited in due time, will fulfil the role of such a truth-maker
(see commentary on previous section). This analysis is in line with Chattons
general approach to assent, which, he claims, normally has a res (and not a
complexum) as its object. See dd. 4041, q. 2 for more on divine assent to res,
and rss i, d. 1, q. 1, a. 2 [33], [46] for a treatment of creaturely assent to res. For
Chattons use of res as objects of cognition, referents of propositions, objects of
assent, and truth-makers, see Chapter i, 10.1.2.3.
9 For (1), see Ockham, Summa logicae pars ii, c. 2 [OPh vol. 1, p. 249, l. 8p. 250, l. 17]; for (2)
and (3), see Summa logicae pars. i c. 72 [OPh vol. 1, p. 216, ll. 6167].
10 Of course, in the Tractatus de praedestinatione, as I argue in Chapter i, 7.17.2.3, Ock-
ham himself undermines the unproblematic character of this analysis by his claim that
he does not understand how God can know the future.
11 See Chapter i, 4.1.
commentary 351
Chatton claims that his approach, unlike Auriols, allows prophecy to be

accurate in an intuitive sense. For further discussions, see dd. 4041, q. 1 [32]
[34] and q. 2 [33], and Quodlibet q. 27.
D38 [17]: For every actual thing, event, or state of affairs S such that S has not
always been the case (or is not timelessly the case), there was a time when S
was merely future, i.e., was a future contingent. Yet here we are in the present,
and S is undoubtedly the case. So even at that previous time, this proposition S
will be was true. The objection attempts to justify the use of the future tense,
even when matters are not yet settled.
Note, incidentally, how when the objector says haec prius fuit vera hoc est
futurum, he incurs the response of [23].
D38 [18]: There is no hope without the sure expectation with respect to a
future contingent: the mechanism of hope requires that I have a sure expec-
tation that my own salvation is, to some extent, under my control. The future
contingent here mentioned can be understood either as my own future action
or as my own future blessedness.
D38 [19]: Chatton explains how the truth of assent mentioned in [16] can work,
namely by making use of the propositional analysis in [15]. In doing so, he draws
attention to a shortcoming in Auriols analysis: Auriol (like his follower Peter de
Rivo) has no way of dealing intuitively with the fact that prophecies are about
the future and thus do not track the indistant knowledge which God has of
future events.
Note the syntactic ambiguity between sed sic [esse venturum] in re and sed
sic esse [venturum in re]; this is picked up in [22].
D38 [20]: Gods knowledge with respect to Antichrists existence is now, hence
[Gods] knowledge precedes [Antichrists] existence: once again, Chatton mis-
represents Auriol as claiming that a correct model of divine knowledge has God
reacting to creation.
D38 [21]: Harking back to the consequentia in [2]. Clearly, if Auriols attempt
to analyze Gods foreknowledge out of existence fails, then the old problem
reasserts itself.
D38 [22]: The third opinion, which sounds much like Chattons own as
expressed in [15], comes in for a clearer statement in [25]. Its source (whether
direct or indirect) is probably Thomas Wylton, who, drawing on Boethius, prof-
352 chapter 3
fered a solution to the problem of future contingents that depended on scope

disambiguation of the truth operator.12 This is a twist on the common scope-
disambiguation techniques, which involve modal operators; however, it isnt
such a dramatic twist as all that, since the truth operator essentially reduces to
a necessity operator in Wyltons analysis.13 The idea is to distinguish between
two truth-declarations14 of the claim Socrates will sit in instant a:
(1) (True) (FUTURE(a)) [Socrates sits], i.e., It is true now that Socrates will
sit in a.
(2) (FUTURE(a)) (True) [Socrates sits], i.e., It will be true that Socrates sits in
a.
The correct truth-declaration is (2), which embeds the truth operator inside the
future-tense operator. This solves the problem because, on Aristotelian corre-
spondence,15 the truth operator stands for a truth-maker. If the truth-maker
of the future-tense sentence is domiciled in the present, the contents of the
sentence are necessitated; if said truth-maker is domiciled in the future, said
contents remain contingent from the present. This doctrine will henceforth be
referred to as the Wylton Scope Analysis (WSA).
The phrase suam de inesse, here translated as its actuality, is a common for-
mulation of early fourteenth-century modal logic. Compare Ockham, Summa
logicae iii-3 [OPh vol. 1, p. 637]: Circa illas de possibili est primum sciendum
quod illa de possibili non infert suam de inesse . Sed illa de inesse semper
infert suam de possibili. The reference in [22], then, is clearly to propositions,
which are held to have both possible and actual variants; contrast [15], which
casts the distinction in terms of the presence or absence of truth-making res.
D38 [23]: This cryptic little sentence recites Wyltons rebuttal to a possible
objection.16 An opponent of the WSA, as that doctrine is briefly sketched in
[22], might argue as follows: You claim that the proposition Socrates will sit
12 In fairness it should be said that no direct reference to Wylton can be found in Chattons
hitherto edited works; nevertheless the conceptual parallels are so striking that I am
confident Wylton is either himself the source of these ideas or has been directly influenced
by that source.
13 See Chapter i, 6.1 for Wyltons treatment of the problem.
14 Truth-declarations are sentences whose surface grammar suggests that they are ascrip-
tions of truth (Knne 2003: 52 note 67).
15 See Categories ch. 10 (12b1116), ch. 12 (14b1422); Metaphysics ch. 7 (1011b2527).
16 What follows is an informal restatement of the analysis in Chapter i, 6.1.
commentary 353
in a is unproblematically true if we avoid the mistake of analyzing it as (1), and

analyze it instead as (2). But if we have the right to say (FUTURE(a)) (True)
[Socrates sits], then surely we can assert the truth of this analysis by saying the
following:
(3) (True) [(FUTURE(a)) (True) [Socrates sits]]
After all, if it is true now that it will be true that Socrates sits in a, then we have
hardly escaped from the clutches of the truth-to-necessity argument.17
Wylton suggests a reply, which Chatton here repeats: if you do assert the
present truth of the correct truth-declaration in the foregoing mannersi
asserat se verum, in Chattons paraphrasethen the resulting proposition will
have the kind of truth appropriate to such an assertion, and not the necessitat-
ing, freedom-canceling kind of truth. In other words, you will produce not, as
you imagine, (3), but rather (4):
(4) (FUTURE(a)) (True) [(True) [Socrates sits]]
And indeed, endless repetitions of the attempt to necessitate through the affix-
ation of a truth operator will fail for the same reason, producing ever longer
assertions of Socrates future sitting, all of them falling under the scope of
the (FUTURE(a)) operator. The validity of this rebuttal, at least in Chattons
version, depends on the legitimacy of reading the formulae with wide-scope
(FUTURE(a)) operator as in some sense assertions of future truth in the appro-
priate manner, rather than (as they seem to be) mere assertions of futurity.
The analysis in [23] is supposed to be justified on the basis of the principle
ex opposito sequitur oppositum, to which is appended the mysterious qualifying
phrase si intelligatur illud dictum generaliter. The principle referred to is that of
contraposition: one criterion of a good consequence, i.e., a legitimate con-
ditional sentence or a valid argument, is that the negation of the consequent
should entail the negation of the antecedent. The principle, which has already
been applied once in our text (see [2]), was widely known.18 It is unclear what
precise relation the principle bears to this rebuttal; what follows is speculative.
Here, perhaps, the focus is on the modality of the expression: if the expression
17 For the truth-to-necessity argument, see Chapter i, 1.

18 Standard roughly contemporary treatments include Walter Burleighs De puritate artis
logicae tractatus brevior [Burleigh 1955, p. 207], Ockhams Summa logicae pars iii-3, c. 38
[OPh vol. 1, p. 728], and Buridans Tractatus de consequentiis [Buridan 1976, p. 33].
354 chapter 3
is a truth-declaration, then it is a non-necessitating truth-declaration. Apply-

ing the ex opposito rule would then involve assuming, against the background
of the contingency of Socrates will sit, that not (4) but (3) is the correct way to
assert the truth of (2). But, given Wyltons beliefs about the relation of truth and
necessity, this will entail the precedent necessitation of [(FUTURE(a)) (True)
[Socrates sits]], and therefore of Socrates will sit, which was assumed to be
contingent; and there we have our oppositum. This would not be an argument
against the legitimacy of a wide-scope truth operatorif it were, it would be
singularly unuseful, as the opponents of the WSA already believe in the neces-
sitation of what are prima facie contingents, and thus would simply take it as
confirming their opinionbut rather a kind of formal reminder about the rea-
sons for emending the analysis, at each iteration, in the correct, narrow-scope
way.19
Besides Wyltons analysis (for which see Chapter i, 6.1), see also Chattons
own more detailed statement of the WSA in Quodlibet q. 28 [30][35] and
commentary. The latter text explicitly makes the reference to the possibility
of endless reiterations of this process, as does the (possible) source in Wyl-
ton.20 More importantly, the Quodlibet text brings up a substantial reasonthe
distinction between an actus exercitus and an actus signatusfor preferring
truth-declarations of form (4) to those of form (3).
D38 [24]: My own opinion differs in part: the difference between the Wylto-
nian doctrine presented in [22] and Chattons own doctrine as advanced in [8],
[15], and in this section consists in (1) an emphasis on experience as the source
of our certainty about the existence of the contingent (an emphasis to which
Chatton will return in dd. 4041 q. 1 [66][75]), and (2) a reformulation of the
proposition-based analysis in [22] in terms of truth-making res.
19 For other, also somewhat murky uses of the ex opposito rule, see dd. 4041, q. 1 [46] and
[50].
20 My debt to Rondo Keeles analysis of d. 38 [23] (Keele 2013) should be obvious to anyone
who has read his article. However, I differ from Keele in that I do not see that an appeal to
an infinite regress argument plays a role on either the pro or the con side of the WSA.
The idea of an explanatory regress is invoked neither in Wyltons text, nor here, nor in
Chattons later presentation of the same move in Quodlibet q. 28 [30][32]. Rather, the in
infinitum of Wyltons text and of Chattons Quodlibet text refers to the ability of both the
opponent and the proponent of the WSA to take their antagonists analysis and flip the
order of operators. On my reading, then, in infinitum refers to a move not in logic but in
dialectic, and amounts to an admonition of the form dont let the other guy get the last
word in.
commentary 355
D38 [25]: By all the dicta we should understand all the requisite doctrines
about Gods infallible foreknowledge, human freedom, and the nature of prop-
ositional truth; by in which a proposition about the present is demonstrated,
perhaps where an (embedded) proposition about the present, Sortes sedet, is
demonstrated, i.e., foregrounded or asserted through a mental act correspond-
ing to the tense operator (FUTURE) (haec erit vera).
D38 [26]: I certainly do not want to assert anything on any such perilous sub-
ject: Here we have Chattons first explicit attempt to insulate himself from
the dangers of a doctrine he clearly feels tempted to endorse, namely that
expounded in [8], [15], and [22][25]. In this section, he presents an alterna-
tive approach to the problem articulated not in terms of scope analysis or of
the presence or absence of truth-makers, but rather in terms of the voluntary
or involuntary character of the future event described: it is true not only that
Socrates will sit, but that he will do it voluntarily and freely. The contingent
character of the future event is thus part of what is true (and therefore what
God knows). This general approach is very widespread and dates back at least
to Alexander of Aphrodisias. Chatton may have it directly from Auriols critique
of Henry of Harclay, Augustine, Boethius, and Anselm, all of whom held sim-
ilar positions; Aquinas discussions of divine providence are another possible
source; Scotus says something very like this in a discussion of predestination;
and Ockham rounds out his explanation of the mystery of divine knowledge by
asserting a version of this idea.21 By proffering this analysis, Chatton prepares
what Keele 2010b has described as a rhetorical fallback position (hereafter
Fallback) to which he can retreat if challenged.
D38 [27]: This section might seem to align Chatton with Aquinas in think-
ing that God, while His thought is non-propositional, has non-propositional
knowledge of the contents of all propositions.22 In fact, this is a reference to
Chattons general theory of cognition, according to which all cognition (created
and uncreated) normally has res, not complexa or ficta, as its objects. The point
is that knowledge of propositions, including knowledge of their truth, depends
21 For Alexander, see Sharples 1983: 81; for Boethius, see Chapter i, 4.4; for Auriol and his
targets, see Scriptum i, d. 39, a. 3 [Schabel 1995, p. 185, l. 803p. 186, l. 819], and discussion
and references in Schabel 2000: 84; for Aquinas, see st i, q. 22, a. 4, co., et ad 1 ad 3 [aoo
vol. 2, p. 222] and Summa contra gentiles iii ch. 94 nn. 1013 [aoo vol. 2, p. 91]; for Scotus,
see Reportatio I-A dd. 3940, qq. 13, n. 77 [r i-a vol. 2, pp. 488489]; and for Ockham, see
Ordinatio i, d. 38, q.u. [OTh vol. 4, p. 587, ll. 519].
22 See Aquinas, st i, q. 14, a. 14, co. [aoo vol. 2, p. 209].
356 chapter 3
on the ultimate objects of such knowledge, namely the things (substances

and accidents) referred to by the proposition. (In fact, as d. 39 and dd. 4041
will reveal, Chattons res theory is far more complicated than this short descrip-
tion suggests; see these Distinctions, commentary, and Chapter i, 10.1.2.3 for
discussion.)
D38 [28]: Chattons two-part analysis of propositions about divine knowledge

receives its first formulation here (later treatments can be found in [40]
[42], d. 39 [13] ff., and dd. 4041, q. 1 [14], [16], and [31]; see also Quodlibet
q. 28 [46]). In brief, a proposition of the form God knows that a will be is
properly analyzed into a copulative (i.e., a conjunction) of the form God
cognizes a, and a will be. The divine cognition of a, in Chattons special
sense, amounts to a perfect knowledge of the truth-conditions of a proposition
such as Socrates will sit at time a; it does not include the truth-value of
the proposition, but rather constitutes Gods knowledge of the modal map,
and as such is necessary.23 The conjunct a will be, however, is ex hypothesi a
contingently true proposition. (The criteria for contingency are touched on in
[29] and connected with the WSA in [40].) Hence, the copulative as a whole is
contingent. Thus the problem raised in [2], namely that the valid consequence
God knew that Antichrist will be, therefore Antichrist will be seems to impose
necessity on its consequent, is solved: as the antecedent is contingent, the
consequent can remain so. See Chapter i, 4.6.44.6.4.2 for the background
of the Copulative Analysis (which dates back at least to the middle of the
thirteenth century), and Chapter i, 10.1.2.1 for a more in-depth discussion of
Chattons use of it; for the intensional character of divine cognition, see dd. 40
41, q. 2 [5] (and commentary) and once again Chapter i, 10.1.2.1.
D38 [29]: This section includes a traditional criterion for contingency: the
contingent is that which, before it is posited, can be impeded or prevented.
Chatton returns to this criterion in [46] and [47], in dd. 4041, q. 1 [46] and
[51] (the latter in the context of an impediment to salvation), and dd. 4041,
q. 2 [5].
At the end of [29], Chatton returns to Fallback (sketched in [26]).
D38 [30][32]: A review of issues already touched on at the beginning of the

Distinction.
23 God cognizes what Keele 2014 5.3 refers to as the truth-career of a proposition.
commentary 357
D38 [33][34], [36][37]: These sections all argue, in one way or another,
for logical determinism; hence they are in line with the general tendency of
these sections, which is to lay out the case for propositions that are neutral
in truth-value and thus not in danger of a pernicious form of antecedent
necessitation.
D38 [33]: Chatton here raises a possible objection to his own analysis. Even
if we concede that a future contingent such as Antichrist will be is true
according to the analysis presented in [15] and [22][25], one might feel that
the original Aristotelian argument to logical determinism loses none of its
force. Let us posit this proposition in being; that is, let us imagine that its
actuality (guaranteed, after all, by the assumption of its eventual truth) has
been granted. It follows that it is true now (whether necessarily or contingently)
that the proposition Antichrist is will be true, and hence that there is no
need to take trouble, etc. This is basically a reiteration of the point raised in
[23].
D38 [34]: Chatton reviews an attack on contingency which, though obscure,

exhibits some familiar features. The reasoning seems to be as follows. A future-
tense proposition P, if it is true now and not newly true, has been true from
eternity; this seems to follow from De Interpretatione 9 reasoning. Now, such
a true-from-eternity future-tense proposition is either necessary or contingent
(this exhausts the categories of true propositions). If it is necessary, then of
course it is necessary. If it is contingent, then we get a contradiction by doing
something we should be able, on Aristotelian grounds, to do, namely take
something merely possible and posit it in being.24 Therefore, if a future-
tense proposition is true now, it is necessary. Moreover, in establishing this
movement from truth to necessity, we have also moved from the assumption of
something contingent (the positing-in-being of P) to something impossible (a
contradiction); so clearly, we have a problem here.
There are two salient interpretive difficulties in this passage:
(1) What does true now and not newly true mean? It could represent a
distinction between temporally definite and temporally indefinite propo-
sitions, i.e., between the type Socrates will sit on December 13th, 2025
24 See Chapter i, 88.5 for discussion of this phrase. The usage here seems to be i(3)(a) in
the typology given in 8.3.
358 chapter 3
and the type Socrates will sit tomorrow; only the latter could be newly
true, e.g., on December 12th, 2025. Alternatively, it could refer to a distinc-
tion between two kinds of temporally definite proposition: (a) the true-in-
advance, which is therefore necessary-in-advance (assuming some form
of truth-to-necessity la De Interpretatione 9), and (b) the recently-made-
true, which was in an alethically indeterminate state until some agents
free choice made it true. The first reading is suggested by conceptual sim-
ilarities between this passage and Quodlibet 28 [19], which contains a
clearer (though indirect) reference to temporally indefinite propositions;
on the other hand, the second reading connects the passage to Chattons
abiding though uneasy interest in the possibility of an open future and
truth-value gaps.
(2) What is the meaning of the final turn of the passage (from And what
is more)? As written, it seems like some new formal absurdity can be
gleaned from this argumentsomething beyond the contradiction
entailed by positing a supposed counterfactual in being. But it is anything
but obvious what that formal absurdity is.
For a tentative and incomplete formalization of this argument, see Appendix

A3.821.
In section [48], Chatton will concede the validity of this argument for a large
class of propositions; see also dd. 4041 q. 1 [10].
D38 [35]: The traditional, or truth-value-gap, analysis of De Interpretatione 9

reappears here (cf. [5] and [38]). Of a pair of propositions {Antichrist will be,
Antichrist will not be}, assuming that the one is contingens ad utrumlibet, so is
the other. If we assimilate truth to modality, we have no warrant for granting
more truth to the one than to the other; hence, neither is true. For the difference
between contingens ad utrumlibet/utrumque and contingens in maiori parte, see
commentary on [39] below.
D38 [36][37]: In interpreting these two obscure arguments I adopt Keeles

suggestion (2010b) that, in both [36] and [37], the result of non-contingency
is asserted to follow logically from the initial, apparently harmless assumption
that Antichrist (contingently) will be. Then notice is taken that this necessary
consequence is identical in content to the supposedly contingent assumption,
which latter is shown to be necessary or impossible (and not contingent, as
was supposed). If this interpretation is correct, the two arguments are variants
of a traditional sophism that runs as follows (in the version that appears in the
Syncategoremata attributed to Henry of Ghent):
commentary 359
Assuming that Antichrist will at some time be a human, but contingently,

in such a way that it is possible that he will not exist; from this it follows
that the soul of Antichrist will necessarily exist
Proof: the soul of Antichrist will at some time exist, and when it exists,
it will exist necessarily. Therefore the soul of Antichrist will necessarily
exist.25
Henry calls this a fallacia secundum quid et simpliciter, i.e., a fallacy that
attempts to derive absolute or simple necessity from conditional necessity.26
The Boethian character of the example should be obvious (cf. Chapter i, 4.3).
Chatton (or his source) has simply replaced the assumption, Antichrist will
[not] exist, with complicated reformulations: in [36] the negated version of the
assumption becomes whatever is future is other than the Antichrist, in [37]
the affirmed version becomes the non-being of Antichrist will be corrupted.
D38 [38]: This is the truth-maker pendant to [35]: the res that makes the propo-
sition Antichrist will be truecrudely put, Antichrist himselfis at this
moment still unposited, i.e., indeterminate in being; hence, neither member
of the set {Antichrist will be, Antichrist will not be} is exclusively true.
D38 [39]: A contingens in maiori parte, which I have translated contingent in

its greater part, is (like a contingens natum, see [54]) a thing which is generally
but not always true; a contingens ad utrumlibet or ad utrumque is a thing
which is in a state of exact equipoise between being and non-being, truth and
falsehood. The distinction goes back directly to Aristotles De Interpretatione
ch. 9, 19a1823. John Wyclifs mid-fourteenth-century Tractatus de logica gives
some standard examples of contingentia in maiori parte:
And thus it happens in its greater part [i.e., most of the time], but it does
not always happen, since sometimes a monster with six fingers on one
hand is born, and a sheep with two heads.27
25 Henry of Ghent 2010, p. 49, ll. 14951499: [P]osito quod Antichristus aliquando erit homo,
sed contingenter ita quod poterit non fore; inde sic: anima Antichristi necesario erit.
Probatio: anima Antichristi aliquando erit, et quando erit, necessario erit. Ergo anima
Antichristi necessario erit.
26 Henry of Ghent 2010, p. 49, ll. 15031504.
27 Wyclif 18931899, v. 1, p. 27: [E]t sic in maiore parte contingit, sed non contingit semper,
quia aliquando procreatur monstrum cum sex digitis in una manu, et agnus cum duobus
capitibus.
360 chapter 3
In [39], the point is that the insistence on determinate truth cancels the use-
ful distinction between two kinds of contingent proposition. A contingens ad
utrumlibet is, intuitively, more opposed to the necessary than is a contingens
in maiori parte. Assuming determinate truth for one member of a contradictory
pair {P, P} would abolish this difference; hence the assumption must be false.
Notice that the argument seems to assimilate determinacy to necessity.
D38 [40]: The Copulative Analysis first set forth in [28] is reiterated. Note-
worthy here is the combination of that analysis with a reference to the as yet
unposited res that will make the proposition true. This reference to posit-
ing can be taken as a truth-maker-oriented nod to the WSA, whose proposi-
tional structure locates the truth operator safely in the future. We thus have
the first appearance of the complete analysis that typifies Chattons approach
to the problem of future contingents. A proposition such as God knows that
Antichrist will be is analyzed as follows, with the results of the WSA embedded
as the second conjunct in a copulative structure:
God cognizes Antichrist will be, and it will be true that Antichrist is.
As in [28], the first conjunct is necessary while the second conjunct is contin-
gent; therefore the whole is contingent.
The use of posit in this section drifts between senses ii and i(3)(b) in the
typology set forth in Chapter i, 8.38.4; cf. the similar drift in a passage in
Scotus Ordinatio (quoted at the end of Chapter i, 5.2.1).
In the final clauseand when [this condition holds], the proposition is
not truethe proposition in question is probably (though not certainly) the
second conjunct in the copulative expression God cognizes this, and this will
be; this conjunct is, in the sense of [15] and [22], not true now.
D38 [41]: The Copulative Analysis is further developed. Here, tense issues
come to the fore: Gods past cognition of a no more necessitates a than does
his present or untensed cognition. Chatton then seems to reject Fallback in
favor of an analysis based on the exclusion of future-dependent propositions
from the otherwise global necessity of the past, a doctrine whose best-known
exponent is Ockham but which in fact predates him (see Chapter i, 4.5.4
for discussion). On the connection between the Copulative Analysis and the
future-dependency escape clause, see Chapter i, 4.6.4.
Chattons assumption that endorsing this doctrine would require the aban-
donment of Fallback makes sense, as Fallback is a position that construes
divine knowledge as knowledge in the normal sense. According to Fallback,
commentary 361
theological-epistemic determinism can be avoided by including contingency

in the content of what God knows: God knows [that Socrates will sit in a and
that Socrates will have had other live modal alternatives before a]. But the
first conjunct here known by God corresponds to the second conjunct in the
Copulative Analysis, which God knows only by courtesy (as it were). Clearly,
then, if one adopts the Copulative Analysis, one must reject Fallback, irrespec-
tive of the latters intrinsic merits or lack thereof. (Note that it is the eccentric
approach to divine knowledge, not the future-dependency escape clause, that
forces a choice between the two theories here: the escape clause is, in one form
or another, common to the whole medieval tradition from the twelfth century
on. Indeed, Chatton himself will appeal to it later in Quodlibet q. 27 [42][43]
and elsewhere.)
Also noteworthy is Chattons attribution to an unnamed them of a doctrine
he himself endorses. In order to secure plausible deniability for its author, the
text plays fast and loose with verb desinence: You will say, i resolve, they
must respond. Chatton is reluctant to own this doctrine, as it seems to imply
that Gods retrospective knowledge is in our power. Cf. commentary on [62]
below for Chattons views on our power to retrospectively render the divine
will determinate; see also dd. 4041, q. 2.
D38 [42]: From this section until [47], Chatton shifts tactics: instead of appeal-
ing to the copulative status of propositions about divine cognition of futures,
he appeals to the fact that there is, as yet, nothing (no res) that has been
posited in being that could count as a truth-maker for claims about the
future. The analysis is essentially the same in either case, but the concep-
tual focus has shifted (cf. the similar shift that takes place between [35] and
[38]).
This passage, like many in this text, can be read in two ways. On the weak
reading, the distinction between cognition and knowledge, like that between
apprehension and assent, is merely perspectival; on this reading, there is a
sense in which God timelessly knows (in a pretheoretical sense) what will
happen. On the strong reading, Gods assent, like His cognition, must actually
await events in time. On its face, this passage seems to advance the strong
reading, bringing it in line with Chattons Day 2 doctrine as outlined in dd.
4041, q. 1 [58] (see commentary on that section and Chapter i, 10.1.4.2 for
discussion).
Chattons difficult doctrine of divine assent (as opposed to the assent of the
prophet) here makes its first appearance in this text. Note that Gods assent
to a thing is treated in parallel with His knowledge about a thing, in line with
the analysis of human (albeit divinely inspired) assent in [16]. Cognition is
362 chapter 3
knowledge in virtue of the truth of the thing cognized; apprehension is assent

in virtue of the existence of the thing assented to.
D38 [43][44]: Chattons combination of the Copulative Analysis and the WSA
gives us room for two-sided potency of action, while letting us use a meaningful
and unproblematic future tense. The language of [43] anticipates Chattons
Day 3 or middle way at dd. 4041, q. 1 [59]; that of [44] underlines the res-
based, objectual character of his solution.
D38 [45]: The objection considered here, which invokes Scotus as an author-
ity, reacts to Chattons development of the Copulative Analysis / WSA theory.
Scotus theory stipulates that there are no contingent truths until the divine
will has made its decision in the second (or third) instant of nature, where-
upon there are actual disambiguating matters of fact that act as truth-makers.28
Hence, so goes the objection, Chattons talk of future contingent truths makes
no sense: there are, as yet, no such disambiguating matters of fact. Chatton
responds by criticizing the idea of contingency implicit in the Scotistic objec-
tion, namely absolute contingency. With respect to this type of contingency,
although Socrates is sitting right now, he might just as easily (without logical
repugnancy) not be sitting. But, Chatton objects, this isnt what hes talking
about; absolute contingency is not a basis for free action. It is not a conative
option, something it is worth taking trouble over, that Socrates should be sit-
ting or not sitting at this instant. Chatton is interested in conative contingency,
in matters over which agents have real choices, andso he suggeststhe only
kind of truth consistent with this contingency is the type that is established by
the WSA.
Both the objection and Chattons response are rather odd; Scotus concerns
in the relevant passage are orthogonal to Chattons, and Chattons response is
not so much an argument as a restatement of his own thesis. Moreover, Chatton
himself will find an important use for the type of contingency he here criticizes
(see dd. 4041, q. 1 [10][12], [37]).
D38 [46][47]: Chatton responds to the challenges of [33] and [35]. In [46]
he grounds the truth of the proposition Antichrist will be, ultimately, in a
not-yet-posited res; this proposition is true suo modo, in its own way,
i.e., according to the Copulative Analysis / WSA. In [47] he establishes its
28 For Scotus instants of nature, see Chapter i, 5.2.1. The passage to which Chattons text
refers is Ordinatio i, d. 38, pt. 2, et d. 39, qq. 15 [Vat. vol. 6, p. 429, ll. 12].
commentary 363
contingency with reference to its current preventability. The WSA suffices to

defuse logical determinism.
Effected speculatively translates promoveri. Keele 2010b opts for pro-
moted, which suggests that the event can (as it were) be encouraged into being.
D38 [48]: The argument of [34] is actually conceded for a certain class of
propositions or res (notice that the talk has switched from the former to the
latter). Since the tendency of [34] was to question the coherence of the idea
of a future truth being contingent, the concession may seem surprising, but
Chattons general drift is clear: if we restrict ourselves to things, events, or
states of affairs that are formally true from eternity, i.e., globally or precedently
necessary, then it is hardly surprising that the assumption of contingency
produces contradiction. What events are meant? Chatton clears this up in dd.
4041 q. 1 [10].
D38 [49]: Here we see the point of the previous section: Chatton explicitly
excludes future contingent propositions like Socrates will sit from the class
of propositions formally true from eternity. From the perspective of the past,
as well as the present, such propositions depend on the future and fall under
the Ockhamist escape clause, which latter prevents us from being able to use
past-necessitation to necessitate future events (a crucial move in the argument
reviewed in [34]). No reductio is possible.29 Chattons emphasis on different
kinds of truth also looks forward to his more sophisticated res-based analysis
of truth in d. 39 [25][32].
D38 [51]: Chatton here responds to [36]. The text of [51], as it stands, seems to
accuse the opponents of committing an absurd fallacy of the following form:
For every object, it will necessarily be the case that that object is or is not
the Antichrist.
Therefore: either, necessarily, everything will be different from the
Antichrist; or, necessarily, something will be identical to the Antichrist.30
Such nonsense seems hardly worthy of a response. More charitably, one might
assume that the opinion has undergone some garbling, and that Chatton is
29 For a formal explanation of why the reductio is impossible for this type of event or
proposition, see Chapter i, 4.5.4 and Appendix A2.21.
30 Formalized: (x)(Fut(x) [x=a xa]) [(x) (Fut(x) xa) (x) (Fut(x) x=a)].
364 chapter 3
adverting to his opponents confusion of simple and conditional necessity (see

commentary on [36][37]). Either way, his reply just repeats the contingency
of such a future-tense proposition and anything following logically from it.
D38 [52]: This compact section reacts to the argument of [37] in two ways.
First, Chatton invokes his own Doctrine of Contradictories. This doctrine is
expounded briefly in rss i, d. 4, q. 3 [56], where Chatton remarks that
All contradictories are opposed [to each other] equally according to affir-
mation and negation of the same thing altogether, in such a way that they
do not signify diverse things but the same thing altogether, otherwise they
would not be contradictories; but nevertheless the same is signified by the
one affirmatively and the other negatively.31
Applied to this section, Chattons doctrine implies that invoking the non-
being of Antichrist does not make necessitation any more plausible than
invoking his existence, since the propositions Antichrist will be in a and
Antichrist will not be in a have isomorphic, though complementary, modal
profiles.32 If, however, non-being is construed more substantively, as consti-
tuting the presence of some thing or form that would prevent Antichrist from
existing, then Chatton repeats the analysis of [43], [44], and [45]: while such a
thing or form will, as a matter of logical necessity, be corrupted when Antichrist
comes into being, we do not have the right to claim that this corruption will take
place with precedent necessity.
D38 [53]: [I]t has already been made clear: i.e., [38], like [37], has been
answered by [43], [44], and [45].33
31 Chatton, rss i, d. 4, q. 3 [56]: [O]mnia contradictoria opponuntur ex aequo secundum

affirmationem et negationem eiusdem omnino, ita quod non significant diversa sed idem
omnino, alias non essent contradictoria, sed tamen unum significat idem affirmative et
aliud negative. The same doctrine appears in lss i, d. 2, q. 6 [110] and [193]. For further
applications of the Doctrine, see rss i, d. 39 [29] and dd. 4041, q. 2.
32 For reasons that he does not spell out, Chatton thinks that an appeal to the traditional
approach to negation as a determinatio compositionis [cf. Peter of Spain 1992, pp. 72103;
also Henry of Ghent(?) 2010, p. 18] would be hostile to or incompatible with his own
approach; but in any case, Chatton thinks, it would be an ineffectual objection. Wey and
Etzkorn [rss vol. 2, p. 357, note 24] connect this to Wodeham, Lectura secunda i, d. 1, q. 1,
but I see no obvious relation here to Wodehams comprehensive attack on Chattons res-
based theory of cognition.
33 Wey and Etzkorn think that [52] refutes [38] [rss vol. 1, p. 357, note 25], but except for the
commentary 365
D38 [54]: The minor premise of the original argument in [39] reads effectively
as follows:
In contradictory pairs of apparently contingent propositions in which one

part of the contradiction is determinately true, the nature of a contingens
ad utrumque is no more opposed to the necessary than is that of a contin-
gens in maiori parte.
Chatton reacts by denying that we can assimilate determinacy to necessity.

One part of any contradiction can be determinately true without canceling
the contingency of that contradiction (if it consists of contingents in the first
place). If the contingency is not cancelled, neither are any distinctions within
the category contingent, such as that between a contingens in maiori parte (or,
as here, a contingens natum) and a contingens ad utrumlibet. What this means,
effectively, is that the following scenario is possible: it is highly probable that a
will be; a will in fact not be; and it is up to me whether or not a will be.
D38 [55]: Here, as in [26], [29], and [41], Chatton presents Fallback, i.e., the
position that God knows that P will happen and that it will happen contin-
gently; but, as in [41], he seems to favor the Copulative Analysis / WSA.
The phrase cum tali veritate propositionis quae est, with such truth of the
proposition as there is, indicates the possibility of a non-necessitating truth-
declaration of the kind mooted in [22][23] (i.e., the WSA).
D38 [56][59]: The arguments here are a presentation of those found in Ock-
hams Ordinatio i, d. 38, q. u. [OTh vol. 4, pp. 579583]. The latter text consists of
an attack on Scotus account of synchronic contingency (for which see Chap-
ter i, 5.2.2) followed up by the statement of a dilemma: if the determination of
the divine will overrides creaturely wills, creaturely responsibility is lost, while
if it does not override them, divine foreknowledge is uncertain. However, Chat-
ton simplifies Ockhams exposition considerably.
Recall that although Chatton rejected the relevance of synchronic modal
alternatives in his discussion of actuality as a criterion of truth for future
contingents in [45], he also conceded that the idea made sense: there is a
conceptual place for absolute contingency, of which Scotistic synchronic
contingency is one variety. Here, Chatton is concerned with a specific reason
language of being/non-being, there is no close connection of thought. The issue in [38]

is truth and how it can comport with contingency.
366 chapter 3
for assuming such contingency: he assumes that if something will in fact

take place but will do so contingently, then there must be some specific time
during which God is able to will its opposite. Section [45] has established
that the mere logical possibility of His (or anyones) willing the opposite at a
time simultaneous with the thing itself does not suffice; by then, its too late.
Consequently, there must be some moment prior to a at which God can will
that this will not be. For that prior moment, however, Scotus analysis is just
as relevant as it is for a itself: if P will be true in a, but there is an alternative
future a in which P will not be true, then there is an alternative present in which
P will not be true in a. Hence Chatton feels he must first present and then refute
Ockhams arguments against synchronic contingency.
D38 [60]: Chatton reacts to the anti-Scotist positions outlined in [56][59]

by asserting the Copulative Analysis / WSA. Notice that (as in [41]) he runs
together his and the Ockhamist position: ubi veritas propositionis dependet
a futuro et ipsam esse veram est rem esse ponendam in tali futuro indicates not a
double condition but the same condition expressed in two ways. The modally
open future enshrined in this double condition, Chatton points out, entails
the very synchronic contingency that Ockham himself is at pains to refute in
Ordinatio i, d. 38, q. u. [OTh vol. 4, pp. 579583].34 As in [40] above, the meaning
of ponere drifts between senses ii and i(3)(b) (see Chapter i, 8.38.4).
D38 [61]: Chatton paraphrases an argument of Ockham to the effect that if

God had so willed it, He could have created a world without a beginning
in time.35 According to Henry of Ghent, if we assume that such a possibil-
ity were realized, it would be ab aeterno true and so necessary. Not so, says
Ockham: Henry misconstrues Aristotles principle articulated in De Interpre-
tatione ch. 9 (19a23), namely that omne quod est, quando est, necesse est esse.
Like Duns Scotus (see Chapter i, 5.2.2), Ockham resists the temporal inter-
pretation and embraces the scope interpretation of the principle (cf. Chap-
ter i, 4.5). The result is that Gods power to have created some logically non-
repugnant contingent state of affairse.g., an existent-from-eternity world
34 Later in the same text under discussion, Ockham himself is forced to concede a role for
synchronic contingency very much like the one Chatton here insists on; see Ordinatio i,
d. 38, q. u. [OTh vol. 4, p. 586, ll. 111] and Chapter i, 7.2.3 for discussion.
35 See Ockham, Quaestiones variae, q. 3 (Utrum mundus potuit fuisse ab aeterno per poten-
tiam divinam) [OTh vol. 8, pp. 5997]. Henrys argument is presented on p. 66, ll. 118132,
Ockhams reply on p. 87, l. 498p. 92, l. 600. See also Ockhams Quodlibet 2, q. 5 [OTh vol. 9,
p. 130 ll. 3945 and p. 132, l. 98p. 133, l. 102].
commentary 367
remains unimpaired by His actual choices, and in like manner His power to
have created a state of affairs which is, for us, actual, would remain unim-
paired under the assumption of counterfactual choices. Chattons motive in
mentioning this argument of Ockhams seems to be once again to underline
the fact that Ockhams own position entails synchronic contingency, since the
latter is required by the existence of eternally true but contingent proposi-
tions.
D38 [62] According to Chattons doctrine of divine will, God wills contingently
toward things other than Himself, as we must believe by faith (rss i, d. 42, q. 2
[3]) and as we can support by plausible arguments (ibid., [21]). Furthermore,
such necessity as does inhere in the divine will does not cancel creaturely
freedom, since He wills by willing something under a condition, e.g., by willing
necessarily that the [created] will should act when it wants to act (ibid.,
[26]). For Chattons doctrine, which is complex, radical, and (perhaps) Pelagian,
see Chapter i, 10.1.4.2, as well as the material on divine assent in dd. 4041,
q. 2 below; here, suffice it to say that claims about divine willing are broadly
isomorphic with claims about divine knowing, and so fall under (something
like) the Copulative Analysis. God can will contingently just as He can know
contingently.
D38 [63]: Here we have another appeal to the status of the truth-making res
which, because as yet unposited, does not necessitate the acts of the divine will
in advance. The analysis proffered in [8] and [15] (the truth-maker pendant of
the WSA) can deal with worries both of the Auriolian (cf. [12] and [32]) and
Ockhamist (cf. [56]) varieties.
Therefore there is no power to posit opposites in a: This is not, pace
Schabel 2000: 236, a categorical rejection of Scotus simultaneous capacity for
opposites, but rather a response to a typical (and Ockhamist) objection to that
capacity, namely that it implies contradiction at a given time. The emphasis
here is not on the rejection of synchronic contingency (although it is rejected
in its Scotistic form), but rather on the prior capacity for opposites, which on
Chattons reading remains unimpaired.
D38 [64][65]: The unposited-res analysis also takes care of voluntarist deter-
minism. Gods willing that a shall be is an eternal fact, but one whose truth-
maker is lodged in a, not before. Notice that the truth-maker here is not a res in
the strict sense but a fact referred to in a quod-phrase; see Chapter i, 10.1.2.3, as
well as d. 39 and commentary, for a discussion of the nature of the Chattonian
res.
368 chapter 3
D38 [66]: Ockham (see [58]) has offered a dilemma: either Gods will neces-
sitates everything (so much for contingency and personal responsibility), or
not (so much for certain foreknowledge). Chattons analysis takes the sting
out of Ockhams dilemma: certain foreknowledge has already been guaran-
teed (though in an idiosyncratic way) by the Copulative Analysis / WSA, while
Gods will, whose workings are structurally isomorphic with those of his
knowledge and with diachronic truth in general, necessitates only condition-
ally.
D38 [67]: The refutation here is basically straightforward: the major premise
of [1], namely everything known by God is, of necessity, true, allows substi-
tution instances that falsify the sentence. Such instances are, of course, future
contingents, which lack current truth-makers or which fall under the Copula-
tive Analysis / WSA. The text, however, is confusing in that it seems to blur the
distinction between cognition and knowledge, which plays so great a role in
Chattons analysis (see commentary on [28]); furthermore, it is unclear why
the text should lay stress on the fact that something will be cognized, since
the whole point of divine cognition seems to be that it can operate without
regard either for time or for facticity. Perhaps, then, cognitum erit is a slip for sci-
tum erit; alternatively, perhaps the correct translation of cognitum erit is [that
which is] cognized will be.
D38 [68]: The argument of [2] can be taken to have been refuted several
times over. The appeal to unposited truth-making res, the associated WSA and
Copulative Analysis, and the appeal to the future-dependency escape clause
all provide ways in which something can be true without being necessary; the
Copulative Analysis, in particular, specifies a way in which divine knowledge
can be construed in a non-necessitating fashion; and for those made queasy by
any or all of the above, the traditional Fallback position provides an alternative
refutation.

Distinction 39. Unique Question: Whether God Could Know More
Than He Knows
Summary: The question addressed in this Distinction derives from Book i, Dis-
tinction 39 of Peter Lombards original Sentences; from this source, the question
became a standard challenge for thinkers of the thirteenth and fourteenth cen-
turies. The relation of this question to issues of divine freedom, (a)temporality,
and immutability should be fairly obvious. As we shall see, Chatton has a some-
commentary 369
what tortured relationship to this question, but his struggle with it reveals a
great deal about his thoughts on time, truth, and divine cognition.
Article 1 is an extension of the discussion of divine cognition from the
previous Distinction. After stating the question in [1][2], Chatton provides a
version of his eventual solution in [3]: in the sense he cares about, God cannot
know more than He knows. Duns Scotus voluntarist account, which shows
some similarities to Chattons, is presented in [5] and defended against various
attacks in [10][17]. The divine-ideas solution, already criticized in [12][13],
is dispatched in [21][22], while the eternal-present solution is presented and
rejected in [18][20], both with Scotus help.
After the propaedeutic in Article 1, Article 2 responds directly to the form
of the question, i.e., to the question proper. Here, as so often, Chattons main
target is Ockham. The latter had used an analysis in terms of propositions
to argue that while God cannot know more than he knows, He can know
other than He knows ([23][24]); Chatton, amending Ockhams analysis so
as to make things (res) instead of states of affairs the ultimate referents of
propositions and objects of cognition, points out in [25] that on such an
analysis Ockham must concede that God can indeed know more than He
knows. In [26][28], Chatton develops his idea of truth as ultimately a property
of things (res) rather than of states of affairs, joining it with an Ockhamist
definition of knowledge so as to yield a surprising, and ambiguous, conclusion:
in the strict sense, God is eternally aware of an immutable ensemble of truths.
[29][32] concede a kind of legitimacy, though a relatively unimportant one,
to Ockhams distinction between knowing more and knowing other, while
undertaking a careful analysis of the different modes of truth. Finally, [33] and
[34] apply the conceptual analysis developed in the previous sections to the
matter at hand, answering the principal question of this DistinctionCan God
know more than He knows?in the negative.
D39 [1][2]: Chatton states the opposing view with maximal generality, thus
providing himself with a rather fat, because semantically ambiguous, target.
Note the clumsiness of expression in [1] (strictly speaking, the sentence makes
sense only if we emend something is contingently true to something is
contingently untrue).
D39 [3]: Chatton states his own position: in the most important sense, God
cannot know more than He knows. If we treat divine cognition as a form of
apprehension, i.e., as a form of intensional knowledge (see Chapter i, 10.1.2.1),
and give potest the most metaphysically generous reading, it is clear that Gods
cognitive possibilities are already, and eternally, at their maximum: leaving
370 chapter 3
aside the question of which future history is real, He eternally cognizes every-
thing about the modal map of the world (i.e., the right-branching temporal-
modal tree; see Chapter i, 4.5). Then, filling out the definition of knowl-
edge as cognition of what is true, Chatton introduces a line of analysis which
he will follow throughout this Distinction: For any given pair of propositions
{(tf)P, (tf)P}, the truth of one member of the pair is a timeless matter of fact.
In other words, there is a matter of fact, at (t0) and all other times, about
which member of the set will be true. Hence, Gods knowledge, which con-
sists of His cognition (immutable in any case) and the unchanging fact of
the matter about future truth (also immutable on this reading), is of course
immutable.
D39 [4][5]: Duns Scotus is invoked here, if not as an ally, then at least as
a kind of amicus curiae. Scotus voluntaristic theory of divine foreknowledge
(for which see Chapter i, 5.2.1), though differing in structure from Chattons
approach, is generally in harmony with it, and Chatton takes the trouble, after
presenting arguments against it in [6][9], both to undermine the implied
alternative theory of divine foreknowledge via ideas in [10][12] and to refute
the anti-Scotistic arguments directly in [14][16].
D39 [6]: The identity of the magister referred to here is unknown, nor is it
known whether the ideas in sections [6][9] are to be attributed to single
author or are just an array of possible responses to Scotus. As for [6], Aquinas
(who is not, of course, responding to Scotus) says something along these lines.
He writes that something can be known either in its causes or in itself. A future
contingent, if it is known in its causes, is known only in a conjectural and
indeterminate way; if it is known as present (actu), it is known determinately.
But God, with His presential knowledge, knows everything both in its causes
and in act.36 Chatton may be invoking Aquinas directly or may be referring to
a later author who uses this Thomistic argument against Scotus ideas.
D39 [7]: This is a familiar complaint about Scotus model: basing the resolution
of future contingents on the divine will seems to leave no room for creaturely
agency. Ockham, for example, voices this criticism.37 In fact, it is based on
sloppy reading, since Scotus establishes a mechanism, co-causality, by which
36 See st i, q. 14, a. 13, co. [aoo vol. 2, p. 209]. For the eternal-present solution, see Chapter i,
4.4.2 and 4.6.2; cf. Chattons brief mention of this solution below at [18][20].
37 See Tractatus de praedestinatione q. 1 [OPh vol. 2, p. 516, l. 254p. 517, l. 259].
commentary 371
the divine will delegates some choices to creatures (see Chapter i, 5.2.1
5.2.2). In [15], Chatton makes this point himself.
D39 [8]: This obscure-sounding objection is clarified by Chattons response

to it in [16]. The idea is that Scotus (and Chattons) project of distinguish-
ing between divine cognition and divine willing is doomed to failure, since
the divine cognition, being infinite, already contains information about the
results of any willed action. Whatever its immediate source, the idea is akin to
Bonaventures critique of the conjunctive analysis ( the Copulative Analysis);
see Chapter i, 4.6.4.1.
D39 [9]: The complaint that the voluntaristic account of divine foreknowledge
deprives God of intuitive cognition of futures is reasonable enough. I have
been unable to locate its source, though (unsurprisingly) there is a possible
connection to Ockham.38
D39 [10]: These arguments run in another sense, etc.: these arguments fail to
hit the mark. It is not God only focuses on the objection in [7], nor Gods
cognition on [8]; Chatton will return to both. Recall that claims about divine
knowledge have, for Chatton, two components; (1) divine cognition, i.e., Gods
knowledge of the modal map, and (2) claims of fact verified by things. Well-
formed propositions that merely assert (1) are not falsifiable. There is no way
the world can be that could falsify such a proposition as God cognizes the
temporal-modal profile of all attributes associated with object a, since that
proposition expresses a necessary truth. There is, however, a way the world can
be (or better, can come to be) that can falsify the proposition God cognizes (or
better, knows39) that a will bear some attribute A, since it is precisely the object
38 In Ockhams Quodlibeta septem, Quodlibet 4, q. 4, which deals with the revelation of future
contingents, someone raises the objection that a creature cannot have intuitive cognition
of future events. Ockham concedes that this matters, since every whole is greater than its
part, but that God can supply evident cognition even in the absence of what it naturally
requires, namely intuitive cognition [OTh vol. 9, p. 316, ll. 2627; p. 317, l. 78p. 318, l. 90].
Although the issue in the Quodlibeta text is not divine but rather creaturely cognition, the
reasoning is clearly similar to that in [9].
39 Chattons language here (Deus cognoscit a fore), given that it appears in the middle of a
rhetorical question, need not imply that divine cognition implies assent to one or another
side of a contradiction. The whole point of the section is to underline the fact that divine
cognition does not suffice: more is needed, namely the event itself. On the other hand, cf.
[20] below for similar language and Chapter i, 10.1.4.1 for discussion.
372 chapter 3
a, insofar as it is posited as bearing or not bearing attribute A, that verifies or

falsifies this copulative proposition.
In the typology set forth in Chapter i, 8.38.4, the first use of posited
belongs to sense ii; the second is quite general (perhaps sense i(1)).
D39 [11]: Gods cognition of a stone prescinds from actuality. The object is
grasped directly by God at an ontological stage anterior to the distinction
between the possible and the actual (see Chapter i, 10.1.2.1, 10.1.2.3); hence
the objection in [8] has no merit, since the actualizing of the stone is necessary
in order to secure knowledge rather than mere cognition. Chatton reiterates
this point at [16].
D39 [12][13]: The solution appealing to divine ideas appears (among other
places) in the work of Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Henry of Ghent. Aquinas
claims that Gods cognition of the ideas of objects grants Him complete modal
knowledge of them (including actuality); Bonaventure connects Gods cogni-
tion of ideas with the eternal-present solution; and Henry of Ghent places the
divine-ideas approach in a framework that also includes the eternal-present
and voluntaristic approaches.40 Chatton retails Scotus objections to the
divine-ideas approach, while framing those objections in terms of his own
copulative theory.
D39 [14][17]: Chatton employs his Copulative Analysis to meet all the anti-
Scotistic arguments. In responding to [6] above, he emphasizes that cognition
is intuitive but, strictly speaking, includes no information about the effects of
divine and creaturely willing, which are outside God. The language recalls
Peter Auriols distinction between Gods intrinsic and extrinsic willing; see
Chapter i, 6.2.5.2.1. The quarantining of Gods cognition from the objects of His
knowledge ensures that divine cognition stays immutable, while a distinction is
drawn in [14] between the claims God knows that a will be and God asserts
[through a prophet, or by direct statement] that a will be; the former leaves
space open for a quasi-Pelagian theory of creaturely participation in the divine
will, while the latter apparently does indeed imply that God has in-advance
knowledge (in the normal sense of the term) of one side of the contradiction.
(Chatton will severely qualify this assumption in dd. 4041.)
40 See Aquinas, i S., d. 38, q. 1, a. 3, ad 1 [aoo vol. 1, p. 101]; Bonaventure, Commentaria i, d. 39,
a. 2, q. 3, co. [Opera omnia vol. 1, p. 696]; Henry of Ghent, Quodlibet viii, q. 2 [Paris 1518,
vol. 2, f. 301r304v]. See Schabel 2000: 3441 for discussion. For references to opponents of
the doctrine of ideas, see Chapter 2, footnote 43.
commentary 373
Of the remaining arguments addressed here, the one that poses the least
difficulty for Chatton is the second, i.e., [7]; Chattons eccentric definition of
divine knowledge very comfortably accommodates creaturely freedom along
the co-causal lines laid out by Scotus. Responding to the objections raised in
[8] and [9] is trickier. In order to meet [8] on his own terms, Chatton, in [16],
must foreground the more radical qualities of his divine-cognition theory by
conceding that, in an important sense, God does not know the future.41 As
to the objection raised [9], Chatton seems, on a first reading of [17], simply
to evade it; on the other hand, the point of the last phrasethat a will be
from Godseems to be that Chattons account does, after all, locate something
akin to intuition in the fully expanded definition of Gods knowledge, since it
includes the fact that a is, ultimately, a product of Gods will and thus has its
point of origin in God Himself.42
D39 [18]: The Boethian-Aquinate eternal present solution attempts to solve

the problem of future contingents by locating God in a timeless eternity, while
reading His cognition of timed events in a manner analogous to that of crea-
turely understanding of spatial phenomena in the present; see Chapter i, 4.4.2
and 4.6.2 for discussion and references.
D39 [19][20]: After presenting Scotus rejection of the eternal present solu-
tion, Chatton offers a nuanced demurral: a better way of approaching this sub-
ject, he thinks, is by way of a proper analysis of future truth claims, i.e., one that
accords with the Copulative Analysis and the Wylton Scope Analysis. In agree-
ment with a number of remarks he makes in d. 38 (see esp. [15][20]), Chatton
claims that such an analysis is somehow consonant with a statements having
eternally been true; contrast Wylton and Auriol, both of whom use this kind of
analysis to avoid in-advance truth (see Chapter i, 6.1 and 6.2.4). As in d. 38,
the key clause is obviously the last: in the way that a proposition about the
future can have truth, i.e., in accordance with both the WSA and with what
follows in [29][32] below, it is acceptable to countenance future truth.
The significance, if any, of Chattons curious formulation of the Copulative
Analysis in [20]God cognizes that a will be (Deus cognoscit a fore)is
discussed in Chapter i, 10.1.4.1.
41 Note the conceptual isomorphism between Chattons theory of divine cognition and the
esoteric variant of Scotus instants-of-nature theory; cf. Chapter i, 5.2.1, footnote 192.
42 Cf. also Ockhams response to a related point in his fourth Quodlibet, cited in footnote 38.
374 chapter 3
D39 [21][22]: A pro forma repetition of the material already covered in [12]
[13].
D39 [23][24]: The analysis presented here is that of Ockham, who distin-
guished between the two claims (a) God can know more than He knows and
(b) God can know other than He knows. Despite his critical attitude, Chatton
in fact adopts much of Ockhams analysis. Thus it is worth quoting that analysis
at some length:
[I]t must be known that know is interpreted in this discussion in two

ways, sc. broadly and strictly. In the first way, it is the same as cognize,
according to [the sense in which] cognizing is common to everything [as
its object]. And in this way, God knows, i.e., cognizes, everything, i.e.,
the complex and the non-complex, the necessary and the contingent, the
true, the false, and the impossible. [But] strictly, know is the same as
cognize [something] true, and in this sense nothing is known but what
is true.
Thus I say that, taking know in the broad sense, God cannot know
more than He knows or know something that He does not [currently]
know, as He cannot newly acquire the knowledge of anything. Taking
know in the second way, I say that God cannot know more than He
knows. The reason for this is that everything true is known by God, and
the number of truths is always equal. Thus it is not possible that more
[complexes] are true at one time than at another, since at each time one
part of [any] contradiction is true, and nothing is true but what is one or
the other part of [some] contradiction, and it is not possible that both
parts of [any] contradiction are true. [] Nevertheless, notwithstanding
the fact that God cannot know more than He knows, God can know
something that He does not know, taking know in the second sense. []
Thus, the [proposition] I am now in Rome is not now known by God,
since it is not now true. But it can be known by God, since it can be true;
and if it will be true, it will be known by God.43
43 Ockham, Ordinatio i, d. 39, q. u. [OTh vol. 4, p. 589, l. 10p. 590, l. 16]: [S]ciendum quod
scire dupliciter accipitur ad praesens, scilicet large et stricte. Primo modo idem est quod
cognoscere secundum quod cognoscere commune est ad omnia. Et isto modo Deus scit,
hoc est cognoscit omnia, scilicet complexa et incomplexa, necessaria et contingentia, vera
et falsa et impossibilia. Stricte scire idem est quod cognoscere verum, et sic nihil scitur
nisi verum.
Per hoc dico ad quaestionem quod accipiendo scire large, Deus non potest scire plura
commentary 375
Chatton retains, from this treatment, the distinction between the broad and
strict senses of knowing, the definition of knowledge as cognize [something]
true, and the idea that the state of the world at any given time can be catego-
rized by a function taking each of an unchanging set of contradictions to a
truth-value. As for what he changes, see the next section.
D39 [25]: Chatton insists that it is a res, not (e.g.) anything resembling a fic-
tum or mind-internal propositional object, that functions as the truth- or false-
maker of a given proposition.44 He has already adverted, on a number of occa-
sions, to his own preference for res (construed as substances and accidents) as
the proper objects of cognition and propositional reference (e.g., d. 38, sections
[27], [38], [42], [48]; d. 39, sections [10] and [11]). In this section he uses his res
theory to construct an ad hominem argument: According to Chattons analy-
sis, Ockhams claim that God can know other than he knows must be cashed
out as the claim that God can cognize some thing in the future that He does
not cognize now. If, as Ockham himself admits, God need not thereby cease
to know something [i.e., for Chatton, some thing] that He now knows, it seems
to follow that God can know more than He knows after allwhich is just the
conclusion Ockham wanted to avoid. Hence, even from Ockhams perspective,
the idea that God can know other than He knows must be wrong in some deep
sense.
In fact, although the general trend of [23][25] depends on Chattons con-
strual of res as truth-makers, this section marks an important turn in his anal-
ysis. Up to now, his general approach to the problem-complex of future con-
tingents has beendespite the focus on respropositional in nature. Accord-
ingly, as indicated, res have until now played the role of truth-makers (i.e., the
verifiers of true propositions). From this section onward, however, the focus in
d. 39 is increasingly on res as truth-bearers, i.e., as the timelessly true objects of
Gods cognition. Chatton, following an established scholastic tradition, thinks
nec scire aliquid quod non scit, quia nullius notitiam potest de novo accipere. Secundo
modo accipiendo scire, dico quod Deus non potest plura scire quam scit. Cuius ratio est,
quia omne verum scitur a Deo, et semper aequalia sunt vera. Unde non est possibile quod
plura sint vera in uno tempore quam in alio, quia semper altera pars contradictionis est
vera, et nihil est verum nisi sit altera pars contradictionis, et non est possibile quod utraque
pars contradictionis sit vera. [] Tamen non obstante quod Deus non possit scire plura
quam scit, tamen Deus potest scire aliquid quod non scit, accipiendo scire isto secundo
modo. [] Sicut ista non est modo scita a Deo ego sum Romae quid modo non est vera.
Et tamen potest esse scita a Deo quia potest esse vera; et si erit vera, erit scita a Deo.
44 For a brief review of Chattons attack on Ockhams fictum theory, see Chapter i, 10.1.2.3.
376 chapter 3
that there is an important sense in which res, even considered strictly as sub-
stances and accidents, can be true.45 Nevertheless, in the following sections it
becomes clear that Chattonian res are not conceptualized only as substances
and accidents, but also as events, facts, or states of affairs, thus impinging on
some of the conceptual territory of propositions in Ockhams sense.46 On this
interpretation, a true res is a state of affairs which, timelessly, is the case. The
result of this broadening of the meaning of the term res is a theoretical stance
which, because of the metaphysically stable character of res as the objects of
divine cognition, is sharply at odds with the open-future tendencies on display
in parts of d. 38 and in dd. 4041. As we shall see, this shift is due partly to the
fact that Chatton is, at this point in his career, genuinely ambivalent on the
issue of an open future.
D39 [26]: Using a mixture of his own conceptual tools and traditional Aris-
totelian principles, Chatton deduces omnitemporality, and thus immutability,
for the objects of divine cognition. The argument actually continues his ad
hominem attack on Ockham, but the result is endorsed by Chatton himself: God
cannot know something other than He knows. As presented in this section, the
argument makes a simultaneously chaotic and circular impression, but in fact
it has a conditional proof structure which can be sketched as follows:
1. Assume that some res R is true at some Assumption

time;
2. It follows that it is signified now by 1 (Doctrine of Contradictories

both members of the contradictory plus truth-value links)
complex-pair {P, P}
3. One member of the contradictory Bivalence

complex-pair {P, P} is currently true.
45 See Anselm, De veritate, c. 7 [Anselmi opera omnia vol. 1, pp. 185186]; Aquinas, De veritate
q. 1, a. 2, co. [aoo vol. 3, p. 2]; Duns Scotus, Quaestiones super libros Metaphysicorum
Aristotelis, lib. vi [Opera philosophica vol. 4, pp. 6567]. For Chattons focal meaning
approach to the truth of res, see Brower-Toland 2013: 180, and Chapter i, 10.1.2.3 of this
study. See also the further development of the concept of res in dd. 4041 q. 2 [5], etc.
46 Cf. Norman Kretzmanns translation of Boethius term res as things, events, and states of
affairs (in Ammonius and Boethius 1998, p. 187).
commentary 377
4. If some res R is true at some time, it is 13, conditional proof

signified by some currently true complex
(either P or P).
Since being true, for a res, amounts to being signified by a true complex, we can
just emend 4 to 4:
4. If some res R is signified by a true com-

plex at some time, it is signified by some
currently true complex (either P or P).
In other words, if anything is true at any time, it is in a sense true at all times.
As for the principles appealed to, they are of varied provenance. Chattons
Doctrine of Contradictories is reviewed briefly in the commentary on d. 38 [52]
(see also Chapter i, 10.1.2.4); essentially, it states that any two propositions
P and P refer to the same res, else they would not be contradictories. The
truth-value links, a.k.a. the universal alethic relation (see Chapter i, 4.5), are
a doctrine common to virtually the whole scholastic tradition stemming from
Aristotle and Boethius; that doctrine stipulates that the temporal-modal field
is stable. The other principles are self-explanatory.
This is rather a lot of sound and fury for a conclusion that Ockham would
surely accept without demur: objects grasped eternally by God are also grasped
now by Him. But despite the modest yield of the argument, it is important
as an indication of Chattons intention to reframe the main question of this
Distinction in terms of res rather than propositions.
D39 [27][28]: Some conceptual housekeeping, or perhaps throat-clearing.

Divine apprehension is assimilated to knowledge, which makes sense inas-
much as knowledge, in this Distinction, amounts to cognition; then Chatton
reiterates his negation doctrine (i.e., the Doctrine of Contradictories).
D39 [29][32]: These sections add some detail to the doctrine implied in Chat-
tons critique of Ockham in [25][28]. Chatton offers a kind of sop to Ockham:
the latters concern for propositions as truth-bearers can be accommodated,
albeit on a secondary basis, by Chattons analysis. This is because when it comes
to cognition, two kinds of truth are under discussion: (1) the truth that is asso-
ciated with the thing cognized, which is the truth that Chatton cares about in
this Distinction; (2) the truth associated with the complex or proposition mak-
ing reference to the thing cognized, which is the focus of Ockhams analysis.
Since res obtain eternally, type 1 truth is immutable; but type 2 truth, which is
378 chapter 3
associated with temporally indefinite statements like Socrates is seated right

now, can change from moment to moment. However, [30] establishes that the
bearers of type 2 truth can be considered in two ways:
(a) as propositions tout court, and in this sense they are vulnerable to de-
verification in the absence of the relevant truth-making res;
(b) as connected by a timeless link to the thing cognized (= the main sub-
ject or focus of the proposition), in which case they may be considered
eternally true a sense analogous to type 1 truth.
Finally, [31] and [32] use the distinction between type 1 and type 2(a) truth (and
its bearers) to concede that, even though the former is what really matters,
Ockham has a point with respect to the latter: in the Venerable Inceptors
relatively trivial sense, God can at least know other than He knows.
D39 [32]: As indicated in the previous note, this section represents the appli-
cation of Chattons alethic analysis to divine knowledge, with the result that
Ockhams ideathat God can know other than He knowsis admitted to hold
for type 2(a) truth. There is, however, an additional element in this section
that might give the reader some pause: the apparently superfluous use of the
determinate operator. Is there any special significance in Chattons talk about a
determinatum complexum verum? In the context of these sections, there does
not seem to be; but compare this use of determinatum, which seems rhetorical
(cf. commentary on d. 38 [8]) to that in dd. 4041, q. 1 [13], in which the topic
is the direct divine ordination of specific events (e.g., the salvation of the spe-
cially predestined). If this strong sense of determinatum is in play here, Chatton
may be preparing his audience for the possibility of God delegating some of
His own decisions to creatures in a strong sense (cf. dd. 4041, q. 1 [57][59],
esp. [58], commentary on these sections, and Chapter i, 10.1.4.2; cf. also the
distinction between broad and narrow assent in dd. 4041, q. 2 and Chapter i,
10.1.4.3.1).
Here is a summary of the three kinds of truth:
Type 1 truth is res-borne, i.e., it is borne directly by the res (the substances,
qualities, and facts) referred to in a proposition. Since it depends on refer-
ents that are ex hypothesi given as an ensemble at some appropriate point
in the timeline, type 1 truth is always present for any (pretheoretically) true
proposition. Example: Socrates will sit (considered as itself a res, i.e., a fact) is
eternally true in virtue of the eternally given substance Socrates, the eternally
commentary 379
given accident be seated, and the inherence of the latter in the former, when-
ever it eventually happens.
Type 2(a) truth is res-dependent: it is associated with a proposition considered

as temporally indefinite. Hence, type 2(a) truth is sometimes present and some-
times absent. A typical example would be a present-tense assertion such as
Socrates is seated: at times this is type 2(a) true, at times not. Future-tense
propositions, too, can be evaluated according to type 2(a) truth. A (pretheoret-
ically true) proposition such as Socrates will sit, evaluated according to type
2(a) truth, lacks a truth-value in the (hitherto) absence of Socrates and seated-
ness, possesses the value of T while that substance and that accident are really
available for reference but before Socrates sits for the last time, and possesses
a value of F at and after Socrates sits for the last time.
Type 2(b) truth is res-directed: evaluated according to type 2(b) truth, Socrates
will sit is eternally true in a manner analogous to type 1 truth. It is type 2(b)
truth which explains the sense in which Gods knowledge of complexes never
changes: given a contradiction such as {Socrates will sit, Socrates will not sit},
res-directed truth must pertain to exactly one member, and God grasps this
truth (ultimately itself a res) directly and immutably.
Chatton does not return explicitly to this typology in dd. 4041 or (as far as
I can tell) anywhere else. The importance of res as the ultimate referents of
ordinary propositions remains, and their crucial role as truth-makers (whether
necessitating or non-necessitating) is an abiding concern, but Chatton does not
normally clarify which type of truth he is talking about at any given juncture.47
Nevertheless I shall have occasion elsewhere in this commentary to make use of
the typology, as its use often clarifies the structure of Chattons various analyses.
For example, reflection should indicate that it is type 2(a) truth that presents
truth-to-necessity dangers. If a sentence such as Socrates will sit at instant a is
currently (propositionally) type 2(a) true, then there is currently some res that
acts as its truth-maker at present, and it is thus irrevocably and unpreventably
true. Thus the Wylton Scope Analysis should be read as applying to type 2(a)
truth only. Moreover, it is clearly type 2(a) truth that is involved in Chattons
later analysis of prophecy in dd. 4041, q. 1 [32][33]. Finally, in the Day 3
theory (see dd. 4041, q. 1), an analysis in terms of type 1 and type 2(b) truth
47 Moreover, the meaning of the word res shifts subtly in the course of dd. 4041; see those
Distinctions and commentary.
380 chapter 3
throws light on Gods non-necessitating grasp of the truth of prophesied things,

events, and states of affairs.
A final observation about Chattons alethic analysis is in order. In these sec-
tions, at any rate, all three types of truth assume a stable ontological back-
ground of res. There are, throughout this discussion, pretheoretically given
facts of the matter with respect to the question of whether you will sit at a
given instant a, whether or not such facts are epistemically accessible to human
beings and whatever role they play in the alethic analysis. Chatton is thus hold-
ing the world-model parameter steady while conceptually manipulating the
theory of truth parameter for the special purpose of solving predominantly
theological dilemmas specifically dealing with divine knowledge.48 This policy
makes perfect sense given his focus in this Distinction on res-based rather than
propositional analysis.
D39 [33][34]: Chatton applies the analysis in sections [23][32] to the prin-
cipal arguments: type 1 truth dispatches [1], and the privileging of divine cog-
nition of res over any other kind of definition of divine knowledge takes care
of [2]. The final sentence of [34] is mysterious. One possibility, suggested by
Keele 2010b, is that Chatton is making the trivial observation that God can know
corruptible objects; another interpretation, given the particulars of Chattons
objectual theory of divine cognition, reads the sentence as claiming that God
can cognize some object which does not and never will exist, i.e., some merely
subsistent object.

Distinctions 4041
General remarks on rss I, dd. 4041. Dd. 4041 address the traditional soteriolog-
ical issues associated with Lombards original text, while engaging in a highly
complex way with the modal and alethic doctrines associated with the issue of
future contingents. The salient point of contrast between d. 39 and dd. 4041
is the reintroduction of open-future possibilities in the latter; however, this is
just the beginning. Textually and doctrinally, these Distinctions are a fascinat-
ing mess. Nowhere is the status of rss as a genuine reportatio more in evidence
than in the often contradictory and chaotic, but just as often analytically rigor-
ous and original, sections included here. We get a glimpse into the workshop
of a scholastic thinker in the very process of developing his ideas.
48 See Chapter i, 2.12.2 for these two parameters.

commentary 381

Question 1. Whether the Mystery of the Divine Incarnation was the
Meriting Cause of Human Predestination.
Summary: After posing the question in a highly specific form, Chatton first
argues for the negative (i.e., that the Incarnation was not the meriting cause
of human predestination) by appealing to divine impartiality ([1]) and to the
modal status of predestination ([2]). After a simple assertion of the affirmative
([3]), the next few sections focus on the modal issue, asking whether a given
predestined one can be damned and, if so, in what sense of can ([4][7]).
Before embarking on the first round of analysis, Chatton takes care to disclaim
responsibility for what follows, insisting that he is only reciting the views of
others ([4]).
Article 1, consisting of sections [5][37], is organized around theory of truth,
divine foreknowledge, divine will, the ab aeterno status of predestination, and,
once more, the question of whether the predestined one can be damned. After
dispatching Ockhams views on the subject ([5][7]), Chatton embarks on a
long paraphrase of what he takes to be Peter Auriols views; this comprises
sections [8][20], with a continuation at [28][37]. According to this para-
phrase, Auriol claims that future contingent claims are neither true nor false,
but become retrospectively so upon the positing-in-being of the res or fact to
which they refer ([8][9]). Chatton then lays out a two-type theory of contin-
gency, with one type applying to the specially predestined and another, more
radical type, applying to the rest of us ([10][13]). Then comes a series of sec-
tions devoted to the Auriolian take on divine foreknowledge ([14][18]); here
the Copulative Analysis and the unposited-res analysis (see d. 38 and commen-
tary) are pressed into service to explain the senses in which God does and does
not know the future. Following a series of orthodox objections to the Aurio-
lian account ([20][27]) there comes a reprise of Chattons earlier distortion
of Auriols doctrine, according to which God must somehow await events in
time in order to turn His cognition into knowledge proper ([28][32]; cf. d. 38
[12][14]). In [32][34], this analysis is applied to genuine prophecy; in [35],
to the question of whether God wills that this one be saved; and in [36], to
the question of whether this one has been predestined ab aeterno. Finally, [37]
applies the composition / division distinction to answer the question Can the
predestined one can be damned? in the positive.
Article 2 ([38][111]), ostensibly organized around the question whether the
act of Christ is in some way the meriting cause of this persons predestination,
is actually a loose baggy monster containing, among other things, Chattons
own review of the progress of his thought on the subject of future contingents.
382 chapter 3
It begins with a pro forma refutation of some of Ockhams views on the merit-
ing cause of predestination ([38][42]). There follows, in [43][45], a return to
the Auriolian analysis of prophecy, here applied to the meriting cause of pre-
destination; this is followed, in [46][51], by a brief and accurate summary of
Auriols (unrelated) doctrine of General Election. After some objections to this
doctrine ([52][56]), sections [57][59] change the subject entirely, present-
ing the progress of Chattons thought on future contingents as having taken
place during three days, with each section devoted to expounding the doctrine
supposedly discussed during that day: section [57] (Day 1) presents something
like the Boethian logical-compatibilist model, section [58] (Day 2) the distorted
Auriolian model, and section [59] (Day 3) a novel analysis making use of the
temporal clause for [instant] a, which I suggest is fundamentally similar to
Auriols actual analysis. [60][65] and [76][83] record and answer a series of
objections to and questions about the Day 3 analysis, some fairly straightfor-
ward and some quite obscure; these are interrupted, at [66][75], by a brief but
eclectic excursus on the subject of contingency as per se notum. [84][86] then
carefully apply the Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3 analyses to the issue of predestina-
tion, thus closing the expository gap between [56] and [57]. Sections [88][93]
spell out Chattons own theory of predestination, which resembles Auriolian
General Election plus assorted Chattonian complications, while [94][111] deal
with a number of theological objections to this theory. Finally, [112] responds
to [1] by claiming that Chattons theory retains divine impartiality, while [113]
implies that [2] commits equivocation on the term contingent.
Formulation of Question 1: The formulation of the main issue of q. 1 is highly spe-

cific; more commonly in contemporary Sentences commentaries, the question
under discussion is simply whether there is some cause of human predestina-
tion. But Chattons opinion on this general question is that there is such a cause,
and that it can be specified: Gods salvific activity, which infuses grace into the
predestined, is conducted by God primarily through the Incarnation and Pas-
sion of Christ (see, e.g., rss i, d. 17, q. 1 [53], [100]). As should become clear,
however, Chatton also has much to say on the subject of the wayfarers own
contribution to his eventual salvation.
D4041Q1 [1]: Christs Incarnation, as the palmary example of Gods salvific

will, must be morally impartial; otherwise, God would be a respecter of per-
sons (an acceptor personarum: cf. Acts 10: 34). If, then, we are to attribute the
salvation of the predestined to the Incarnation, we must pari passu attribute
the damnation of the reprobate to it. And this last, it is silently assumed, is not
acceptable. If, on the other hand, we assume an asymmetry of divine action vis-
commentary 383
-vis the predestined and the reprobate, ascribing to God the meriting cause
of predestination while letting responsibility for damnation devolve upon the
reprobate, we are back with the problem of a biased God, Who has pre-selected
certain individuals for predestination on no grounds whatever. The implication
is that we can avoid the entire dilemma by assuming that the Incarnation of
Christ, as the divine instrument of salvation, is not the meriting cause either
of predestination or of reprobation. This conclusion, however, is dangerous,
indeed Pelagian, and Chatton will not in fact endorse it (although his response
to these sections, at q. 1 [112] and [113], is ambiguous and indirect).
D4041Q1 [2]: The reasoning in this section can be expressed in the following
form:
1. If the Divine Incarnation were the meriting cause of Given

human predestination, then predestination would be
contingent.
2. But predestination would be contingent if and only if Definition of
it were necessary to take counsel and deliberate about contingent
predestination.
3. It is not necessary to take counsel and deliberate Follows from the
about predestination. divine source of
predestination
4. Therefore, predestination is not contingent. 2 and 3
5. Therefore, the Divine Incarnation is not the meriting 1 and 4, modus
cause of human predestination. tollens
The argument seems vague and confused. Part of the confusion is caused by
an ambiguous use of the term contingent: in step 1, it is the contingency of
the Incarnation that is appealed to,49 while in step 2 it is conative creaturely
49 Judging from [2], [10], [11], and [89], as well as rss iii, d. 1, q. 1 [72][75], Chatton believes
that the Incarnation is contingent on human sin. This belief places him in the mainline
or anthropocentric tradition to which Augustine, Anselm, and Thomas Aquinas also
belong. The alternative, Christocentric tradition, inaugurated by Rupert of Deutz in the
early twelfth century and continued by (among others) Grosseteste and Duns Scotus,
views the Incarnation as metaphysically necessary and only the Passion as conditioned by
human sin (Horan 2011). The terms anthropocentric and Christocentric when applied
to this tradition come from Braud de Saint-Maurice 1955: 241242, quoted in Horan 2011:
375. More broadly, Chatton (like Scotus) believes in divine contingency of action (see rss i,
d. 42 [23]).
384 chapter 3
contingency that is tied to the human necessity to take trouble over future
outcomes. In the event, Chatton will respond to this argument by asserting that
predestination is contingent in its [proper] mode (see [113] below).
D4041Q1 [3]: Assuming the Incarnation, any blessedness (i.e., final glory of the
predestined) follows necessarily; hence, the Incarnation is the meriting cause
of predestination. This move reads a tergo necessitation as a sufficient criterion
for establishing causality; it leaves unclear the question of whether blessedness
might be possible in the absence of, or at least prescinding from, the Incarna-
tion. Note the use of quo posito, which will prove of crucial importance in the
discussion to come. Chatton will in fact endorse the position of [3] in [88].
D4041Q1 [4]: Chatton lays out the two principles that are likely to produce
a clash in any discussion of predestination (as in any discussion, in a theistic
context, of future contingents): (1) creaturely liberty of indifference is per se
notum and cannot coherently be called into question (cf. d. 38, q.u. [3], as well as
[66][75] below), but (2) Gods knowledge and will are immutable and perfect.
Then he returns to the question of how to formulate correct doctrine (cf. d. 38
[4]) and disclaims responsibility for what follows. This disclaimer, which recalls
Chattons timidity in d. 38 [26] and which he will repeat several times in the
current Distinctions, aims to deflect charges of heresy onto Peter Auriol.
D4041Q1 [5][6]: Ockham, in Ordinatio i, d. 40, q. u. [OTh vol. 4, pp. 592596],

answers the question whether it is possible for someone predestined to be
damned, and for someone foreknown [as reprobate] to be saved50 in the affir-
mative. In doing so he makes use of the traditional scholastic scope distinction
between composition and division: a proposition like It is possible for pre-
destined Peter to be damned can be analyzed either as the composed
(Peter is predestined and Peter is damned),
which is obviously false, or as the divided
Peter is predestined and (Peter is damned),
50 OTh vol. 4, p. 592, ll. 2122: Utrum sit possibile aliquem praedestinatum damnari et
praescitum salvari.
commentary 385
which is held to be true and unproblematic.51 As Chatton notes, an appeal of

this kind is common, indeed traditional, in the scholastic literature on predes-
tination, though the terms vary somewhat. Peter Lombard, reporting others
views, applies the distinction coniunctim / disiunctim to the proposition non
potest modo esse quin sit praedestinatus; considered coniunctim, the propo-
sition is true, while disiunctim it is false.52 Similar moves can be found in the
work of Aquinas (st i, q. 23, a. 3, ad 3 [aoo vol. 2, p. 222]) and Duns Scotus [r i-
a dd. 3940, n. 76, p. 488]. The use of these scope-disambiguators continues
the sophismatic strategy as applied to the pure problem of future contingents
(see Chapter i, 3.13.2.2 for an analysis of the sophismatic approach).
Chatton, following Auriol,53 suggests that this move is an evasion. The modal
operator in the above formulations refers not to options really available
to an agent in time, but to forgone options merely counterfactually available
to God and creature as co-agents; the appeal to scope thus ignores the fact
that the options now really available to the predestined one do not include
damnation, andrather more ominouslythe options really available to the
51 OTh vol. 4, pp. 595596.

52 Lombards discussion clearly indicates that counterfactual possibilities are held, by some,
to be an adequate warrant for temporal conative modality:
Hoc enim et coniunctim et disiunctim intellegi potest. Non enim potest esse ut ab aeterno
sit praedestinatus et modo non sit praedestinatus, nec potest esse simul ut sit praedesti-
natus et non sit praedestinatus; sed tamen potuit esse ab aeterno quod non esset praedes-
tinatus, et potuit ab aeterno non esse praedestinatus. Et sicut ab aeterno Deus potuit
eum non praedestinare, ita conceditur a quibusdam quod et modo potest Deus eum non
praedestinasse ab aeterno. Ergo potest Deus non praedestinasse eum, ergo potest iste non
fuisse praedestinatus. Si vero non fuisset praedestinatus, nec esset praedestinatus; ergo
potest modo non esse praedestinatus.
Sententiae i, d. 40, c. 1 [lombard 1971, p. 285, l. 33p. 286, l. 7]
For this [proposition] can be understood conjunctively and disjunctively. For it cannot
be that, from eternity, he is predestined, and now he is not predestined, nor can it be
that he is simultaneously predestined and not predestined; but it could have been, from
eternity, that he was not predestined, and [therefore] he was able, from eternity, not to
be predestined. And just as, from eternity, God could have not predestined him, thus it is
conceded by some [n.b. not by Lombard himself] that God can now not have predestined
him from eternity. Therefore God can not-have-predestined him; therefore he can not-
have-been-predestined. But if he had not been predestined, he would not be predestined;
therefore he can, now, not be predestined.
53 See Auriol, Scriptum i, d. 39, a. 3 [Schabel 1995, p. 188, l. 871p. 189, l. 875], and a. 4 [ibid.,
p. 197, l. 1067p. 199, l. 1108].
386 chapter 3
reprobate one do not include salvation. Predestination and reprobation imply

conative, though not absolute, necessity, and conative necessity is what counts.
To preserve conative contingency, then, the truth of propositions asserting
predestination or reprobation will have to yield. Or so it seems; but a few
sections later, Chatton will be singing a different tune (see [10] below).
D4041Q1 [7]: To preserve conative contingency and future truth, Ockham

can be expected to resort to his standard move, the exclusion of true future-
dependent propositions from the otherwise global necessity of the past (see
Chapter i, 4.5.4). But, Chatton responds, this wont work: future-dependent
propositions lack a current truth-maker and so cannot be true now.
Chattons response is revealing. Recall that he has no problem, in principle,
with the future-dependency escape clause: he has endorsed it himself in d. 38
[41], and will do so again in Quodlibet 27 [42]. What he objects to here is the
use of the doctrine to bolster the truth (rather than the contingency) of future-
tense claims. While such claims are contingent, he suggests here, they are not
yet (at least in the sense intended by his interlocutors) true, since there are, as
yet, no truth-making res for them to refer to. There are (as section [9] below
confirms) two issues here. First, even if the truth-making res for the sentence
this one will be savedand by this Chatton means a state of affairs, namely
this ones attaining of salvationwere to be posited in being, i.e., made actual
in the present instant, the sentence would not be verified, since it speaks of
the future. Lurking behind this technical worry is a problem of considerably
more moment, one which Chatton hesitates to formulate openly: perhaps
there is no matter of fact about this ones eventual salvation; perhaps God and
creature have not yet made up their minds on the subject. But this would mean
that future contingent propositions must await events (i.e., the positing of the
relevant res) in order to be verified or falsified; and Gods knowledge, it seems,
must also await events.54 Compare this section to the remarks on the truth of
the determining complex in d. 39 [32].
54 There is another problem associated with this objection. Given Chattons Scotistic com-
mitment to a divine grasp of res (however construed) at a stage anterior to the possi-
ble/actual split (see d. 39 [11]), one might imagine that the truth-making res would in
any case already be given. An answer might be that the res (in this case, the substance
this one and the quality is saved) are indeed available to ground the reference of the
relevant proposition, but that they do not yet function as truth-makers, given that the rel-
evant quality does not yet definitely or determinately inhere in the relevant substance.
See Chapter i, 10.1.2.310.1.2.4.
commentary 387
[Five doubts]: While the topic of these doubts is soteriological, the issues raised
continue the inquiry into future contingents: their truth-status, their modal
status, and their implications for divine knowledge.
D4041Q1 [8]: Chattons insistence that he is merely reciting someone elses

opinion (in this case, officially Auriols) should be compared both to his earlier
discussion of Auriols doctrine in d. 38 [12][14] and to his remarks in d. 38
[26] on the Wylton Scope Analysis. See also commentary on [10][13] below.
For Chattons general strategy of distancing himself from Auriol, with whose
doctrines he has an obvious affinity, see Chapter i, 10.1.4.5.
D4041Q1 [9]: This passage may make a deceptively tame impression at first
reading. Chatton is not merely trading on the fact that, before tomorrow, I
cannot sit tomorrow; as the next few sections make clear, he is saying that, prior
to a, statements of the form tomorrow, I will sit are never true until rendered
retrospectively so by events. (Cf. [7] above).
D4041Q1 [10][13]: In these sections, Chatton teases out some of the impli-
cations of a doctrine of Ockhams, namely the latters theory of predestination
as presented in Distinction 41 of his Ordinatio. In Ockhams theory, predesti-
nation and reprobation are in general based on Gods foreknowledge of how
individuals will behave, but an exception is carved out for privileged events
and individuals.55
Building on Ockhams approach, Chatton introduces two types of contin-
gency, which I call type A and type B. Type A contingency, discussed in [10]
and [11], is the pro forma variety, which works as follows: God, through His
ordained power, has guaranteed that certain states of affairs will hold and cer-
tain events will take place. Among these are conditional rules such as he who
is well-disposed shall be saved, as well as specific events such as the resurrec-
tion of the dead and the ultimate salvation of certain individuals such as the
Blessed Virgin. These states of affairs and events are necessary as of now (nec-
essarium ut nunc) precisely because they are, even now, determinately true in
advance. Nevertheless they are broadly contingent in the sense that their nega-
tions imply no conceptual incoherence or absurdity: they are available to Gods
free action considered from the perspective of His absolute power.56 In other
55 See OTh vol. 4, p. 606, l. 11p. 607, l. 13.

56 See Chapter i, footnote 43. For a general introduction to the distinction between Gods
ordinate and absolute power, see Courtenay 1990.
388 chapter 3
words, the negations of predestined events that involve creaturely action

count as available to the creatures in question even though God has preemp-
tively ruled these negations out. In terms of the forward-branching tree model
outlined in Chapter i, 4.5, nodes in which Peter commits final impenitence
are available to him, but will not be exercised: all the live nodes accessible
from the present include Peters final blessedness. As Chatton points out in
[10], this answers the objection in d. 38 [34], namely that the positing-in-being
of contingency produces a contradiction. In fact, some contingencies need not
be positable in being57 in order to count as contingencies.58 A peculiarity of
this doctrine is that the pro forma contingency here under discussion is, to all
appearances, precisely the same kind rejected in d. 38 [45] and characterized as
deceptive logic-chopping in the current Distinction (see [6] and commentary
above).
In [12][13], Chatton presents type B contingency. There is no truth-maker
as yet for events that are type B contingent; hence, on Aristotelian correspon-
dence, there is as yet no type 2(a) truth to propositions asserting the content of
such events.59 In [12], Chatton illustrates type B contingency with the example
I will sit, while in [13], he applies it to propositions asserting the predestina-
tion of those not specially predestined.
In these sections Chatton is treating his sources with considerable free-
dom and some creativity. Recall that the opinion as a whole is supposed to
be Peter Auriols (as claimed in [8] above). But Auriol has no two-type con-
tingency theory resembling the one presented here. What we find in d. 40 of
Auriols Scriptum, instead, is a unitary treatment of the predestined that is in
line with his innovating doctrine of General Election (see Chapter i, 6.2.5.2.2).
On this account, the predestined one has no special status: like everyone else,
he is free, before the instant of his actual blessedness, to commit final impen-
itence, since there is no expectative truth before that instant as to his status
as predestined or reprobate. Auriol defends this approach with a battery of
arguments that are consistent with his rejection of expectative truth in gen-
eral.60 The real background of the doctrine presented here by Chatton consists
57 The sense of positing-in-being in this passage is apparently i(3)(a) (see Chapter i, 8.3
8.4).
58 This answer to d. 38 [34] was already adumbrated in d. 38 [48].
59 It is unclear whether there is type 1 truth associated with such propositions on this reading;
the issue would seem to depend on whether type 1 truth depends on the eventual positing-
in-being of the ensemble of substances and qualities that would count, for Chatton, as a
fact.
60 See Auriol, Scriptum i, d. 40, a. 1 [Halverson 1993, p. 301, l. 350p. 303, l. 441].
commentary 389
of (a) Ockhams brief remarks on specially predestined individuals and events,

and (b) Thomas Wyltons answer to the question Can the predestined one be
damned? Ockhams remarks, mentioned above, divide predestined humanity
into two classes, those whose predestination depends in some way on Gods
infallible prediction of their future behavior and those whom God has prese-
lected for salvation on arbitrary grounds. Ockham does not, however, address
the question raised by such preselection: can the specially predestined one be
damned? Wylton, by contrast, treats predestination as unitary (as does Auriol);
he does not mention special classes of the predestined. On the other hand, Wyl-
ton does answer the question of whether the predestined one can be damned,
and he answers it in a way that corresponds to Chattons type-A-contingency
approach: of any given predestined person, it is logically possible that that
person be damned, and this merely formal possibility is to be treated as cona-
tive for the purposes of establishing his freedom of action.61 Chatton, in other
words, has developed a doctrine of Ockhams, fitted it out with a conceptual
tool used by Wylton, and washed his hands of the resulting doctrinal amalgam
by attributing it to Auriol.62
One result of Chattons two-type contingency doctrine is that most people
are more free in an intuitive sense than are Mary and Peter: in terms of the
forward-branching tree-model, there are live nodes accessible to those not
specially predestined on which they achieve final blessedness, and live nodes
on which they do not.63 Also striking (though in line with [2] above) is the fact
that the specially predestined need not engage in deliberation and counsel in
order to secure their eventual blessedness.
The second doubt: As the following sections make clear, the one who will
be saved is not a specially predestined person, but someone for whom type B
contingency applies.
61 Wylton, Quaestio, nn. 8384 [Schabel 2011b, p. 464].

62 Auriol, be it noted, specifically and trenchantly rejects Wyltons approach, pointing out
that mere logical possibility does not cancel immutability and thus conative impossibility
[Halverson 1993, p. 309 ll. 791797].
63 Modern ideas of intuitiveness, however, can be misleading in a medieval context; cf.
Anselms remarks in De libertate arbitrii ch. 1 to the effect that the ability to sin does
not belong to freedom of choice [Anselmi opera omnia vol. 1, pp. 207209], Grossetestes
quasi-Anselmian doctrine outlined in 5.1.1 above, and Aquinas distinction between the
ability to choose diverse things, which does belong properly to freedom of choice, and
choosing evil, which does not (st i, q. 62, a. 8, ad 1 ad 3 [aoo vol. 2, p. 274]); behind them
all looms Augustine, Contra Julianum, book 6 [P.L. 45, pp. 15181522].
390 chapter 3
D4041Q1 [14]: Chatton, still apparently reciting, suggests that a proper

understanding of divine foreknowledge with respect to future contingents
involves an appeal to the Copulative Analysis of d. 38 [28]. Noteworthy in this
version of the analysis is the language Chatton uses: [K]nowing this [consists
of] cognizing this and this is true; which [copulative] was not [true] before this
instant, by reason of its second part64 (emphasis added). The analysis of the
copulative proceeds in one of two ways, depending on whether or not one inter-
polates [true]:
(1) Interpolating [true]: There is a shift in emphasis from modality to truth:

while in d. 38 the second conjunct of the copulative is presented as con-
tingent, rendering the entire copulative contingent, here the important
point is that the second conjunct lacks a truth-value, rendering the entire
copulative not yet true. The distinction among types of truth in d. 39 [29]
[32], apparently retained here, allows Chatton to distinguish among types
of truth and to deny type 2(a) truth to future contingents.
(2) Not interpolating [true]: the copulative literally did not exist before this
instant; instead, it is enacted by a creaturely agent who participates dia-
chronically in the verification of propositions asserting ordinary predes-
tination.
Sections [16] and [31] below suggest the first interpretation; Chattons remarks
at [32][33] about expectation vs. assent suggest the second.
Notice, too, how the example sentence slips insensibly from this one will
be saved to I am sitting: soteriological considerations take a back seat to the
issues of time, truth, and knowledge.
D4041Q1 [15]: On the doctrine expounded in [10][13], there are no facts of

the matter with respect to propositions about future contingent states of affairs
ostensibly under our control. Nevertheless God can reveal to us (and so make
us believe) such propositions even though the normal felicity conditions for
such communicationthe actual obtaining of the state of affairs described,
corresponding to the determinate truth of the associated propositionare,
on this theory, lacking. The gap between the felicity conditions that would
be appropriate for us and those appropriate for God is a special case of the
difference between the way attributes in general apply to creatures and the way
64 Latin: [S]cire hoc est cognoscere hoc et hoc est verum, quod non fuit [verum?] ante hoc
instans ratione secundae partis copulativae.
commentary 391
they apply to God: just as God is not just in a creaturely sense, but is rather
justice itself,65 so He does not really foreknow that you are going to sit, but
foreknows it in the sense that it is He from whom all truth and knowledge
sensu lato come.
D4041Q1 [16]: The third way of understanding the doubt sounds remark-
ably like the first way (see [14] above). The difference seems to be that the topic
under discussion is divine assent to, rather than knowledge of, a future contin-
gent. On the other hand, recall from d. 38 [42] that divine assent and knowledge
are virtually interchangeable. Gods relation to the various res involved in a
proposition such as this one will be saved or you will sit is simple in the
sense that it is apprehension or cognition without reference to actuality, until
the res are posited in being; once so posited, the res form the basis of Gods cog-
nition of the determinate true complex, i.e., of the knowledge that you were
always to be saved or that you were always to sit (cf. d. 39 [32]).
According to this opinion, it would be said that certain arguments are valid:
traditional truth-to-necessity arguments are, on this view, valid; hence the
need to render them unsound by limiting truth to matters already considered
antecedently necessary.
D4041Q1 [17]: A familiar move, dating back to the Hellenistic Master Argu-
ment66 and further back, of course, to De Interpretatione 9: determinate truth-
in-advance can be past-necessitated, and hence must be rejected.
D4041Q1 [18]: This section reiterates the rejection of the Ockhamist appeal
to the future-dependency escape clause (see [7] above). In this context, says
Chatton, the clause does not do what his interlocutors want it to do, since
it secures only type 1 truth (see d. 39), the kind which, being eternal, can do
without the actual presence of truth-making res. The truth of the complex
i.e., type 2(a) truth, the kind the Ockhamist interlocutors are aiming foris not
secured.
Is Chatton, in fact, speaking in his own voice at this point? And if so, where
was the line between recitation and positive assertion crossed?
65 Cf. Boethius De trinitate c. iv [Boethius 1973, p. 18]: Rursus iustus, quae est qualitas,
ita dicitur quasi ipse hoc sit de quo praedicatur, id est si dicamus homo iustus vel deus
iustus, ipsum hominem vel deum iustos esse proponimus; sed differt, quod homo alter
alter iustus, deus vero idem ipsum est quod est iustum.
66 For which see Chapter i, footnote 3.
392 chapter 3
D4041Q1 [19]: This seems like a concession of the validity of Divine Fore-
knowledge Necessitates. But notice the absence of any vocabulary associated
with modality. Chatton might well simply be conceding that certain future
contingent eventsnamely type A contingent events such as Peter will be
savedare true now, and their truth can indeed be deduced by the DFN argu-
ment; nevertheless they remain type A contingent since their negations are not
logically impossible. The lack of any need of taking counsel with respect to pre-
destination is in line with [2] and [13] above.
D4041Q1 [20]: In the absence of both a determination on Gods part that such-
and-such an event will take place and the positing-in-being of the thing, event,
or state of affairs in question, the associated proposition cannot be true.
D4041Q1 [21]: This is the first of a short series of sections ([21][27]) opposing
the Auriolian approach. The sections bolster the idea of determinate truth in
advance, and therefore of an orthodox approach to divine foreknowledge. In
the current section, Chatton lays out a reductio ad absurdum argument. Let
us assume that the advocates of truth-value gaps for future contingents are
right. Let us further assume that some future thing, event, or state of affairs
is both instantaneous and under the control of a free agent: the volitional
act underlying a basic action like lifting ones arm will do. It would follow
that, before instant a, the proposition Joe will issue, in instant a, the voli-
tional command to lift his arm lacks a truth-value because of the absence
of the relevant res (in this case the command itself); at and after instant
a, the proposition will be false because of its future-tense form. Hence, at
instant a, matters stand just as the future-tense proposition signified, yet the
proposition has never been, is not, and will never be true. This is counter-
intuitive; hence, the assumption of truth-value gaps must be rejected. Note
that the argument depends on Chattons type 2(a) truth (see d. 39 [30] and
[32]).
D4041Q1 [22][27]: A broad array of orthodox objections is raised against the

Auriolian account. These include a normal interpretation of bivalence (as in
[22]), divine immutability ([23]), the reliability of prophecy ([24] and [25]),
scriptural testimony ([26]), and an ordinary understanding of divine provi-
dence ([27]). These objections should be compared to those which Chatton
raises against (his version of) Auriols doctrine in d. 38 [15][21].
D4041Q1 [28]: Chattons language suggests that, somewhere in [8][20], he

had moved away from Auriols opinion and is now returning to it; if this is
commentary 393
the case, it is hard to see where exactly the break occurred. In any event,
he repeats here the distortion of Auriols doctrine expounded in d. 38 [12]
[14]. Recall that Chattons own amendment of this doctrine (see d. 38 [8],
[15], [24], [25], [28]) consisted (among other things) in the introduction of
the positing-in-being criterion, which he takes up here as well. Every true
proposition asserting divine foreknowledge incorporates, as a proper part, the
fact of the positing-in-being of the relevant truth-maker: this fact is what makes
it true. We have here an example of type 2(b) res-directed truth (see d. 39
[30] and commentary). The alternative modetype 2(a) truth, in which the
proposition functions as a complex and signifies the thing to be as it is (rem
esse sicut est, see ibid.)is here represented by the unproblematically true
statement man is an animal. This, however, is precisely the way in which
God does not assent to a future contingent statement; if He did so, then the
propositional content of all such future-tense statements would be true in the
present.
D4041Q1 [29]: Chatton concedes the validity of the argument in [21], while
implicitly denying that it poses a danger to his account of truth. Type 2(a)
truth never characterizes the proposition in question, for the reasons laid out
in [21], butChatton could respondthe proposition nevertheless possesses
type 2(b) truth, which, before instant a, must await the positing-in-being of the
truth-maker at instant a.
D4041Q1 [30]: The objector in [22] maintains that the truth of the disjunction
(P P) depends on the truth of exactly one of the disjuncts. Hence if P
is Socrates will sit, then either Socrates will sit is true or Socrates will
not sit is true. So far we have a straightforward presentation of bivalence-
based logical determinism; we also have a claim which, given his argument
in d. 39 [25], [26], [29], and [30] that the truth must, after all, be somewhere
in the contradictory pair, Chatton might be expected to endorse. Chattons
response makes tacit use of his tripartite analysis of truth in d. 39 [29][31].
He concedes the validity of the argument and draws the conclusion that,
where P stands for a future contingent, neither P, P, nor (P P) is true in
the sense intended (i.e., by type 2(a) truth). The argument is thus valid but
unsound, since the premise, T(P P), is false on the grounds that (P P)
lacks a truth-value in the sense of type 2(a) truth (it is of an undetermined
quality). More specifically, the following sentence lacks a type 2(a) truth-
value:
Socrates will sit at instant a, or Socrates will not sit at instant a.

394 chapter 3
The following sentence, however, has a propositional type 2(a) truth-value

of T:
You, Socrates, will at instant a either sit or not sit.
The first sentence, despite its apparent status as a logical truth, could be verified
only by the positing-in-being of some truth-making res in the form of Socrates
or his accident of seatedness / not-seatedness (after all, those are the topical
foci of the sentence); both of these res are ex hypothesi absent, so the sentence
is not verified. In the second sentence, however, the truth-making subject of
the sentence is ex hypothesi present as an addressee; hence the tautology, in
the form of the predicate, is (so to speak) activated, yielding type 2(a) truth for
the sentence as a whole.
The analysis is interesting in itself as a testimony to Chattons commitment
to a res-based analysis of truth even where determinate claims about the real
future are concerned; it is also further evidence that Chattons presentation has
uncoupled itself from Auriols doctrine and is at this point substantially his
own. For unlike Chatton, Auriol thinks that all bare disjunctions of the form
(P P) are true, even where P stands for a future contingent whose res are all
currently nonexistent.67
D4041Q1 [31]: This is a reiteration of the distinction between divine cognition

and divine knowledge, based both on the positing-in-being criterion and the
Copulative Analysis / WSA; see the relevant sections in d. 38. The separation
of divine cognition from creaturely action means that the latter can change
without the former undergoing intrinsic change; with the positing-in-being of
the creaturely action, Gods cognition undergoes only extrinsic or Cambridge
change, thus defusing divine mutability worries. The many things that masters
say in Sentences [commentaries] may refer to previous thinkers discussions of
the Copulative Analysis, a.k.a. the conjunctive analysis (cf. Chapter i, 4.6.4
4.6.4.2). Finally, the reference to equal indifference toward both sides of a
contradiction suggests that the apparatus of the Copulative Analysis / WSA
applies only to ad utrumque contingency. Chatton apparently assimilates the
latter to type B contingency (see [10][13] above).
67 See Chapter i, 6.2.3 and 6.2.4, and Auriols Scriptum i d. 38 a. 3 [Schabel 1995, p. 130,
l. 925p. 131, l. 930]. Auriols specific example is Antichristus erit vel non erit; this is one of
the rare cases in which the choice between Socrates sedebit and Antichristus erit actually
makes a difference!
commentary 395
D4041Q1 [32][33]: In reacting to the dilemma of [24]either a prophecy

is true now, or a prophet can be wrongChatton clarifies the connection
between the WSA and his own alethic analysis in d. 39 [29][32]. A prophecy
is not yet true, but will be true. In other words, the wayfarers attitude toward
the contents of a prophecy of the form you will sit at instant a should con-
sist of an expectative and an assenting part. During all moments up to but not
including moment a, we expect or await the type 2(a) truth of the present-
tense proposition you are sitting, i.e., its correspondence with present res;
at instant a itself, when the relevant res have been posited in being,68 we
assent to that correspondence. This entire process constitutes our (justified)
belief in the pretheoretical truth of the prophecy. And if you choose not to
sit in instant a? Then, concedes Chatton, the prophecy will have been falsi-
fied.
D4041Q1 [34]: Chatton aligns his theory of truth with his two-type theory
of contingency (see [10][13] above): Some events predicted in Scripture are
indeed predetermined by God, and propositions asserting that such events
will take place are true in advance on any reading of truth. Other events
predicted in Scripture depend on the free actions of creatures in a more radical
sense. It is these latter, the type B contingent events, to which Chattons alethic
analysis applies. Since the predictions of Scripture, although not considered
true in the type 2(a) sense, must in some sense represent the contents of Gods
knowledge (and therefore have the certainty associated with that knowledge),
Chatton apparently expects his alethic analysis to provide (a) an adequate
warrant to establish genuine creaturely freedom in spite of what is, to all
appearances, genuinely praevident knowledge on Gods part and (b) sufficient
reassurances that the prophecy will, in the event, turn out to have been true.
For criticism of Chattons approach to the problem of falsifiable prophecy in
these sections, see Chapter i 10.1.4.2.1 (2).
D4041Q1 [35]: Chatton reiterates the parallel analyses of divine assent and
divine knowledge: both are amenable to the copulative / WSA analysis or, on
the truth-maker side, to the analysis in terms of yet unposited res (see, e.g., d. 38
[16], [42], d. 39 [32], and section [16] in the current Distinction). This analysis,
he thinks, resolves the ab aeterno worries of the third principal doubt (whether
God wills that this one shall be saved).
68 Posited in being in sense ii; see Chapter i, 8.4.

396 chapter 3
D4041Q1 [36]: The approach of the previous section is extended to cases in

which predestination is explicitly asserted. A proposition Walter is predes-
tined must first be translated into the future-tense Walter will receive blessed-
ness, which in turn is resolved into something along the lines of This will be
true: Walter receives blessedness. Assuming the pretheoretical truth of the
original proposition, the expanded version has, from eternity, type 2(b) (res-
directed) truth. What has never been truein fact, on Chattons reading it is
falseis This is true: Walter will receive blessedness. The explicit fronting
of the truth operator is, for Chatton, equivalent to asserting propositional type
2(a) truth. On the other hand, the specially predestined can be discussed in just
such a mode: Mary is predestined was true in every sense, and from eternity.
D4041Q1 [37]: There are two main interpretive problems with this section.
First, which kind of predestined human beings are we talking aboutordinary
sinners who will, in the end, make final perseverance, or the specially pre-
destined? Second, given that Chatton has already considered and rejected
the solution by composition and division in [5] and [6] above, what is it
doing here? A plausible solution is suggested by taking the two questions
as connected. On the assumption that we are now discussing the specially
predestinedwhich is reasonable after two sections devoted mainly to the
ordinary predestinedChattons embrace of composition and division is in
line with his two-type doctrine of contingency. Type B contingency, the kind
that applies to the ordinary predestined, involves live modal alternatives from
the present moment, on some of which the ordinarily predestined one is ulti-
mately saved and on some of which he is ultimately damned. For such contin-
gency, Chattons various devices (Copulative / WSA, delay of positing-in-being,
distinctions among types of truth) are appropriate. Type A contingency rep-
resents a simpler case: as expounded in [11][13], it involves reading logical
contingency as conative contingency for the purpose of calculating an agents
freedom. Such contingency dovetails nicely with the composition / division
distinction because that distinction downplays the importance of the availabil-
ity of live conative options and treats foreknowledge-based threats to free-
dom as mere scope fallacies (see Chapter i, 3.13.2.2 for the sophismatic
approach).
This interpretation explains most of the section, but a small mystery
remains. How are we to interpret the final sentence? It seems to imply that even
on the divided interpretation the specially predestined cannot help having been
predestined. Such a clause seems to revoke the privileges apparently granted
to type A contingency in [11][13]; if we take the clause seriously, the mere log-
ical possibility of Mary sinning (and therefore not having been predestined)
commentary 397
does not, after all, count as her ability to sin in any meaningful sense. Perhaps,
however, the text is corrupt and an unintended negation has slipped into the
sentence.
D4041Q1 [38][41]: Recall that in [5][7] above, Chatton reviewed Ockhams

opinion; hence he must begin pro forma with Ockham in the current Article,
even though the discussion has shifted to Auriol.
In these sections, Chatton refers to Ockhams discussion of predestination in
the latters Ordinatio i, d. 41, q. un. Here Ockham suggests that, while there may
be no Aristotelian cause of predestinationi.e., no formal, final, material, or
efficient causenevertheless there is a sense in which the antecedent of a valid
consequence can be regarded as the cause of the truth of the consequent.69
Thus, in a consequence such as This one will persevere; therefore, this one will
be saved, the antecedent can function as the meriting cause of the consequent,
and therefore of this ones predestination. Chattons critique runs as follows: If,
as Ockham maintains, future contingent statements have determinate truth-
values in advance, then this analysis is otiose. In the aforesaid consequence,
the consequent already has determinate truth, and cannot receive it from
the antecedent in the way Ockham indicates. Moreover, the entire analysis is
fundamentally wrong or at least superficial, since it is conducted in terms of
propositions rather than res. Finally, Ockhams determinate truth in advance is
untenable, as he himself admits (Chatton could be referring to the open-future
tendencies of the argument reviewed in Chapter i, 7.27.2.2).
D4041Q1 [42]: This is intended as a reductio: if Ockhams views on the Virgin

Marys special predestination were correctif, that is, there was no meriting
cause of her predestinationthen she would not have needed the Incarnation;
but she did need it (see [89], [91], and [111] below).
D4041Q1 [43][45]: The analysis in [32][34] above, there applied to the

question of the truth of prophecy, is here applied to the thorny problem of
the meriting cause of predestination. Is there a cause of predestination that is
somehow localizable in the wayfarers own actions? Chattons answer will turn
out to be that there is always such a cause, irrespective of the category (special
or ordinary) into which the predestined one falls. In these sections, however,
the focus is clearly on the ordinarily predestined, i.e., those to whom type
B contingency applies. This is clear from the language Chatton uses: instead
69 See OTh vol. 4, p. 605, l. 22p. 606, l. 6.

398 chapter 3
of examples such as Mary, Peter, and Christ, this one is mentioned (as in
this one will be saved), as are you (if you will have persevered). The final
perseverance on the part of the predestined one is, along with Gods efficacious
but conditional promise of salvation, a partial cause of this ones salvation.
The transition from theory of truth to issues of soteriology is handled by
treating the two problem-complexes as amenable to the same kind of structural
analysis. In the Copulative Analysis / WSA, as well as the associated analysis
in terms of as-yet-unposited res, an element is not yet so but stands, even in
the present, as an absent but effective truth-maker for future-directed claims
that things will be so, so long as such claims have the correct formal structure.
Analogously, the causal structure of this ones salvation lacks a crucial element
at present, but that element will be present when this one finally perseveres.70
D4041Q1 [46][51]: Chatton provides a brief and accurate paraphrase of Peter

Auriols General Election theory of predestination (for which see Chapter i,
6.2.5.2.2). According to Auriol, God offers grace to everyone; the predestined
are those who accept the offer, while the reprobate are those who impose an
obstacle or impediment to the offer. The theory has two features that distin-
guish it sharply from Chattons approach: (1) there is no privileged class of
predestined; on Auriols account, everyone is on an equal footing; (2) Auriol has
a purely negative account of the cause of predestination, as it is only the absence
of an impediment to grace that is responsible for someones final blessedness.
Chatton will stress his problems with the second point in [53][55] below.
Chattons logic is wobbly in these sections. For example, the ex opposito
move at the end of [46] is obscure: if we are to read some kind of modus-
tollens-style reasoning into the section, it is far from clear what real work it
is doing.71 Similarly, the ex opposito move in [50] is fallacious: if we interpret
God predestines X and God reprobates X as contradictories, then God
predestines all for whom no obstacle is posited yields by contraposition not
God reprobates all for whom an obstacle is posited but rather For all whom
God reprobates, an obstacle is posited. The fallacy does not, as far as I have
been able to tell, originate in Auriols text.72
70 See also rss i, d. 46, q. 1 [8] [vol. 2, p. 440], where the relation of God to the ordinarily
predestined is discussed in terms of Gods antecedent and consequent will.
71 Cf. the similar obscurity of the ex opposito move in d. 38 [23].
72 But Auriol does endorse the following principle: [V]erum non sequitur nisi ex vero
(Scriptum i, d. 38, a. 3 [Schabel 1995, p. 131, l. 945]). The conceptual mistake enshrined
in this (fallacious) principle is certainly akin to the reasoning Chatton presents in section
[50].
commentary 399
The use of posit in these sections is that of Auriol in his discussions of

General Election, namely to place or impose an impediment to grace; it has
no direct relation to the various meanings of posit in being (see Chapter i,
88.5 for the latter).
D4041Q1 [52][56]: Chatton presents a series of objections to Auriols theory.

Section [52] points out that Auriols own alethic analysis, similar to Chattons,
refutes or at least complicates his General Election approach to predestina-
tion. The objection is a bit unfair: there is nothing in General Election that
is essentially incompatible with Auriols denial of expectative truth, since that
denial is made in the context of a model with an ontologically stable future
(see Chapter i, 6.2.5.1). Sections [53][56] find exceptions to Auriols pairings
of negative causepredestination; positive causereprobation. Of particular
importance for the rest of dd. 4041 are the first type of exceptions. An ordinar-
ily predestined person can, by fulfill[ing] those obligations imposed on him by
positive precepts, contribute to his own salvation.
D4041Q1 [57][59]: In these important sections, Chatton presents his treat-

ment of the problem of future contingents as having taken place over a period
of three days. Each day, on this account, was devoted to a specific proposed
solution; on the third daythe day corresponding to the now of section
[59]Chattons own preferred solution is presented. The three sections thus
represent a neat (perhaps too neat) summing-up of Chattons engagement with
the central alethiological, epistemological, and modal issues surrounding the
problem during the period of his lecturing on the Sentences. For a more detailed
discussion of these sections, see Chapter i, 10.1.410.1.4.3; here I present short
descriptions of each days doctrine while concentrating on specifically textual
and interpretive issues. Two preliminary observations are worth making:
(1) Determining the real textual basis in rss for Chattons individual days
presents a difficult hermeneutical challenge. There is no reason to sup-
pose that lectures on the Sentences were given strictly in the order in
which they appear in the texts; consequently, material for each of the
three days could theoretically appear anywhere in dd. 3841 (or, indeed, in
other parts of Book i). For this reason, in selecting the attestation for each
day, while I have been guided in the first instance by Wey and Etzkorns
suggestions, I have also taken into account the prima facie content of each
days doctrine. See also Chapter i, 10.1.4.1, footnote 432.
(2) Although his name is not mentioned here, Peter Auriol is a strong
presence in these sections (as throughout dd. 3841). Chattons strange
400 chapter 3
engagement with Auriols ideas is discussed in Chapter i, 10.1.4.5, in

which I (developing a suggestion of Schabel 2000: 237) argue that, in hold-
ing Auriol up as a target for accusations of Pelagianism, Chatton is himself
developing new conceptual tools to explore the possibility of an open
future. Like Ockham before him, he is attracted to the vision of strong
libertarianism but unwilling to commit himself openly to it.
D4041Q1 [57]: From soteriology, we are abruptly whisked back to matters of

truth, modality, and foreknowledge. The effect is disorienting; Auriols theory
of General Election is compatible with any number of different approaches
to the problem of future contingents, and there is no obvious way in which
the conceptual progression sketched in [57], [58], and [59] can be construed
as a response to sections [52][56]. Of course, the placement may simply be
an artifact of the process by which rss was compiled from notes. Assuming it
is intentional, however, a possible explanation lies in the simple fact that it is
Auriols theory that has just been presented. On this reading, the French master
functions, here as elsewhere, not so much as an intellectual opponent as a kind
of dangerously fascinating bogeyman. It is important for Chatton to at least
seem to be moving away from this source of doctrinal danger; hence, perhaps,
his placement of a discussion of General Election directly before his summary
of his struggle with the problem of future contingents.
The Day 1 doctrine presented in this section is one in which eternal in-
advance truth is unproblematically compatible with contingency. In other
words, it is a version of the Boethian logical-compatibilist model discussed
in Chapter i, 4.5. According to this model, there is a single real future, a
Thin Red Line73 whose contents provide the basis for true assertions about
future matters of fact; however, time also branches forward, presenting alter-
native futures whose unreality does not prevent them from functioning as
the basis for true assertions that things might be otherwise than they will in
fact be. Many passages in the previous Distinctions can be held up as exam-
ples of this kind of thinking. For example, d. 38 [8] and [15][25], [46], and
[60] all support stable in-advance truth in various ways, as does Fallback (see
d. 38 [26]). The alethic analysis presented in d. 39 [20][34] also provides
several ways in which in-advance truth is eternally available for divine cog-
nition (as well as several ways in which it is not so available). Chatton indi-
cates that, in the Day 1 model, the Ockhamist truth-clauses for tensed and
modal expressions (see d. 38 [15] and Chapter i, 7.1) and the Wylton Scope
73 For the Thin Red Line (the term is due to Belnap and Green 1994), see Chapter i, 4.5.
commentary 401
Analysis (see d. 38 [22][23], d. 39 [20], and Chapter i, 6.1) provide an ade-

quate account of in-advance truth.
D4041Q1 [58]: Day 2, the view Chatton presents as Auriols, is essentially the
view described in Chapter i, 2.1 as the A-series / modal realist model: the fixed
present and past are ontologically and epistemically available to God and crea-
ture, but future contingents are ontologically and epistemically unavailable,
and so even God must await events, including the willed actions of creatures,
before His cognition becomes, retrospectively, ab aeterno knowledge.
In the context of rss, the Day 2 doctrine emerges from a distortion of Auriols
thesis of divine indistant knowledge of futures. As we have seen, Chatton
misattributes to Auriol the belief that God has knowledge after the fact (see
[28] above, and d. 38 [12][14], [20]). Similar lines of thought can be observed
in d. 38 [42][43] and in the current Distinction and question, sections [8]
[20] and [29][37]. In many of these places, Chatton either directly ascribes
the doctrine to Auriol or denies responsibility for it, claiming that he is merely
reciting anothers view (cf. Chapter i, 10.1.4.5).
D4041Q1 [59]: Chatton here expounds a doctrine (hereafter Day 3) which

he evidently considers a mean between extremes. Day 1, as Chatton makes
clear in [63], is vulnerable to the truth-to-necessity argument, while Day 2
seems to curtail divine omniscience. Day 3 concedes the ontological stability
of the future but blocks necessitation by means of a formal device, the clause
for [instant] a/b, which allows God to have assent and certain cognition of
Socrates behavior in a without necessitating that behavior. From eternity, both
of the following formulae are true:
1. God assents that [for all instants b prior to a] ([for a, Socrates sits] or [for
a, Socrates does not sit])
2. God assents that [for instant a] (Socrates sits).
Divine assent and cognition are treated as virtual synonyms in this model (con-
trast d. 38 [42]; cf. Chapter i, 10.1.4.3.1). In the Day 3 model, divine assent
and cognition remain constant and eternal, while, as in Day 2, the objects of
that assent and that cognition vary over time. However, in Day 3 (as in Day
1) there is a timeless fact of the matter about what happens in instant a. In
fact, Day 3, which Chatton presents as his own analysis, strongly resembles
Auriols actual theory (as opposed to the theory Chatton misattributes to him).
For Auriol, God has indistant but not expectative knowledge of futures; thus
Gods knowledge that Socrates will sit does not operate along the line of suc-
402 chapter 3
cession (infra lineam successionis), but attaches ab aeterno directly to the event
in question. However, there are no facts (and therefore no truth or falsehood) at
any instant b<a respecting a future contingent that will be resolved at instant a;
thus Gods lack of expectative knowledge (knowledge of how matters stand at
b with respect to some future a) is no lack at all, there being, officially, nothing
to know (see Chapter i, 6.2.16.2.4).
D4041Q1 [60]: An obvious objection is immediately raised to the Day 3

account: since it is ex hypothesi timelessly true that, for a, Socrates sits, the
proviso that God assents/cognizes for a that Socrates sits does not provide an
adequate defense against the truth-to-necessity argument. Chatton retorts that
although the complex for a, Socrates sits is in a sense timelessly true, that
sense is not available for ordinary tensed propositions, i.e., complexes: for
the entire period designated by b, the complex for a, Socrates sits is indif-
ferent between truth and falsehood despite the timeless truth of the corre-
sponding proposition asserting the existence of the divine assent/cognition of
the thing(s) signified by the complex. Since the two truth-declarations oper-
ate on different levels, the objectors move, which attempts to take Chattons
own analysis in order to reinstate the necessitating type of truth, is ineffective.
Although Chattons terms are different, both the objection and the response are
reminiscent of an objection in Wyltons Quaestio ordinaria74 and of Chattons
previous discussion of the Wylton passage in d. 38 [22][23]; see also Quodlibet
q. 28 [30][35] and commentary.
D4041Q1 [61][65]: Chatton faces a series of skeptical questions regarding

Day 3. During this back-and-forth, theory of truth is held by Chatton to provide
satisfactory answers to all the perplexing questions about prophecy, divine
foreknowledge, and creaturely freedom.
D4041Q1 [61]: The objector, making the Correspondence Assumption (see

Chapter i, 2.2), reads indeterminate truth-status as destroying the basis of
Gods foreknowledge, since knowledge is of the true. Chatton responds by
appealing to the differing objects of ordinary creaturely and divine/prophetic
knowledge: both God and His prophets foreknow and assent directly to the
thing signified by the relevant proposition, not to the proposition itself. Such
foreknowledge and assent can be certain without making the proposition true.
74 See Wylton, Quaestio, nn. 7879 [Schabel 2011b, p. 463] and Chapter i, 6.1 for discussion.
commentary 403
D4041Q1 [62]: Note the return of the positing-in-being criterion to Chattons

truth requirement; it played a crucial role in the Day 1 doctrine as well (see, e.g.,
d. 38 [8], [15]), and put in a brief appearance in texts supporting Day 2 (d. 38
[42], [43]). The referent of illud is obscure: I have assumed that the assent is
meant, which would mean that, at time of actuality, Gods assent is somehow
present in the state of affairs to which it refers.
D4041Q1 [63]: The analysis of [59] and [60] is reiterated: a proposition such
as God assents for a that it is true can be true without entailing necessitation
of its contents.
D4041Q1 [65]: Yet another attempt to get Chatton to concede expectative

propositional truth is blocked. The interplay here between divine and crea-
turely use of propositions, res, and assents is somewhat confusing, but is consis-
tent with Chattons distinction among what I have called res-borne, res-directed
and res-dependent truth (see d. 39 [32] and commentary). Chatton denies that
God must assent to the proposition Socrates will sit for a; He merely assents
directly, ab aeterno, to the res (= actual state of affairs) signified by that propo-
sition, a state of affairs that will be the case in due time (see d. 38 [15]). On
this reading, Gods cognition and assent have type 1 truth. We can also read
Gods assent and cognition through the lens of the proposition; if we do this,
God can be claimed to assent, timelessly and directly, to the res referred to by
that proposition. On this reading, Gods cognition and assent have type 2(b)
truth. If, on the other hand, a wayfarer utters the proposition Socrates will sit
in a, his reference depends on the res signified by that proposition, and his
claim lacks a type 2(a) truth-value since that res does not currently exist. On
the other hand, when the wayfarer utters a proposition such as God assents,
for a, that Socrates sit, he is using a proposition to signify an assent, which is
quite in order since the assent currently (indeed eternally) exists: the assent
itself functions as the res upon which the wayfarers proposition depends for
its type 2(a) truth. But from Gods res-directed assent that Socrates will sit for
a we cannot licitly deduce the res-dependent truth that Socrates will sit in
a.
D4041Q1 [66][75]: These sections respond to the criticism, in sections [60],

[62], [64], and [65], that the Day 3 or middle way account destroys contin-
gency. The objections raised in those sections can be taken as applying to a
general and intuitive sort of contingency: given Gods ab aeterno knowledge
of how things are for a, such events (which include phenomena character-
ized in the Day 2 theory as type A and type B contingent things and events)
404 chapter 3
seem necessary. Chattons strategy is to concede determinate future truth to

such things and events and to concentrate on defending contingency as per se
notum, i.e., as epistemically primitive and thus in no need of demonstration.
This is a standard move; for other examples of it, see Duns Scotus, Lectura i,
d. 39, qq. 15, nn. 3940 [Vat. vol. 17, pp. 490491] and the discussion of Auriols
truth-to-omnitemporality argument in Chapter i, 6.2.2. Of course, arguing
that something is epistemically primitive involves the disputant in a kind of
paradox: if the something so characterized is really primitive in the sense
intended, argument should be unnecessary. Hence the style of argumentation
employed here is mainly rhetorical. We get a list of phenomena that defeat
intellectual analysis but whose reality, our experience tells us, we must (and
do) nevertheless accept.
Chatton selects his evidence from the realms of epistemology, physics, and
logic. In [66][67], he takes up a classic example from the tradition of skepti-
cism: the stick that appears bent or broken because immersed in water.75 His
treatment of the example can be compared with that of Duns Scotus, who
appeals to the primacy of the intellect in adjudicating between rival inter-
pretations of sense data.76 Against Scotus, Chatton asserts that it is experi-
ence that tells us to disregard the testimony of our senses and correctly judge
the stick to be unbroken. To a Scotist who objects, in [67], that it is precisely
experience (which the Scotist evidently equates with sensory testimony) that
tends to lead us astray in this instance, Chatton replies that only an intellect
that is uninstructed by experience (properly construed) would lead us thus
astray. Next the problem of projectile motion, a much-discussed conundrum
in the context of Aristotelian physics, is considered: given that, according to
the Philosopher, everything in motion is moved by something else, how can
a stone keep moving after it is no longer in contact with whatever initially
moved it?77 Chattons candid (or perhaps lazy) answer is that he does not know
([69]). Finally there comes a terse affirmation of the possibility of asserting
75 See Outlines of Pyrrhonism i. 119 [Sextus Empiricus 1955, p. 71] and Against the Logicians i.
414 [Sextus Empiricus 1957, p. 221].
76 According to Scotus, our intellect contains a tacit proposition (propositionem quiescen-
tem) to the effect that nothing harder is broken by the touch of something softer than
itself; this proposition overrides our erring senses. See Ordinatio i, d. 3, pt. 1, q. 4 [Vat.
vol. 3, pp. 147148].
77 See Aristotles Physics, book 7, 241b34; for his proposed solution see book 4, 215a1417. On
late thirteenth to mid-fourteenth century attempts to solve the problem, see Murdoch and
Sylla 1978: 211213 and Grant 1996: 9399.
commentary 405
statements involving the liars paradox, despite the fact that such statements
seem to lead to contradiction ([71]).
Having pointed to a class of truths to which we simply must assent, Chatton
then asserts that the existence of conative contingency is a member of that
class. We have the right to think of our actions as subject to the full indifference
of [our] power even though God has given us trustworthy assurances that a
given side of the contradiction will in fact be realized ([72][73]). Prophetic
dreams notwithstanding, we are free.
Whether or not Chatton has earned the right to this claim, it can, if accepted,
be used to defend either type A or type B contingency. In both cases, logical
determinism is denied in the manner of Dr. Johnsons famous outburst: Sir,
we know our will is free, and theres an end ont. However, Chatton is clearly
not entirely happy with this solution, and his admission in [73] that he do[es]
not know how contingency can obtain given such a closed-future model can
be fruitfully compared to Ockhams admission that he does not know how
God knows the (presumably open) future (see Chapter i, 7.1 and 7.2.2
7.2.3).
D4041Q1 [76]: The specter of the God Can Be Wrong argument is raised. In
Peter Lombards canonical version, this old sophism reads as follows:
kind; but it can be that this one does not hold the lecture; therefore it can
be otherwise than God foreknew; therefore Gods foreknowledge can be
mistaken.78
(See Chapter i, 3.1 for discussion.) Chattons doctrine of divine cognition and
assent, which posits indifference for b<a and determinate truth for a, domiciles
contingency in the portion of the timeline designated by b. Given the apparent
importance attached to the concept of contingency expounded in [66][75],
the question naturally arises: how seriously can we take this indifference?
Does it imply, as it intuitively seems to do, that it is in this ones power to do
the opposite, in a, of what God timelessly assents will really be the case in a?
And if this is so, does this one not have the power to make God turn out to have
been wrong? Chatton denies that this is the case: what guarantees contingency
78 Lombard, Sententiae, i, d. 38, c. 2 [Lombard 1971, p. 278 l. 27p. 279 l. 2]: Deus praescivit
hunc lecturum, vel aliquid huiusmodi; sed potest esse ut iste non legat; ergo potest aliter
esse quam Deus praescivit; ergo potest falli Dei praescientia.
406 chapter 3
is the neutral orientation of divine assent in b, not the one-sided assent that
pertains to a. Nevertheless he insists on an ethically substantive interpretation
of indifference.
D4041Q1 [77]: The critique continues. Even if we cannot make God wrong
in retrospect, does not the Day 3 doctrine imply that we can redirect Gods
assent to a different object? Chatton surprisingly concedes the point, while
insisting that this conclusion does not imply that we have power over God
in any meaningful sense: instead, our ability depends on Gods embrace of
all modal options and therefore testifies to His power. If taken seriously, this
response aligns Day 3 with the first interpretation of Ockhams doctrine given
in Chapter i, 7.2.3, with the communis opinio discussed in 7.3, and with
Chattons own doctrine of broad and narrow divine assent as developed in dd.
4041, q. 2 (see below). It would, however, seem to militate against the general
tendency of Day 3, which assumes ab aeterno divine assent to a fixed future for
instant a. That he is not entirely happy with the open-future implications of
this response is evident from [87] below.
The last sentenceGod, therefore, assents firmly that I sit for acan
be taken as an assertion, given without argument, of the certainty of Gods
assent and cognition despite the doubts that might have crept in due to the
high-caliber form of contingency apparently conceded to creaturely agents
under the Day 3 regime. Divine assent to a specific outcome, though apparently
defeasible, is firm.
D4041Q1 [78]: Chatton aligns Day 3 with the analysis at [32][34] and [43]
[45] above, which in turn look back to the WSA and the positing-in-being
criteria from dd. 3839.
D4041Q1 [79][80]: Here are two more attempts to force in-advance proposi-
tional truth onto claims about divine assent. In [79], note that truth and firm-
ness of divine assent come apart. In [80], note the return of the anti-Wyltonian
move of d. 38 [23].
D4041Q1 [81]: The objector invokes another variation on (theo)logical

determinism: if God has indeed assented, for a, that I perform action A, then
surely, far from taking any trouble over the matter, I should want to perform
action A? Chatton dialectically concedes the point, while insisting on
contingency anyway (as per the analysis in [66][75]), and drawing atten-
tion to the argos-logos-style psychological trap the objector lays for himself:
since we have in any case no epistemic access to Gods assent for a, however
commentary 407
ontologically fixed that assent may be, it is better for us to take trouble and
counsel over our future actions.
D4041Q1 [82]: Propositional discourse, a sine qua non of philosophical anal-

ysis, distorts truth (in the broad sense) when the subject itself is truth; this
explains the error of the (unnamed and unknown) authorities who object to
the Day 3 doctrine.
D4041Q1 [83]: Both question and answer are so brief as to make interpretation
uncertain. [A]ssent, for a, that the king sits refers to a typical example from
the ars obligatoria (for which see Chapter i, 8.2). Perhaps, therefore, we should
read question and answer in the following way. The objector seeks grounds
for assent (both human and divine). Human grounds for assent are obscured
by the apparent existence, on some level of analysis, of an ontologically fixed
decision on Gods part as to whether action A or its contradictory will be
posited in being, while divine grounds for assent, on the important subject of
special predestination, are notoriously problematic (cf. [49] above). Chatton
replies that there is nothing especially problematic about the notion of assent
without clear grounds: for example, the ars obligatoria allows us to entertain
the possibility that a player assents to the proposition the king is sitting, a
proposition whose truth-value is normally (indeed canonically) unknown.79
D4041Q1 [84][86]: These sections establish a connection between the osten-

sible subject of the Question, namely the meriting cause of human predestina-
tion, and the alethic, epistemological, and modal issues Chatton has been con-
cerned with for the last thirty or so sections (cf. the conceptual break between
[56] and [57] above).
D4041Q1 [84]: According to the Day 1 model, which explicitly concedes expec-
tative truth, there are fixed truths right now that correspond to every persons
status as saved or damned. God wills, ab aeterno and right now, that this one
will be saved, and that he will receive the help required from God, i.e., the habit
of infused grace necessary to secure salvation;80 and God wills that that one be
damned for his faults.
79 See Burleigh, De obligationibus [Green 1963, vol. 2, p. 62, ll. 613; translated in Kretzmann
and Stump, eds., 1988: 397].
80 Against Ockham, Chatton believed in the necessity of gratia infusa, a special dispositional
quality granted to the predestined one by God in order to secure salvation. See rss i, d. 17,
q. 1 [51][108]; lss i, d. 17, q. 1 [30][77].
408 chapter 3
D4041Q1 [85]: Day 2 requires a radical redefinition of predestination. Instead

of any kind of foreknowing and foreordaining, Gods predestination (and pre-
sumably also His reprobation, though it is not mentioned here) operates
according to the Copulative Analysis. God cognizes/assents to general ordained
laws of conduct, and, in the moment when this one posits good action in being,
God wills to help him attain salvation. This entire process, which must await the
crucial instant of correct action, is known as predestination (cf. the treatment
of prophecy at [32][33] above).
D4041Q1 [86]: Day 3 utilizes the clause for [instant] a in a way which, pre-
sumably, avoids the necessitation worries associated with Day 1 and the Pela-
gian threat implicit in Day 2. Predestination, on this model, is (like foreknowl-
edge) ab aeterno, but aims directly at the crucial instant a of (final) divine and
human action, bypassing the timeline; prior to this instant (i.e., in all instants
b<a), it has the structure of mere cognition or assent, lacking as it does access
infra lineam successionis to the res domiciled at the decisive moment a. Repro-
bation, it is implied, works analogously to predestination.
D4041Q1 [87]: Chatton seems to be getting cold feet when confronted with
an old problem. The Day 3 doctrine stipulates that God has a firm res-directed
assent that, for a, you sit; yet Day 3 also takes contingency seriously, in that for
all b<a you have, in some strong sense, the ability to not-sit in a, thus apparently
exerting retroactive control over Gods assent. Chatton has, of course, already
proffered a solution to this problem (see [77]); perhaps the solution now seems
weak to him. The problem, and a new solution, will turn up again in q. 2 [10]
below.
D4041Q1 [88][93]: These sections continue developing Chattons doctrine as

to the who and the how of predestination, already sketched in [10][13] above.
As to the who, the first class of predestined has three subclasses: Christ
Himself (as human), baptized infants, and those sanctified in the womb, such
as the Blessed Virgin. The second class is, basically, the rest of us, who are not
specially predestined but will be blessed if we perform appropriate actions:
persevere in virtuous behavior, go to church, etc. (Note that the two-class
analysis of the predestined, which was made in the context of the Day 2 model,
has carried over to the Day 3 model.)
As to the how, it varies from case to case. In the case of Christ Himself,
it is primarily Gods will that has predestined Him, albeit conditionally;81 in
81 See footnote 49 on Chattons anthropocentrism regarding the Incarnation.

commentary 409
some sense, however, Christs own future actions, as well as the hypostatic
union, played a role as well. Baptized infants are entirely dependent on the
Passion82 for their blessedness. Those sanctified in the womb are also depen-
dent on the Passion, but also on their own good works, though these latter are
traceable back to grace infused by God. As for others, whom I have called the
ordinary predestined, they too require the Passion, but alsocruciallyit
is required that, in the end, such a person be good. It is clear that this is a spe-
cial requirement, over and above any influence of the Incarnation and Passion
and separate from the special requirements that pertain to the other classes
of predestined. The implication, which seems borderline Pelagian, is that this
one can contribute to his own salvation by efforts that have no direct source in
divine activity.
D4041Q1 [94][101]: Miscellaneous theological objections are raised to the

Day 3 account. [94][97] are of a broadly anti-Pelagian character; the rest make
a random impression.
D4041Q1 [102][104]: To the sola gratia implications of [94], Chatton gives

two responses. The first ([102]) is a simple concession to the common opin-
ion that predestination is due mainly, or essentially, to grace, while reproba-
tion is due mainly, or essentially, to works. The second ([103]) takes a differ-
ent tack. On this account, the grace portion of the formula corresponds to
Gods general arrangement of moral regularity with respect to salvation or
damnation, i.e., to His willing that all who are finally good be saved, and [all
who are] finally evil be reprobated. This mechanism is both an instance of
divine justice (because of its moral regularity) and of divine mercy (because,
strictly speaking, the wages of sin is death, and original sin makes us all sin-
ners). The works portion corresponds to the question of each ones actual
behavior in the final, crucial moment prior to the actual giving of blessed-
ness. This moment, for Chatton, is up to us (at least, to those of us who are
among the ordinary predestined), and it explains why the same divine moral
mechanism (that same thing, [104]) predestines this one and reprobates that
one.
Two further (more or less unrelated) comments on these sections are in
order:
82 In these sections, the Incarnation seems to have been replaced by the Passion as the
motive power behind predestination; I assume that, in this context, either can serve as
synecdoche for both.
410 chapter 3
(1) Chattons remark, in [103], that He foreknew that you, and not the other,
would have blessedness may give one pause; on its face, it seems to mil-
itate against the resistance to the truth of future contingents that is oth-
erwise on view in the Day 3 model. But Chatton here may be telescoping
a copulative formulation such as God cognizes (You will have blessed-
ness in a, You will not have blessedness in a), and You have blessedness
in a will be true.
(2) The account proffered in [102][104] is broadly similar to that of Peter
Auriol (see [46][51] above, and Chapter i, 6.2.5.2.2): in both theories, a
general mechanism of salvation is set in motion, but human beings can
arrange for it not to apply to themselves.
D4041Q1 [106]: On Scotus theory, individuals are predestined by God in an

entirely arbitrary fashion having no reference to their foreseen behavior, while
other individuals are reprobated because of their own natural faults. Ends and
means enter the picture as ways in which God arranges for an individuals sal-
vation: the salvation is the end for that individual, and all the means to that
endi.e., the prerequisites for that salvation, including meritorious action and
infusion of graceare arranged by God accordingly.83 Chatton retains Scotus
use of the conceptual tool of ends and means while applying it in a com-
pletely different way. The end, in Chattons analysis, is the divine mechanism of
conditional salvation; the means include Gods laissez-faire policy of allowing
radically autonomous action of creatures to partly determine their own pre-
destined/reprobate status.
D4041Q1 [107]: Despite the impossibility of divine dishonesty or error, crea-

tures have the ability (in some sense) to act in ways contrary to revealed divine
foreknowledge. Here, Chatton asserts this response without explanation; for
earlier discussions, see [77] and [87] above.
D4041Q1 [112]: Chattons quasi-Auriolian model of predestination solves the

dilemma posed in [1]. Since grace is offered, conditionally, to all, God cannot
be termed an acceptor personarum.
D4041Q1 [113]: This laconic note suggests that the argument in [2] can be
defused by pointing out its equivocation on the term contingent. The first line
of the argument reads as follows:
83 See Scotus, Ordinatio i, d. 41, q. u., n. 41 [Vat. vol. 6, p. 332]; Paris Reportatio d. 41, q. u., n. 60
[r i-a vol. 2, p. 503].
commentary 411
If the Divine Incarnation were the meriting cause of human predestina-

tion, then predestination would be contingent.
The plausibility of this premise derives from the anthropocentric doctrine,

espoused by Chatton, that the Incarnation was contingent upon the fall of
Adam (see footnote 49); the truth of the premise follows if we assume that the
causal relation is biconditional. However, the contingency in play here is, if not
merely metaphysical or logical (as is type A contingency), then at least remote
and no longer relevant for a postlapsarian wayfarer. The second line, however,
makes use of a different kind of contingency:
But predestination would be contingent if and only if it were necessary

to take counsel and deliberate about predestination.
This is type B contingency, i.e., the sort of contingency relevant for wayfarers
making free decisions in time (see commentary on [10][13] above for type
A and type B contingency). Chattons point is that the Incarnation, though
contingent in the sense just explained, is now necessary ut nunc; it does not
imply any necessary connection to taking counsel and deliberating, as would
type B contingency.

Question 2. Whether It Can be Consistently Maintained Both That
God Wills That a Shall be Necessarily, and That a Will Nevertheless
Happen Contingently
Summary: In this Question, issues of soteriology are in abeyance, while issues
of propositional and res-based assent take center stage. Furthermore, Chatton
shifts his interpretation of the concept res and introduces two types of divine
assent (broad and narrow).
Article 1 expounds the new doctrine, which amounts to a modification of
the Day 3 doctrine. After a restatement of the God Can Be Wrong and Divine
Foreknowledge Necessitates arguments in [1][2], Chatton assembles the two
main tools of this Question: his analysis of assent and cognition as attaching
directly to res ([3]) and his Doctrine of Contradictories, according to which
a proposition and its negation refer to the same res ([4]). The crucial section
[5] unites these two analyses in an understanding of a res as the polarity-
neutral modal profile of a proposition. [6][8] establish that divine intensional
assent and cognition are immutable and necessary; then [9] introduces the
distinction between what I term Gods broad assent (corresponding roughly
412 chapter 3
to Auriols concept of intrinsic willing) and His narrow assent (correspond-

ing roughly to extrinsic willing). [10][12] detail some alleged advantages of
Chattons analysis. [13] applies the analysis to propositional truth; [14] uses
it to answer the God Can Be Wrong argument; [15] defines contingency in
terms of our ability to disambiguate divine broad assent into the correspond-
ing affirmative or negative narrow assent; and [16] answers an assent-based
version of the Divine Foreknowledge Necessitates argument by pointing out
that, given the definition of broad assent in this Question, the argument is
invalid.
Article 2 presents and responds to a series of objections. These latter, com-
prising [17][25], are of mixed character and quality, as is often the case with
the contributions of students in a classroom setting. In [17], the objector
attempts to reintroduce mutability by reference to Gods assent to complexes.
In [18], he questions the privileging of the true over the false in Chattons use
of the Doctrine of Contradictories. [19][20] are an attempt to show that, on
Chattons analysis, human beings are as infallible as God. Sections [21][22]
rather vaguely arraign the explanatory adequacy of Chattons analysis with
respect to the coexistence of foreknowledge and predestination with contin-
gency, while [23][25] raise some sharp objections about the implications of
that analysis for the possibility of divine providence and the certainty of true
prophecy. In responding to these objections, Chatton gets the opportunity to
clarify some points. [26] responds to [17] by distinguishing between kinds of
truth; [27] establishes that it is the presence of truth, rather than falsehood,
that is decisive in adjudicating the truth (in Chattons special sense) of disjunc-
tions; and [28][29] refute the ad hominem objections at [19] and [20] by using
the distinction between the divine versions of cognition and assent, which are
res-directed, and the creaturely versions of cognition and assent, which require
res-dependent mediating complexes (propositions). Section [30] refutes [21] by
noting that divine knowledge does not precede the (timeless) modal-profile-
res of a given proposition, and hence cannot past-necessitate it, while [31]
responds to [22] by appealing to the conditional structure of predestination,
an appeal continued in [32] with respect to providence. [33][34] establish that
prophecy, prognostications, and predictions in dreams can be falsified, though
the strength of this can is left unspecified.
Finally, in the response to the principal arguments, Chatton takes another
pass at God Can Be Wrong, this time stressing its modal aspect ([35]), and
finishes up the Question by a nod to the Copulative Analysis ([36]).
Formulation of Question 2: Although the Latin syntax suggests otherwise, nec-

essario clearly modifies vult, not fore.
commentary 413
The topical shift between the previous Question and this one is obvious
from the formulation of Question 2 itself: Whether it [can] be consistently
[maintained] both that God wills that a shall be necessarily, and that a will
nevertheless happen contingently. While this is obviously relevant for predes-
tination and reprobation, it is just as obviously a topic in its own right.
D4041Q2 [1]: A return to the God Can Be Wrong problem (cf. dd. 4041, q. 1
[76] and Chapter i, 3.1). Here the formulation virtually begs for a solution
according to the Wylton Scope Analysis; in the event, however, Chatton will
respond to the problem by appealing to the different kinds of assent and
cognition available to God (see [14] below).
D4041Q2 [2]: As a pendant to the God Can Be Wrong argument in [1], we get
a version of Divine Foreknowledge Necessitates (cf. d. 38 [2] and Chapter i,
3.1). The infinite cognition of God, adduced in d. 39 [8] to make an anti-
voluntarist point, is here fitted out with a strong modal operator in order to
make a necessitarian point.
D4041Q2 [3]: Chattons first moves in this Question are tentative and build
on previous analyses. Elsewhere (in rel prol., q. 1, a. 1, pp. 1845), he has
established that assent and cognition, both human and divine, attach directly
to the things signified by corresponding propositions, not to proposition-like
objects; this quite general result is now to be applied to the specific worry of
divine necessitation of creaturely actions.
D4041Q2 [4]: More ground-clearing. For Chattons Doctrine of Contradicto-

ries, see [5] below; the rest of the references in this section (e.g., to dd. 4041,
q. 1 [60][65], and the establishment of the contingency of creaturely action as
per se notum in ibid., [66][75]) confirm that Chatton is going to build on the
ontologically stable Day 3 model.
D4041Q2 [5]: Chattons Doctrine of Contradictories, already touched on at

d. 38 [52] and d. 39 [29], holds that contradictories signify the same thing
entirely; otherwise they would not be contradictories.84 In d. 39, the only role
the Principle seemed to play was as a kind of paraphrase of the Law of Biva-
lence: it guaranteed that, of necessity, one or the other of any two contradic-
tories must hold. On this showing, whichever contradictory will in fact hold is
84 Chatton is quite attached to this doctrine. For further discussion, see Chapter i, 10.1.2.4.
414 chapter 3
the one that God cognizes ab aeterno; hence Gods knowledge, which includes
an external component in the form of the as-yet-unposited fact of the matter,
is guaranteed, although the specific details of that knowledge lie outside the
wayfarers ken (cf. also types 1 and 2(b) truth as expounded in d. 39 [29][32].)
In the current Distinction, however, the Doctrine of Contradictories assumes a
different role, a role that is determined by the shifting significance of the word
res in Chattons discourse.
The transformation of the meaning of res can be seen in this very section.
The first few sentences expound what sounds like a straightforward doctrine of
divine omniscience: for any true present-tense proposition, God, being omni-
scient, necessarily assents to ( knows) the res corresponding to that proposi-
tion. The examples make it clear that a res is, here, simply a fact:
[N]or is it in your or anyone elses power, when you sit, that God should
not assent to your sitting; otherwise He would not know when any things
are true. Similarly, when the complex you are not sitting is true, God
assents to the thing signified by it, and [He does so] necessarily, in such a
way that, if you are not sitting, no [cause] can prevent God from assenting
to your not sitting. [Emphasis added.]
Up to this point, we seem to have distinct res corresponding to the propositions

you are sitting and you are not sitting, to wit, your sitting and your not sitting
respectively. Next we get what seems like a simple application of bivalence, as
in d. 39:
But it is necessary, and cannot be impeded by any cause whatsoever,

that one of the two [complexes], just as it is formed, should be true, and
similarly that the thing signified by these present-tense contradictories
be true, i.e., You sit in a, you do not sit in a.
But here is the crucial turn: from the fact that one member of {, } must
be true, it follows, not (as we might expect) that the fact corresponding to
obtains or the fact corresponding to obtains, but that the thing signified [col-
lectively] by [both] these present-tense contradictories [is] true. The meaning
of res in this Question, it seems, is not a substance or quality, and not a fact, but
rather the polarity-neutral modal profile shared by the propositions and .
This modal profile is an intensional object: it can be construed as modal map
yielding all information about the truth-conditions of and those of .85 It
85 To be sure, Chatton has adumbrated this idea: see d. 38 [28], [52] and d. 39 [10]. More
commentary 415
is this which is, in some sense, true, and necessarily so;86 Gods assent to it and
knowledge of it are thus also necessary. With the change in meaning of the term
res, however, knowledge reduces to cognition.
The proviso that we are dealing with present-tense contradictories, reiterated
at [9] and [13] below, seems intended as a buffer against any modal compli-
cations arising from the expectative referential reach of future-tense proposi-
tions: we are focusing directly on states of affairs at future instant a, at which
time it will be precisely the present-tense propositions that must be evaluated
for truth (in any sense).87
D4041Q2 [6]: Although the phrasing of the section is awkward, its general drift
is clear: divine assent is as eternal and immutable as divine cognition. The last
sentence, however, is obscure, though it seems to be some kind of reiteration
of the first point (i.e., that divine assent is eternal and immutable).
D4041Q2 [7]: More elaboration of the Doctrine of Contradictories. Chatton

bolsters the idea that Gods assent to any given res, in the modal profile
sense of the term, is necessary. Then we get our first peek into the internal
mechanism of Gods relation to res. The divine assent can be true either by the
truth of being conformed to the affirmative complex or of being conformed
to the negative complex. The focus, however, is on the fact that these distinct
complexes signify precisely the same thing, namely the res which functions
as the proper object of Gods eternal, necessary assent.
D4041Q2 [9]: Chattons doctrine of assent is clarified. As was clear from

[7], there are (at least) two types of divine assent: broad assent, by which
God assents to the modal profile shared by and ; and narrow assent, the
affirmative or negative assent by which God assents to a specific member of
the set {*, *}, where * means the state of affairs corresponding to .88
generally, Chattons idea of divine cognition, as a proper part of divine knowledge, implies
Gods knowledge of the modal map, which is a close conceptual variant of His knowledge
of what I call here the polarity-neutral modal profile of all propositions .
86 Presumably in sense 1 or 2(b) in the typology of d. 39 [29][32]; though note that those
two types of truth must be reinterpreted in light of the now wholly intensional meaning
of the word res. Cf. [13] and [26] below.
87 Similar considerations explain Chattons stress on present-tense formulations in d. 38
[22][25] (the Wylton Scope Analysis), d. 4041 q. 1 [9], [16], [30], [32], [33], and [34].
88 The terms broad assent and narrow assent are my own, though inspired by Norman
Kretzmanns broad bivalence (see Chapter i, 4.1 and Kretzmann 1998: 46).
416 chapter 3
In this section, the repugnancy that would result if narrow assent were, per
impossibile, to be granted to both members of this set, is made a criterion of
the necessary truth of the res (in the modal-profile sense) corresponding to
the set of propositions {, }, and of the (broad) divine assent to that res.
In other words, the section suggests a formal diagnostic tool: we know were
dealing with the kind of res to which God has necessary broad assent if we can
identify two minimal propositions, A and B, whose simultaneous verification
would produce absurdity.89 (This is a sufficient but not a necessary criterion;
see [11][12] below.)
The relation between broad and narrow assent is highly reminiscent of
that between Gods intrinsic and extrinsic willing in Peter Auriols system (see
Chapter i, 6.2.5.2.1).
Note that the Copulative Analysis, which played so great a role in d. 38 and
put in a few subsequent appearances,90 disappears in this Question, except
for a brief and dubious sighting in [36]: the decisive, actualizing role of res in
that analysis is no longer applicable, given that res, in the new sense, do not
disambiguate between affirmative and negative truth. On the other hand, the
general contours of the analysis are preserved: the relation between (a) the
cognition-clause and (b) the res-clause or this is/will be true clause in the
Copulative Analysis corresponds approximately to the relation between (a)
Gods broad assent of the modal-profile res and (b) His narrow assent to one
side or the other of the contradiction.
D4041Q2 [10]: Here we see a dividend of Chattons doctrine as set forth in

this Question: an old worry can be allayed. In dd. 4041 q. 1 [77] and [87],
Chatton was troubled by the problem that his ontologically stable picture of
future fact and divine assent ill comports with his apparently robust account
of human contingency: we seem to have the power to retroactively cancel Gods
ab aeterno assent that, for a, such-and-such take place. The distinction between
broad and narrow assent, however, establishes an areathe field of broad
assentover which wayfarers have no power. Of course, the clear implication
is that wayfarers do indeed have power over Gods narrow assent (cf. [14], [15],
and [26] below); residual anxiety over the possibly Pelagian character of this
doctrine may help to explain the next two sections.
89 The proviso minimal propositions attempts to render the tantum unius contradictorio-
rum (only to one of the contradictories) stipulated by the text. The stipulation is neces-
sary so as to rule out pairs like {P, (Q P)}; here the two propositions, while contradictory,
clearly do not form a res in Chattons sense.
90 See d. 39 [13], dd. 4041 q. 1 [14], [16], [31], [35].
commentary 417
D4041Q2 [11][12]: These sections are confusing, in that it might well seem
that the counterfactuals rejected here are not avoided but entailed by the doc-
trine expounded in this Question. Section [11] claims that otherwise, i.e., in
the absence of the distinction between narrow and broad assent and the cor-
responding distinction between res as fact and res as modal profile, we would
be forced to concede that a wayfarer can retroactively change the number of
saved known ab aeterno to God. But according to the narrow/broad assent doc-
trine, God broadly assents only to modal-profile res, objects which, while they
contain (or constitute) complete information on the intension of a proposition
such as the number of saved is n, contain none about its actual truth-value.
Selecting either (for a)(True)[the number of saved is n] or (for a) (False)[the
number of saved is n] is, one might think, precisely the job that falls to crea-
turely choice in the process of enacting narrow assent. Likewise, in [12], the
return to the language of dd. 4041, q. 1, with its focus on what is the case for
[instant] a, suggests that we are dealing with a future contingent creaturely
choice which, for the interval b<a, is undetermined (i.e., type B contingent); on
the doctrine set forth in this Question, such a choice indeed seems like a new
self-predestining.
How then can we interpret these sections so that they come out consis-
tent with the rest of the Question? Section [11] can be accommodated on the
assumption that God broadly assents not only to modal-profile res, but also to
a select group of fact-res. This assumption is consistent with Chattons conces-
sion that there can be propositions that are formally true from eternity (d. 38
[48]) and with his establishment of a class of specially predestined creatures
(dd. 4041, q. 1 [10][13], [88][93]). Along these lines, we can (speculatively)
attribute to Chatton a distinction between the formal and material certainty of
the number of predestined: formally, the number of predestined is some spe-
cific n, but this number can be realized materially by different individuals.91
Placing the formally certain number n within the scope of Gods broad assent,
we allow narrow assent (partially determined by creatures themselves) to hash
out the details. On this reading, the point of the section is that, in the absence of
the distinction between broad and narrow assent, the number n would indeed
belong to the class of things subject to creaturely control.
The language, in both sections here reviewed, about God assent[ing] from
eternity that [someone] be damned is somewhat mysterious. None of the pre-
91 I take the distinction from Aquinas, st i, q. 23, a. 7, co. [aoo vol. 2, p. 224]. Aquinas rejects it
as erroneous. There is no reason (apart from this section) to suppose that Chatton adopts
the distinction, but none that he does not.
418 chapter 3
destinarian doctrines considered and, albeit hesitantly, endorsed by Chatton

allow for a class of specially reprobate persons, i.e., for a doctrine of double-
predestination la Gottschalk or Gregory of Rimini. However, if we read ab
aeterno as referring here not to the beginning of time but to Gods locus in
timeless eternity, we can make sense of these phrases. At instant a itself, Gods
narrow assent is enacted by a given creature; nevertheless it is God, ultimately,
who is conceived as assenting to the final cut of reality (though enacted through
creaturely choice). He does this at instant a, but still ab aeterno. Hence, absent
the distinction between broad and narrow assent, with its postulation of an
interval b<a during which it is still open to wayfarers to posit or not posit a given
res at instant a, strong contingency would have to be interpreted as rescinding
Gods assent at instant a itselfi.e., as countermanding the results of Gods will
of good pleasure (to use the language of traditional scholastic terminology92)
or those of His extrinsic willing (to use that of Peter Auriol93).
D4041Q2 [13]: Chatton attempts to unite the analysis of this Question with
the alethic analysis in d. 39 [29][32] and the first version of the Day 3 theory
of dd. 4041 q. 1 [59]. The fit is slightly uncomfortable: the meaning of res has
changed crucially since d. 39 (from fact-res to modal-profile-res), so that Gods
assent to the thing signified by the proposition you sit for a is in fact His
assent to the modal profile jointly signified by the pair {you sit for a, you do
not sit for a}. Likewise, the initial Day 3 analysis, as expounded in dd. 4041
q. 1, allowed for Gods assent to be directed toward specific events (specific
sides of a given contradiction) for instant a; this role is now limited to narrow
assent.
D4041Q2 [14]: The God Can Be Wrong sophism (see [1] above) is solved
by reference to the fact that the objects of Gods broad assent and cognition
are not subject to creaturely control. God cannot, indeed, be wrong about
the modal map, though His narrow assent and knowledge may be considered
incomplete without the determining actions of creatures. Positing in being,
even if read in such a way that it implies strong counterfactual or ontologically
disambiguating power (i.e., in senses i(3)(b) or simple i(3) in the typology of
Chapter i, 8.38.4), has no bearing on the question of whether Gods broad
assent and cognition attach to their proper objects.
92 See Chapter i, 5.2.1, footnote 198.

93 See Chapter i, 6.2.5.2.1.
commentary 419
D4041Q2 [15]: Two criteria of contingency are presented. The terms of the
discussion make it clear that it is type B contingency that is under discussion
(see dd. 4041 q. 1 [10][13]).
The first criterion emphasizes the temporal character of contingency and its
ability to exist in harmony both with the metaphysical necessity that pertains
to the objects of broad assent and with the immutability that characterizes
that assent. Note the return of the positing-in-being criterion: in the previous
Question, the as-yet-unposited status of a future contingent was taken as a
reason to deny it a truth-value, while here it is taken as a reason to call it
contingent.
The second criterion continues the line of thought begun in [14]: something
is (type B) contingent just in case a wayfarer can determine the polarity of
narrow assent corresponding to it, given of course that the corresponding
broad assent has ab aeterno been true and necessary.
D4041Q2 [16]: The argument in this section harks back to the Divine Fore-
knowledge Necessitates argument presented in d. 38 [2]:
God knew that Antichrist will be; therefore, Antichrist will be. The
antecedent is necessary and the consequence is necessary; therefore the
consequent is necessary.
In d. 38 [40], Chatton deals with this argument, effectively, by conceding its

validity but invoking the Copulative Analysis: God knew that Antichrist will
be resolves into [God cognizes the thing signified by Antichrist will be, and
Antichrist will be is true]. The first conjunct is necessary, but the second is
contingent, so the expression God knew that Antichrist will be is contingent;
the premise of the argument, in the form God necessarily knew that Antichrist
will be, is therefore false.94 In the current section, the topic is not knowledge
but assent; nevertheless the argument is similar enough that one might have
expected the same kind of response as in d. 38. In fact, the two responses are
in harmony. Assent corresponds not to knowledge in the previous argument,
but to cognition; hence, the antecedent, God necessarily [broadly] assents
94 I paraphrase. D. 38 [40] does not mention Antichrist. More substantively, in d. 38 [40],

Chatton actually denies the consequence God knew that a will be, therefore a necessarily
will be. But he does this explicitly because the operator necessarily is added to the
consequent; absent necessarily, he would have to deny the truth of the antecedent in
the form God necessarily knew that Antichrist would be, and this would be more in line
with the general structure of the argument and Chattons response to it in d. 38.
420 chapter 3
that a shall be, is true, in contrast to the false antecedent of the d. 38 [2]
argument. But the necessity of Gods broad assent to the polarity-neutral modal
profile a shall be does not cancel the contingency (as defined in the second
criterion of [15] above) that characterizes an agents action in positing that a
shall be is realized (narrowly assented to) affirmatively or, if the agent prefers,
negatively.
D4041Q2 [17]: Granted that the objects of Gods assent are primarily modal-
profile-res; nevertheless He must, in some sense, assent also to the associated
temporally indefinite propositions as they are verified in time (cf. d. 38 [27]).
Chattons response in [26] below indicates that the main threat here is the
introduction of mutability into the divine being.
D4041Q2 [18]: A clever ad hominem thrust. Given Chattons Doctrine of Con-

tradictories, why should Gods ab aeterno assent to informationally vacuous
disjunctions count as infallible or true, rather than fallible and false, assent?
D4041Q2 [19][20]: The objector tries another ad hominem move, this time
building on Chattons general doctrine of assent to and cognition of res (see
rel prol., q. 1, a. 1).
D4041Q2 [21][22]: The complaints are too brief and generic to yield a clear
interpretation, apart from the mere fact that the objector thinks Chattons
approach fails to reconcile contingency on the one hand and foreknowledge and
predestination on the other. Chattons response, in [30][31] below, does not
entirely clarify the nature of the objection here; however, the further objections
in [23][25] suggest what the objector has in mind.
D4041Q2 [23][25]: Three serious, specific, and connected objections are

raised. [23]: Doesnt Chattons approach remove the basis for anything wor-
thy of the name providence? Wouldnt a power on the part of creatures to
disambiguate divine broad assent, to turn the polarity of a given disjunction
one way or the other, make it impossible for God to dispose of His creation as
He would wish? [24]: Dont analogous worries apply to the certainty of true
prophecy? How can such prophecy be certain, if I can do the opposite of the
fact-res it predicts? [25]: Similarly with (genuinely) prophetic dreams: How can
they be genuinely prophetic, if I can falsify their content? Furthermore, if they
refer to res in any sense, how is this reference established, given that the nor-
mal causal relation of external res to internal perceptive apparatus does not
apply?
commentary 421
D4041Q2 [26]: Chatton responds to the challenge of [17] by making use of

a modified form of type 2(b) truth (recall his similar move at d. 4041 q. 1
[65]).95 Assuming for the sake of argument that God can, in an important sense,
assent to complexes as the objector claims, Chatton essentially derives this
assent from Gods eternal assent to the temporal and modal profile (the res)
corresponding to the pair of complexes {Socrates sits, Socrates does not sit}.
That modal profile is true itself in a type 1 sense, while Gods eternal assent to
it is true in a sense deriving from the type 1 truth of its object. We can, however,
translate this kind of truth into our own, propositional variety, in which case
it emerges as the type 2(b) true claim that Socrates sits. Given the disjunctive
character of modal-profile-res, this claim is as immutably true as its apparent
contradictory, Socrates does not sit. However, from a type 2(a) perspective, the
truth of this proposition will vary from moment to moment, depending on the
availability of the res (in either the substance/quality or the fact sense of the
term) corresponding to the proposition; this produces the illusion of mutability
in the divine assent.
In the final affirmation of our ability to determine whether Gods narrow
assent is affirmative or negative, note the proviso at one moment at another.
The modifier suggests that our contribution to Gods assent is not one of
ontological disambiguation, but rather of statistical contingency: we can, at
any given time, arrange for certain states of affairs * or, at other times, *.
The modifier thus underlines the fact that the apparently robust concept of
contingency in play in this Question is paired with an ontologically weak, i.e.,
merely notionally open future: not an A(mr) but ultimately an A(a) model.
D4041Q2 [27]: The objection of [18] is dealt with very brusquely. Here is one
possible interpretation: In a pair of contradictories, it is the presence of truth,
not of falsehood, that is decisive; falsehood is parasitical on truth. Truth (in
any sense) could only fail to characterize one of two contradictories if, per
impossibile, both contradictories were false.
D4041Q2 [28]: The objectors ad hominem ploy in [19], which attempts to

force Chatton to admit creaturely infallibility in parallel with divine infallibility,
is parried by an unsurprising response, namely a distinction between divine
and creaturely ways of knowing. Assent caused by a mediating complex is
95 In what follows, as mentioned in footnote 86 and in commentary on section [13] above,

care must be taken to adjust the interpretation of types 1, 2(a), and 2(b) truth in light of
the intensional significance of the word res in this Distinction.
422 chapter 3
irreducibly indexical: it is embedded in a temporal and modal context that

makes its truth dependent and variable. Divine assent embraces the modal
framework timelessly and cannot err.
D4041Q2 [29]: We might have expected that creaturely fallibility about pres-
ent-tense propositions could be unproblematically extended to the future
tense. Instead, Chatton reaches back to the Wylton Scope Analysis and the
unposited-res analysis. The results are somewhat odd and not quite in line with
the use of these conceptual tools as they appear in Chattons previous treat-
ment and in his sources. The proposition Socrates will sit (Sortes sedebit) is
reduced to an underlying Socrates is to sit (Sortes est sessurus), which is then
rejected on the grounds that there is neither an available res nor a determining
cause that could act as a truth-maker. This brief and cryptic section does not
clarify whether such a proposition, i.e., an underlying Socrates is to sit, is to be
regarded as neither true nor false, i.e., as a form of (FUTURE(a)) (True) [Socrates
sits], or rather as false, i.e., as a form of (True) (FUTURE(a)) [Socrates sits] (see
commentary on d. 38 [22][23]). In any case, such a (creaturely) proposition is
not true, contra the objector.
D4041Q2 [30]: A simple reiteration of the scope and limits of creaturely power
(cf. [14], [15], and [26]). Gods knowledge does not precede the modal-profile-
res, since such a res is timeless; it does, in a sense, precede the positing of that
res (i.e., the collapse of the disjunctive pair into one side or the other), since
such positing is up to us; but this in no sense degrades the divine being. The
use of posit is in line with that in [14] above.
D4041Q2 [31]: Chatton points out that the broad vs. narrow assent account
proffered in this Question is in harmony with his predestinarian doctrine in the
previous Question (see dd. 4041 [13], [88][93], [102][103]): in both cases, a
decisive role is granted to creaturely actions, while care is taken to formulate
the divine purview (predestination, cognition, assent) in such a way that its
immutability is not imperiled.
D4041Q2 [32]: In responding to [23], Chatton acknowledges the difficulty

of explaining Gods providence with respect to three types of event: chance
effects, sins, and our actions. The first two are apparently his own addition;
the objector only mentioned the third. Our actions are dealt with by analogy
with Chattons established doctrine of divine conditional predestination (see
d. 38 [62] and dd. 4041, q. 1 [10], [45], [92]). Chance effects are ordained in
respect of some cause; this is perhaps a reference to the standard Aristotelian
commentary 423
treatment of chance in Physics 196b10198a13, in which chance is defined

relative to some agents intention in a way that does not rule out there being
some efficient cause of the event. Gods omniscience would guarantee that
He has foreknowledge of the relevant accidental cause. As for sins, Chatton
addresses them in rss ii, dd. 56, q.u. [8][15] and d. 7, q. 1 [23][27]; in the
first cited, he concludes that God cannot make a rational creature who is not
able to sin (though able is not carefully defined, leaving open the possibility
of a modally exiguous interpretation), while in the second, he links a kind of
impeccability to the eventual fulfillment of a condition, along the lines of the
analysis of the ordinarily predestined in dd. 4041, q. 1, [13] and [92].
D4041Q2 [33][34]: True prophecies by human prophets, being acts of com-

munication made by means of propositions, can be falsified by free creaturely
actions, and the same holds for information furnished by genuinely prophetic
dreams. Gods assent, however, is not defeasible. The first point is either quite
radical (if we assume an ontologically open future) or commonplace (if we
assume that the prophesied event is true in advance but, in some attenuated
sense, conatively defeasible; cf. the Fallback position in d. 38 [26] and Chapter i,
4.44.5). The last point, regarding God, repeats the analysis of divine assent
that has been insisted on throughout this Distinction. Chatton thus fails to pro-
vide any solution for a genuinely problematic case, namely one in which God
has directly prophesied an event, thus at least apparently committing himself
to one side of the contradiction.
This brief treatment of the possibility of retroactively falsifying genuine
prophecies should be compared to Chattons extended consideration of the
issue in Quodlibet q. 27.
D4041Q2 [35]: This refutation of God Can Be Wrong responds directly to the
modal component in [1], neglected in the original response at [14] (but cf. [16]).
D4041Q2 [36]: Wey and Etzkorn claim that this is a response to a missing
argument (see rss vol. 1, p. 400, note 16). It could, however, be a response to
the last sentence of [1], ignored in [35], if we read it is contingent for the thing
to be for instant a in this section (contingens est rem esse pro a instanti) as a
paraphrase of a will happen contingently in [1] (a contingenter eveniet), which
seems reasonable. On this reading, [36] is a reminder that Gods knowledge,
as it includes a contingent event not yet posited in being, is itself contingent,
but harmlessly so, as Gods assent and cognition are not modally infected with
this contingency. [36] thus connects the analysis in this Question with the
Copulative Analysis in d. 38.
424 chapter 3

Quodlibet
General remarks on Quodlibet, qq. 2729. Although Chattons basic approach

to the problem of future contingents has not changed radically from that in
rss i, dd. 3841, there are some obvious differences. To begin with, a cer-
tain amount of analytical apparatus has been jettisoned. Most strikingly, the
emphasis on res as the objects of cognition and assent is gone. As a result,
the distinction among types of truth, so important in rss i, d. 39 and recur-
ring in dd. 4041, is nowhere to be found here, since it depends systematically
on res as truth-maker or -bearer. The Doctrine of Contradictories, connected
as it is to the expanded treatment of res in dd. 4041, q. 2, is also missing.
Furthermore, there is no sign of the distinction between type A and type B
contingency. Some doctrinal shifts have taken place as well. For example, the
Day 3 doctrine, which seemed like a relatively stable result in rss i, dd. 40
41, is missing; indeed, I argue in Chapter i, 10.2 that Chatton has reverted
to something resembling the Day 1 doctrine. On the other hand, there is no
sign of the Fallback position of rss i, d. 38, q.u. [26], etc., except insofar as it
is subjected to vigorous criticism in the forms of the hierarchy-of-modalities
doctrine (q. 28 [9][12]) and the Boethian/Aquinate present-to-eternity doc-
trine (q. 28 [25][27]). The doctrines of Peter Auriol are, for the most part,
conspicuous by their absence; instead, Chatton deals with theories derived
from Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham, with some hints of other figures. New
adversaries have appeared: the doctrine of the Contingency of Signification is
refuted at length (q. 27), and the idea of a contingent consequence is sub-
jected to critical scrutiny (q. 27) although eventually revived in an altered form
(q. 28).
Furthermore, these Questions are free of the timorous disclaimers of respon-
sibility for dangerous positions on the subjects of future contingents, divine
cognition, and truth that characterize the rss material. Chatton seems to
have found a group of ideas that he is prepared to defend and acknowledge
as his own. This group consists of the Copulative Analysis of divine knowl-
edge claims, the Wylton Scope Analysis, and a group of traditional analytical
tools that include the Boethian scope distinctions and the future-dependency
escape clause. Additions include an increased emphasis on the obligational
analysis of future contingents (q. 28 [19][20]) and the distinction between
actus exerciti and actus signati (q. 28 [33]). The text breaks off before Chatton
has completed his analysis.
commentary 425

Contingent
Summary: The 26th Question of Chattons Quodlibet, which deals mainly with
questions of angelic psychology and communication, ends by affirming that it
must be possible for angels to make absolutely reliable prophecies to prophets
(q. 26, a. 3 [20]). The necessary existence of true prophecy, then, is the back-
ground against which the issues in q. 27 are considered. Sections [1] and [2] set
forth the issues of prophecy in familiar terms: freedom and prophecy seem at
odds. Then [3] and [4] announce the two main themes of the Question: the sta-
bility of prophetic semantics and the truthfulness of divine utterances. [5] and
[6] set forth the theory of the Contingency of Signification (COS), according
to which the meaning of prophecies can be retroactively changed by agents.
[7][12] subject COS to a rigorous critical analysis, concluding that the theory
violates established doctrines about the relations obtaining between concepts
and mind-external objects. [13] begins a long exploration of a variant of COS
that appeals to the idea of contingency in the cognitive field constituted by the
Word of God. This possibility is explored and rejected, first with respect to the
meaning of terms and utterances ([14][15]) and then with respect to cognitive
states and their objects ([16][29]). Sections [16][23] focus on the possibil-
ity that knowledge in the Word is a created vision, [24][29] on the possibility
that it is an uncreated vision (and therefore identical with God). The former
possibility succumbs to an attack similar to the propositional and term analy-
sis employed in [7][15], while the latter leads to the heretical position that all
blessed natures are identical with God.
Concluding in [30] that COS is untenable in any form, Chatton devotes the
rest of the Question to an attack on the idea of a contingent consequence.
Sections [31][32] expound this idea: the opponents claim that, in order to
evade a version of Divine Foreknowledge Necessitates (see rss i, d. 38 [1]
[2] and Chapter i, 3.1), we must concede that the link between antecedent
and consequent is itself contingent. Chatton responds by pointing out that
this doctrine allows us to render God either fallible or mendacious ([33]
[38]). Sections [39][41] show that the same result follows from the assump-
tion that the antecedent and consequence are necessary; accordingly, [42] and
[43] argue for the contingency of the antecedent. Section [44] argues that
the doctrine of the contingency of the consequence undermines the guaran-
tees of ethical primacy and veracity that seem inseparable from our ideas of
the Godhead, and [45][52] adduce various authorities in support of the doc-
trine of necessary divine veracity. Section [53] rejects an alternative approach
426 chapter 3
according to which God can lie but has never lied, and [54] retracts Chat-
tons previous opinion that God can engage in (albeit morally upright) decep-
tion.
Q27 [1][2]: Like the predestinarian issues explored in rss i, dd. 4041, the
issue of genuine prophecy seems to impose an additional layer of difficulty
onto the classic problem of future contingents as set forth in Aristotles De
Interpretatione, ch. 9. If God not only knows that you will sit tomorrow but
informs you of the fact, can you sit freely? Section [1] explores this question
as follows: Let us assume that such an act of informing has taken place; then
it seems that if we posit the possibility of your not-sitting in being, we not
only make God wrong, we make Him a liar. By a reductio ad impietatem, then,
the possibility is not positable, and your sitting is necessary.96 But this result
is unacceptable, as it destroys personal responsibility; hence, by reductio ad
absurdum, we must reject the original assumption, viz., that such an act of
informing can take place. And yet, as [2] points out, such acts of informing
happen all the time.
Q27 [3]: This section gives us the first mention in these Questions of the
doctrine of the Contingency of Signification (hereafter COS), a consideration
of which will occupy the next 27 sections.97 The doctrine is a development of
the Revocable Default Future model, according to which agents have a strong
libertarian ability to change a default future (see Chapter i, 3.1, 5, 5.2.2,
7.2.2, and 7.3). According to COS, the hard facts associated with a given
divine prophecy (i.e., the particular words spoken in the prophecy, the physical
medium of the prophecy, etc.) are subject to the necessity of the past, but the
meaning of the prophecy can be retroactively changed by creaturely agents.
Q27 [4]: The possibility of making God a deceiver in retrospect is presented

here as a worry that is distinct from COS, but its conceptual proximity to
that doctrine is obvious. Indeed, Thomas Buckingham, in his mid-fourteenth-
96 Note that the type of contingency here under discussion is evidently one that respects the
positing-in-being criterion, i.e., something like type B contingency; cf. rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1
[10][13].
97 The historical background of COS is somewhat obscure. While the doctrine seems to have
been formulated by Gerard of Novara in the early thirteenth century, it first achieved
widespread currency in the first half of the fourteenth. Prominent advocates of COS
include Thomas Buckingham and Gregory of Rimini. See Chapter i, 10.2.1 for discussion
and references.
commentary 427
century Determinatio de contingentia futurorum, does not hesitate to derive

and endorse a related possibility from COS itself, namely the possibility that
Christ is deceived and has volitions contrary to the divine will.98 Perhaps, then,
Chattons source for COS mooted the possibility of divine deception in the
same context, which would explain its inclusion here. Alternatively, perhaps
Chatton reasons that, after COS has been rejected, the possibility of divine
deception reasserts itself (cf. commentary on [31][33] below).
Q27 [5]: A simple variant on Divine Foreknowledge Necessitates is offered here

in the service of a reductio ad absurdum (compare the treatment of DFN in
rss i, d. 38 [2] and dd. 4041, q. 2 [16]). The formulation of the consequence is
important. If we imagine ourselves at a time after Christs prediction and before
Peters denial, section [5] suggests we should express the consequence as C:
C: Christ said that Peter will deny Him thrice; therefore, Peter will deny
Him thrice.
Given divine infallibility and the necessity of the past, Peters threefold denial
is necessitated in advance.
The reference to Christs prediction and Peters denial is standard for the
literature on prophecy in general, and the reference to the time intervening
between prophecy and fulfillment was evidently typical for discussions of
COS.99
98 Here is a bit from the peroration of his Determinatio, a defense against Bradwardines anti-
Pelagian polemics:
Immo, omnia alia que velut inconveniencia manifesta in isto articulo sunt deducta liben-
cius affirmarem, nec vidi alicubi demonstratum impossibile fore Christum secundum nat-
uram humanam deceptum fuisse, ignarum, falsum jurasse, vel velle in volute velle divino
contrarium habuisse, quamvis hec ex devocione ut pluries sunt negata.
Determinatio de contingentia futurorum, fifteenth conclusion [genest 1992,
p. 290]
Indeed, I would affirm more freely everything else that is brandished as if problematic
in this article, nor do I see anywhere that it has been demonstrated to be impossible
that Christ, according to His human nature, should have been deceived, ignorant, falsely
judging, or indulging in volitions contrary to the divine will, though these things, as many
others, are denied out of devotion.
99 Thus Gerard of Novara writes as follows:
428 chapter 3
Q27 [6]: The first opinion is presented. Some advocates of COS argue that the
inference of [5] can be blocked by reformulating C as C:
C: Christ spoke the words You will deny me thrice to Peter; therefore,
Peter will deny Him thrice.
Though the antecedent is still past-necessitated, the connection between ante-

cedent and consequent is contingent, since the signification of the words You
will deny me thrice can shift under the influence of a creaturely agent. Hence
Peters ability to remain steadfast is still a live modal option. It follows that
his actual threefold denial, if it takes place, will indeed be a sin (since freely
chosen); and if it does not take place, Christs prediction will not be deceptive,
since that prediction will have been fitted out retroactively with an alternative
semantics rendering it ab aeterno accurate.
Q27 [7]: Chatton objects to the referential anarchy introduced by COS as

expounded in the first opinion (i.e., [6]). In doing so, he gives some hints
about the details of the precise version of COS that he is objecting to. That ver-
sion seems to involve the claim that the (normally) fixed relation of concept
to mind-external thing can, in the case of prophecy, be subjected to a kind of
retroactive imposition or institution (arbitrary assignment of sign to refer-
ent) in virtue of creaturely action. If arbitrariness is extended to the concept /
mind-external thing relation, claims Chatton, chaos will reign; for discussion,
see Chapter i, 10.2.1.
The litany of epistemic disaster entailed by COS, which includes the possi-
bility of the simultaneous realization of contradictories, recalls contemporary
anti-skeptical arguments (see, e.g., Henry of Ghent, Summa q. 1, a. 1, solutio
[P]osito quod simus inter Christi praedictionem et Petri negationem, non est necessarium
Christum dixisse verum vel falsum, nec enuntiasse nec protulisse hanc vocem significative
vel non significative, nec etiam tunc aperuisse.
MS Vat. lat. 10754, fols 31rbva, transcribed by mark thakkar, in thakkar 2010:
131 n. 68
Assuming that we are [temporally situated] between Christs prediction and Peters denial,
it is not necessary for Christ to have said [something] true or [something] false, nor to
have declared nor proffered this utterance significatively or non-significatively, nor even
to have revealed [this] then.
Cf. also Buckingham, Determinatio, fifteenth conclusion [Genest 1992, pp. 286287].
commentary 429
[Henry of Ghent 2005, pp. 1819]; Duns Scotus, Ordinatio i, d. 3, p. 1, q. 4 [Vat.

vol. 3, pp. 138141]). Note, however, that the source of the threatened episte-
mological collapse entailed by COS is not universal doubt; rather, COS is held
to lead to universal doubt, which latter position is here seen as self-evidently
absurd and impious and hence not in need of refutation.
Q27 [8]: COS is attacked indirectly. As is clear from [7], the doctrine implies that
the bond between concept and mind-external object is liable to ex post facto
severance and reattachment to a new object. Hence Jacks genuine prophecy,
expressed in the sentence Jill will put a stone in her pocket at (t1) can, in
virtue of a retroactive shift in the signification of the concept stone, come
to mean, and to have always meant, Jill will put her left hand in her pocket
at (t1). In support of this claim, Chattons opponent constructs a thought
experiment that runs more or less as follows (with some details supplied): Let
us imagine two individuals, Socrates and Plato, and, somewhere in their world,
a stone. Socrates and Plato are in all relevant respects exactly similar;100 this
effective interchangeability extends to the sensory and intellectual activities
they are engaged in. Moreover, a stone is really present, and the evidentiary
channels that would normally lead from the stone to Socrates and Platos
respective minds are not blocked. Nevertheless Socrates is apprehending the
stone, and Plato is not. Hence, signification and its factual correlates come
apart.101 Chatton responds by denying that the imagined scenario is possible.
In a situation like this, the truth-value of the indefinite proposition a man
apprehends the stone must be the same for Socrates and Plato; they are in
all respects in identical situations vis--vis the apprehension of the stone, and
the truth-value of the proposition supervenes on the facts constituting that
situation.
The application of the Socrates-Plato example to the problem of prophecy,
though it is not spelled out, is straightforward. Socrates can stand for Jack at
100 The word Chatton uses, consimilis, usually means highly but not exactly similar. In this
context, it seems to mean as close to exactly similar as required; cf. the use of similis
in a closely analogous context in Walter Burleighs De obligationibus to mean alike in all
relevant respects [Green 1963, vol. 2, p. 50, l. 20; translated in Kretzmann and Stump, eds.,
1988: 383].
101 The stance Chatton attributes to his opponent sounds like a sort of conceptual converse
of Ockhams celebrated claim that a human can, if God wills it, have intuitive cognition of
non-existent objects (see Ockhams Reportatio ii, qq. 1213 [OTh vol. 5, p. 260]). However,
given that Ockham specifically endorses the fixed character of the relation between
concept and referent (see Chapter i, 10.2.1), it is unlikely that Ockham is the target here.
430 chapter 3
(t0) assessed from (t0), Plato for Jack at (t0) assessed from (t1). Clearly, due
to the necessity of the past, nothing substantive can have changed, between
(t0) and (t1), about Jacks state of mind at (t0). Jill, however, can redirect the
semantics of stone without illicitly altering anything substantive about the
way the world was at (t0). Chattons view is that no such redirecting can occur
without substantive (and therefore impossible) change.
Q27 [9][10]: Defenders of COS apparently looked for a loophole in the circum-
stance that Socrates and Plato, in the thought experiment, must have different
relations to the stone in virtue of being different individuals. This is a rather self-
defeating move, since the story depends for its force on Socrates and Plato being
effectively indistinguishable. In any case, Chatton insists that there still must
be stable truth-conditions for an indefinite proposition centered on apprehen-
sions rather than on people.
Q27 [11]: The remark is obscure, and my translation is speculative. The general
point seems to be that the semantic redirecting postulated by COS would be
cognitively available only to God in any case, and so would be useless to human
beings as a way of interpreting prophecy even in retrospect.
Q27 [12]: Chatton first uses the identity sentence as a vehicle for displaying
the modally stable character of proper names and then extends this stabil-
ity to class terms. The point of the section is that nominal signification, here
construed as a palmary instance of stable (one might indeed say rigid) des-
ignation, provides the model for the signification of every concept: all such
signification is as immovable (as essential) as that of proper names. Chat-
ton continues that even if it were possible for signification somehow to drift
in Socrates is Socrates, retroactive redirection of the signification of proper
names is impossible: no use of the future-dependency escape clause could pos-
sibly justify changing the reference of a name, or that of any other signifying
term.
Q27 [13]: This section begins a long and theologically abstruse consideration of
the relevance of the beatific visionthat is, the vision which the blessed102
102 Chattons discussion makes it clear that prophets are understood, on this doctrine, to have
some form of beatific vision (even if only by courtesy) while still viatores; contrast his
opinion a few years later in the Sermo de visione beatifica (1333), in which he defends Pope
John xxiis controversial opinion that the beatific vision must await the Last Judgement.
commentary 431
have of Godfor the COS doctrine. This strand of COS draws on a tradi-
tion of seeing in the Word [of God] that dates back at least to Book xv of
Augustines De trinitate, with its complex discussion of the relations between
human mental language and the element of language implicit in the doc-
trine of the Second Person of the Trinity as the Word of God. Behind Augustine
stands the tradition of treating the divine Logos as the source of all knowl-
edge.
The literature of Sentences commentaries took over this Augustinian idea
and added various refinements to it. In this scholastic tradition, the Word is
imagined as a cognitive field of absolute clarity and completeness in which
a perfect and, in some sense, total vision of Creation can be attained by, or
rather granted to, the blessed. A common context for discussions of knowl-
edge in the Word is Book iii, d. 14, in which the questions under discussion
turn on the nature and extent of Christs access to divine knowledge. Clearly
the Word, as God, is omniscient, but what about Christs created souldoes
it know everything the Word knows? Opinions vary, but the general trend is
to stress the comprehensive potency of Christs knowledge while providing
assurances that no modally prohibited comprehensive actuality is entailed. For
example, Bonaventure writes that it is by a habitual cognition, which is like
knowledge (scientia), that Christs soul cognizes everything that the Word cog-
nizes; however, Christ does not cognize with an actual cognition, which is like
consideration (consideratio). The idea seems to be that Christs soul is capable
of knowing anything the Word knows, but cannot know (simultaneously and
as a whole) everything that the Word timelessly knows.103 Aquinas opinion is
more straightforward: Christ has complete access to scientia visionisin other
words, He knows everything that has happened, is happening, or will happen.
Furthermore, He has some limited access to scientia simplicis intelligentiae,
i.e., knowledge of all possibilities including counterfactuals. Specifically, He
knows all possibilities that depend strictly on creaturely action, although those
depending only on Gods free action are not in general available to Him.104 Duns
Scotus has an encompassing view of Christs access to knowledge in the Word:
for the Subtle Doctor, Christ has perfect knowledge, which means modally
complete knowledge. Scotus stresses that Christs intellect need not cognize
all possibilities simultaneously as actual; for His knowledge to be complete, it
suffices that it be an intellectus in potentia ad infinitas visiones. Nevertheless,
103 Bonaventure, Commentaria iii, d. 14, a. 2, q. 3, co. [Opera omnia vol. 3, pp. 315316].
104 Aquinas, st iii, q. 10, a. 2, co. [aoo vol. 2, p. 787].
432 chapter 3
Christ has the ability to see any possibility as though it were actual.105 Ock-
ham distinguishes between Christs divine and human natures: in the relevant,
human sense, Christ knows all things only by general [abstractive] knowl-
edge (notitia generali), which precludes His knowing everything distinctly
and simultaneously.106 Chattons response to the problem focuses on the ques-
tions of whether Christs created soul sees the Word and creatures in the Word
by the same act (his answer is yes) and whether Christs uncreated soul sees
not only essences but also existences of creatures (once again, the answer is
yes).107
The salience of modality in scholastic discussions of knowledge and vision
in the Word explains why advocates of COS looked to the Word as a source
of contingency (a feature of COS which may at first seem puzzling). If the
Word contains the whole modal map of reality (i.e., everything falling under
Gods absolute power), then it contains all non-contradictory counterfactuals,
including alternative significations of prophetic utterances. To the extent that
Christs or a prophets mind has access to those alternative significations, the
belief that the Word could license an ex post facto shift in utterance meaning
is a simple application of the Revocable Default Future model, developed in
the context of theories of divine foreknowledge, to the special problems of
divine prophecy: the Word not only sees alternatives (in this case alternative
significations) but can actualize them. The Word is especially important in the
context of sections [13] and following because it is considered, by advocates of
COS, to be a conduit of knowledge that circumvents intelligible species, and
is thus exempt from the normal semantic stability with respect to per se and
essential signification that characterizes such species.108
Q27 [14]: The objections raised against the appeal to vision in the Word have
to do with the real-world consequences of the semantic functioning of words
in the normal sense, consequences that seem imperiled by COS in any form.
Would valid arguments using the premise Socrates will sit in instant a retain
their validity under retroactive semantic shift? Would my honest and accurate
report of what I have seen in the Word remain honest and accurate?
105 Duns Scotus, Ordinatio iii, d. 14, qq. 12 [Vat. vol. 9, pp. 449451, 456].
106 Ockham, Quodlibeta septem, Quodlibet 4, q. 5 [OTh vol. 9, pp. 319322]. For Ockhams
specific discussion of the tradition of knowledge in Verbo, see Reportatio iv, q. 15 [OTh
vol. 7, pp. 326327].
107 rss iii, d. 14, q. 2, a. 2, [19], [32][33].
108 See Buckingham, Determinatio, fifteenth conclusion [Genest 1992, p. 286].
commentary 433
The section ends with the claim that names cannot diverge from their
primary and per se referent, a thesis that is explicitly denied by exponents of
COS such as Buckingham (see footnote 108). Given that Buckingham is writing
almost twenty years after Chatton, of course, he may be responding either
directly or indirectly to Chatton himself.
Q27 [15]: Chatton raises a straightforward and very telling objection to COS:
even if per se and primary signification can undergo semantic shift from A to B,
it remains necessarily the case that the proposition in question meant A at the
time of utterance. In other words, even if the necessity of the past is revoked
in the case of the signification of prophetic utterances, it reinstates itself at the
meta-level. The objection, of course, applies not just to COS but to any doctrine
resembling Revocable Default Future.
Q27 [16]: In the second and third opinions, the appeal to the Word shifts
ground: from theory of meaning we relocate to epistemology. The shift means
that instead of terms, propositions, and their signification, the topics under
discussion are knowledge-states and their objects. In other words, instead of
the special problems associated with prophecy, we are back with the more
fundamental problem of freedom and foreknowledge. Instead of making use of
the tools developed in rss i, dd. 3841 to solve this problem, Chatton keeps the
discussion centered on the arguments associated with COS, raising objections
to them which, as he remarks, resemble those raised to the propositional form
of the doctrine in [7][15]. Only at [30], after he deals with this epistemological
variant of COS, does Chatton return to the subject of prophecy.
In the last sentence of this section, I assume that the second occurrence of
in essentia divina is dittography; otherwise the sentence is tautological. With
this emendation, it can be read as an explanation of how contingency in the
Word, i.e., in the divine essence, translates by contraposition into contingency
tout court: if some faculty of created vision (say the created vision of Christ
or of some true prophet) necessarily represents all of its proper objects in the
divine essence, then, given my ability to arrange for some seen object not to
be in the divine essencesay the eternal having-been-going-to-be of some
future contingentmy ability to arrange for it not to be at all follows by logical
necessity.
Q27 [17]: Chatton argues that the second opinion, which represents an epis-
temological version of COS, leads to an improper restriction of divine modal
capacity. As is clear from [16], the second opinion assumes that any created
vision in the Word provides a direct cognitive conduit to the divine essence.
434 chapter 3
If this is so, then, since the divine essence is absolutely inerrant (inerrancy
here being read as something like metaphysical necessity), the following con-
sequence is necessary:
Christ, or a prophet, sees * in the Word; therefore, * will take place.109
The antecedent is present-/past-necessitated, as in [5] and [6] above; the con-

sequent is necessitated in virtue of the inerrancy of the divine essence. But
is by hypothesis a future contingent proposition such as Socrates will sit in a;
hence, by the definition of contingent, * is not contradictory, and like all
non-contradictory states of affairs, its actualization lies within Gods absolute
power. Yet this is implicitly denied by the doctrine under discussion. (The sen-
tence beginning But no contradiction appears simply spells out the criteria
for contradiction; the specification in some vision by which the creature sees
God does no obvious conceptual work and seems out of place.)
Two matters should be remarked on here. First, Chattons equation of iner-
rancy and necessity is highly questionable; the entire Boethian analytical appa-
ratus (see Chapter i, 44.5) can be seen as an attempt, and a not obviously
unsuccessful one, to distinguish between facticity along a specific timeline and
availability of conative alternatives. Gods inerrant knowledge of the former
does not cancel the formal existence of the latter. Second, the second opinion
is a variant of COS, which argues not for the necessity of the consequence but
for its contingency. Thus, if Chattons reasoning in this section is correct, the
appeal to a direct conduit between the beatific vision and the divine essence
not only improperly restricts Gods modal capacity; it refutes COSs appeal to
contingency in the Word altogether. It is curious that Chatton does not point
this out.
Q27 [18]: Chattons language in this section can easily mislead the reader into
believing that contingency is the threat; in fact, although it is not immediately
apparent, this section continues the line of reasoning begun in [17], and neces-
sity is still the source of doctrinal danger. The former imposes the latter. In
arranging for the retroactive eternal presence in the divine vision of some *,
a creature can retroactively annihilate alternatives to * in that vision. Since
* was assumed to be contingent, a creature can effectively necessitate for all
eternity something which, for God, ought to remain contingent from the stand-
109 Here, as in commentary on rss i, dd. 4041, q. 2 [9] and [26], i use * to mean the state
of affairs corresponding to the proposition .
commentary 435
point of absolute power. The reference to doctrines of abstractive and sensitive

vision is explained in sections [19][20].
Q27 [19]: Chatton sets up a standard elimination argument. On the assumption

of the second opinion, which reads the created vision in the Word as a royal
epistemological road to the divine essence, we are faced with a dilemma: either
the representation of objects in the Word, and therefore in the divine essence,
is as necessary as the representation of objects in sensitive vision, or it is not.
Both alternatives lead to impious conclusions. [19] reviews the first horn of
the dilemma. If the relationship between vision in the Word and its objects
is as firm as that between sensitive vision and its intentional objects, then the
vision in the Word treats actual and nonactual objects equally. This is shown
by reference to the (ex hypothesi analogous) case of sensitive vision, which
attaches to its intentional objects necessarily, in a way prescinding from the
presence or absence of external, real-world objects. This necessity explains
why God can (though He normally does not) give us sensitive vision of an
actually absent whiteness. If He could not do this, then His power to co-cause a
sensitive vision of whiteness would depend on the actual presence or absence
of whiteness, which would represent an illicit limitation of Gods power. In
like manner, His essence can represent as actual a future event which will, in
fact, not take place; if it could not do this, Gods absolute power to see and
realize alternative actualities would be illicitly restricted. The implication, as
in [17] and [18], is that a prophet or blessed person could override Gods modal
freedom by seeing, and therefore necessitating, a future thing, event, or state of
affairs in the Word.110
110 The whole section makes an implicit appeal to a theory of intentional sensory objects
which resembles that of Peter Auriol (see Auriols Scriptum i, d. 3, s. 14 [Buytaert vol. 2,
pp. 696698]). This is surprising given Chattons sustained attack on Auriols theory of esse
apparens in rel, prol, q. 2, a. 2, pp. 8689. Briefly put, Chatton defends the theoretical need
for sensible and intelligible species, but attacks other intermediaries between perceiver
and perceived and between cognizer and cognized as violations of explanatory parsimony.
Despite the fact that intentional objects would be just such intermediaries, I have referred
to them in the text, primarily for ease of exposition. But note that Chatton need not invoke
intermediaries in his analysis of vision; he can simply say that God, by His absolute power,
can give you a visual perception of a real-world object in the absence of that object, in
which case the perception would simply exist without the object normally associated with
it (cf. Chapter i, 10.1.2.1 for the similar, and similarly counterintuitive, idea that an assent
to a given proposition can in principle be detached from the content of that proposition).
See Tachau 1988 for discussions of Auriols esse apparens (85112) and Chattons treatment
of Auriols ideas (180208).
436 chapter 3
Q27 [20]: Here Chatton presents the other horn of the dilemma. If vision in
the Word has a less secure connection to its objects than does sensitive vision,
then we can be even less certain of things, events, and states of affairs seen in
the Word than we can of the testimony of the senses, which latter is notoriously
fallible.
Apart from the fact that a third alternative is ignoredvision in the Word
could be more necessarily attached to its objects than sensitive vision to its
objectsChatton is engaging in some conceptual equivocation here. In [19],
the necessity was that of a connection between faculty and objects that could
be described in intentional and intensional terms: the power of the sensitive
vision to see a whiteness was analyzed in isolation from its activation at a given
time by the presence of an actual whiteness. By contrast, in [20] the necessity
is associated with an extensional faculty-to-object connection: the question is
the necessity with which sensitive vision yields trustworthy information about
an actual whiteness.
Q27 [21]: Vision in the Word, and therefore in the divine essence, would be
as modally secure as would the assent of the blessed to the objects of Gods
revealed will. The latter has a high degree or kind of necessity; hence also the
former.
Chattons claim that the blessed would necessarily assent to the objects of
Gods revealed will contrasts interestingly with rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1 [81].
Q27 [22][23]: These rather prolix sections simply insist that a kind of Aris-
totelian correspondence obtains between vision in the Word and its objects:
if a given vision occurred, then the states of affairs associated with that vision
are facts. Those facts rule out the unrepresented visioni.e., the alternative
vision in virtue of whose possibility the advocates of COS want to establish
contingency in the Wordfrom being the case in the future. Not even God can
detach the contents of vision in the Word from the facts corresponding to those
contents. There is a conceptual connection here to the point made in [15]: once
a given vision has occurred, no modification of its semantics (even of its past
semantics) can change the fact that, before the modification, it represented
what it represented.
Q27 [24][29]: These sections present and reject the third opinion, a variant
of COS that is even more radical than that discussed in [16][23]. Where the
second opinion takes vision in the Word as created, though constituting a
direct route to the (uncreated) divine essence, the third opinion reads it as
already itself uncreated. Blessed souls in heaven and true prophets have on
commentary 437
this opinion a kind of God-consciousness,111 a direct epistemic connection to,

or rather identification with, Gods knowledge of fact and possibility. Given
this fusion of creaturely and divine cognition, prophecies made by God and
creature are inseparable from the full modal field of possibility available to
God by absolute power, allowing the semantics of those prophecies to be recast
ex post facto by creaturely action just as in the second opinion. But, Chatton
replies, Gods vision is His essence ([24]); hence the union of creaturely and
divine cognition entails, by the transitivity of identity, the ontological merger of
blessed creatures with the Godhead by hypostatic union ([25], [28]), a merger
which, because of the intimate connection of uncreated cognition and deity,
embraces all three persons of the Trinity ([26]). Quite apart from its obvious
impiety, the opinion that all blessed souls are identical with God leads to the
false consequence that they are all equally blessed ([27]). Finally, the opinion
suggests (though it does not imply) a parallel treatment of creaturely love, with
further impious consequences ([29]).
The reasoning in [28] is somewhat murky. The structure of the argument
seems to be as follows: The truth of the proposition William sees either
directly implies a hypostatic union or, if it does not, implies divine presences
which, in turn, imply a hypostatic union. The problem is that Chatton does not
take the last step; we are left with the aforesaid presences, which are, for all we
know, perfectly compatible with the absence of a hypostatic union. The word-
ing of this section, with its parallel phrases comparing the truth of sentences
with sets of entities sufficient to make them true, indicates an attempt by Chat-
ton to employ his celebrated anti-razor, a tool which he uses against Ockham
as a brake on the nominalist drive toward ontological parsimony.112 However,
the attempt in this case was either incomplete or was not completely recorded.
Q27 [30]: Chatton considers himself to have refuted COS, and turns back to the
underlying problem of the relationship between live conative contingency and
true prophecy; this problem will occupy him to the end of the Question.
111 The term is due to Sharon Kaye, who attributes the idea behind it to theories endorsed
by Thomas Buckingham and Peter Auriol (Kaye 2000: 96). For criticism of the latter
attribution, see Thakkar 2010: 130135.
112 If Ockhams razor can be paraphrased as the (ultimately Aristotelian) rule that one must
not posit explanatory entities beyond necessity, the anti-razor, also called the Chatton
Principle (Keele 2002), can be described as the complementary rule that one must posit
such entities as are necessary. For examples see rss i, d. 30, q. 1, a. 4 [39][42], [57]; q. 3
[72]; cf. Chapter i 10.1.2.3. For discussion see Maurer 1984 and Keele (2002 passim, 2014
3.2).
438 chapter 3
Q27 [31][33]: In re-establishing an unbreakable connection between language

and reality, the rejection of COS collapses versions C and C of the consequence
reviewed in [5] and [6] above. Hence, defenders of strong conative contingency
must bite the bullet and admit that the standard, content-oriented version C,
here repeated, is a contingent consequence:
C: Christ said that Peter will deny Him thrice; therefore, Peter will deny
Him thrice.
However, with the complications of COS out of the way, a contingent conse-
quence begins to look more and more like a mere invalid argument or false
sequent. As a result, by securing Peters live conative option to remain stead-
fast, Chattons opponents cannot avoid the charge of conceding to Peter the
ability to render God either fallible or mendacious. Section [33] suggests, natu-
rally enough, that both options are impious and unacceptable. The remaining
sections of this Question focus mainly on the implications of divine mendacity.
Chattons language (opinio multorum, [31]; ipsi, [32]) suggests a reference to
some school of thought that specifically embraced the idea of divine mendac-
ity as a way out of the dilemma of freedom and foreknowledge. Chatton could
have Ockham in mind: the latter writes sometimes as though he indeed coun-
tenanced the possibility of divine deception,113 but in fact he has a complex
argument to the effect that such deception ultimately has no skeptical con-
sequences and so, we may conclude, is not really deception.114 There were,
however, several younger colleagues of Chatton who explicitly mooted or even
endorsed the idea of divine deception, and did so in Oxford around the time
113 E.g., Quodlibeta septem, Quodlibet 5 q. 5 [OTh vol. 9, p. 498, ll. 7273]: Tamen Deus potest
causare actum creditivum per quem credo rem esse praesentem quae est absens.
114 Indeed, the saving clause appears in the text immediately following the passage quoted in
the previous footnote: Et dico quod illa cognitio creditiva erit abstractiva, non intuitiva;
et per talem actum fidei potest apparere res esse praesens quando est absens, non tamen
per actum evidentem (OTh vol. 9, p. 498, ll. 7376, emphasis added). Ockham implicitly
concedes a harmless ability on Gods part to quasi-deceive us, and explicitly denies that
God can really deceive us, since He cannot cause an evident cognition of a nonexistent or
absent object. In its twists and turns, Ockhams attempt to evade the skeptical hook recalls
the discussions of the cognitive impression in classical Stoicism (see Long and Sedley
1987: 249253). For discussion and more references on Ockhams anti-skeptical venture,
see Karger 2004, whose interpretation of Ockhams and Wodehams positions on these
matters I follow. For an alternative interpretation of Ockhams discussions of prophecy
and freedom as being tantamount to the position that God can, in the fullest sense, lie,
see Kaye 1997, ch. 2.
commentary 439
when Chattons Quodlibet was composed, namely adherents of the so-called

communis opinio partly influenced by Ockham (cf. Chapter i, 7.3). For exam-
ple, Adam Wodeham, while endorsing Ockhams doctrine that intuitive cog-
nition of absent or nonexistent objects is possible,115 resisted the Venerable
Inceptors anti-skeptical arguments, concluding that [God] cannot, by any
knowledge, make us certain in such a way that we cannot be deceived if He
so wills.116 Richard FitzRalph and Robert Holcot more directly claimed that
God could deceive. In both cases, their claims were made in the context of a
discussion of revealed future contingents; this stands in contrast to Ockham
and Wodeham, whose discussions take place in discussions of the dangers of
skepticism.117
Q27 [34]: It is the validity of the sequent [God asserted ] [ is true] that
underwrites Scriptural authority. If, given the premise God asserted , we can,
without producing logical repugnancy, posit the possibility in being (that is,
bring about the actual state of affairs *), we have established the invalidity
of the sequent. The sense of posit in being used here is apparently i(3)(a) or
(b) (see Chapter i, 8.3).
Q27 [35]: The assumption considered in [34], namely that a counterexample

to the sequent [God asserted ] [ is true] exists, undercuts not only
Scriptural authority but divine authority in general. Any credible claim derives
its credibility either from the speakers authority or from some other source.
The speakers authority, in the form of the sequent, has in this case been posited
out of existence; all that remains is some other source, a source which, given
that it is less worthy than God, cannot ground the credibility of claims issuing
from God.
Q27 [36]: The conceptual arguments of [34] and [35] are cashed out in a
common-sense, intuitive way: if we actually found evidence of Biblical error,
we would be deprived of our touchstone of authenticity.
115 In Lectura prol. q. 2 7 [Wodeham 1990, vol. 1, p. 46, ll. 4748], Wodeham affirms [q]uod
supernaturaliter posset esse notitia intuitiva sine exsistentia obiecti sui.
116 Lectura prol. q. 2 5 [Wodeham 1990, vol. 1, p. 41, ll. 2728]: [C]oncedo quod per nullam
notitiam potest nos sic certificare quin possimus decipi ab eo si voluerit.
117 For Holcots discussion see his Quodlibet 3, q. 3, ll. 3640 [Holcot 1995, p. 76] and q. 8,
ll. 523551 [ibid., pp. 102103] as well as In quatuor libros Sententiarum ii, q. 2, ll. 898
901, 930935, 12511264 [ibid., pp. 153, 155, 171]. FitzRalphs remarks, from his Sentences
commentary, are quoted in ibid., footnote 20, p. 49; for the text, see footnote 129 below.
440 chapter 3
Q27 [37]: It is unclear why Chatton thinks he is introducing a new topic here,
since the issue of human imposition of falsehood on the Deity has already been
discussed in [33].
Q27 [38]: An appeal to the doctrine of the two natures of Christ is countered by
a reference to the identity relation implicit in the doctrine of the Trinity: Christ
is human, butmore importantly in this contextHe is also God; therefore it
is God, not merely Christ, who has been made a liar.
Q27 [39][41]: Having (at least to his own satisfaction) refuted the solution
consisting in the appeal to a contingent consequence in [33][38], Chatton
constructs an argument directed against the position that divine cognition and
divine prophecy can be subject to different canons of modality. This will not
work: the mere fact of Peters being able to do otherwise than God has made me
believe he will do (as in [39]), and otherwise than His cognition represents him
as going-to-do (as in [40]), suffices to establish Peters power either to deceive
Him or to make Him a deceiver. Chattons move in [41] explains why this point
must be established twice: while the formulation God made me believe X is
intuitively subject to past-necessitation, it is unobvious that the formulation
the divine cognition represented me as going-to-sit-tomorrow is so subject,
since it refers only to the (timeless) divine cognitive faculty. Section [41] links
the two formulations by establishing that the contents of divine cognition
can be insulated from past-necessitation only by conceding the possibility
of divine mendacity. This is unacceptable; hence Chattons opponents must
admit that both states of affairs are necessary. Since they are both necessary,
and since (as has been shown) the consequence is also necessary, so is the
consequent.
Q27 [42]: The exposition of the argument is a bit tortuous. It runs as follows:
If the consequence is not necessary, then the antecedent is compatible with
the negation of the consequent. We have seen, in sections [33][38], that this
assumption leads to divine ignorance or divine mendacity; hence, it can be
rejected. (This step is not made explicitly.) Now, given that the consequence
is necessary, can we allow the possibility that the divine cognition represented
Peter as contingently going-to-sin? If, due to the fact that the cognition is sit-
uated in the past and subject to past-necessitation, we cannot do this, then
by positing something intrinsically possible (namely Peters future and contin-
gent sin) we have conceded something impossible (namely Gods inability to
know future contingents). If, on the other hand, we can allow the possibility
that the divine cognition represents Peter as contingently going-to-sin, then let
commentary 441
us posit this possibility in being (i.e., explore its modal ramifications118). The fol-
lowing syllogism (actually just modus ponens) is valid, and all three sentences
are true during the interval between Christs prediction and Peters threefold
denial:
1. If the divine cognition represented Peter as going-to-sin, then Peter will sin.
2. The divine cognition represented Peter as going-to-sin.
3. Peter will sin.
Now, if the modal status of (3) is contingent, andas we have established

that of (1) is necessary, then, by commonly accepted principles of modal logic,
(2) must be contingent.119 Hence, at the beginning of this section, Chatton
invokes the Ockhamist future-dependency escape clause (see Chapter i,
4.5.4 and 7.2.1) in order to establish that (2) can remain contingent even
though past.
Q27 [43]: Chatton gives a simpler demonstration that it is the antecedent, the
divine cognition represented Peter as going-to-sin, that is contingent. Peter
cannot break the necessary link between divine cognition and reality (repre-
sented by the consequence), but he can (it seems) arrange for the contents of
divine cognition (i.e., Peter as going-to-sin) to be other than they are. Chatton
does not discuss the fact, which seems evident enough, that conceding Peter
an ex post facto ability to make the antecedent not true entails many of the
same problems of divine mendacity and ignorance besetting the assumption
that the consequence is contingent.
Q27 [44]: The aforementioned response, i.e., the opinion that the conse-
quence is contingent, allows God to perform metaphysically impossible actions
such as lie, arrange for some creature to hate Him for His own sake, etc. At
this point in his career, Chatton no longer thinks that God can be deliberately
mendacious (see commentary on [54] below). However, the emphasis in this
section on the (excluded) possibility of God causing hatred of Himself for His
own sake is deliberate, and indicates that Chatton has not abandoned his belief,
118 The phrase posit in being is used in a general derivational way in this section; the
closest approximation in the schema presented in Chapter i, 8.38.4 is perhaps sense i
(1).
119 Assuming, of course, that (2) is not impossible, a safe assumption given that (2) is ex
hypothesi true; cf. Chapter i, 10.2.1, in the discussion following Fig. 14.
442 chapter 3
articulated several times in rss and lss, that God can indeed cause or allow
hatred of Himself subject to certain limitations, among them that the hatred
cannot be for His own sake.120
Q27 [45][52]: Chatton invokes various authorities in favor of the proposition

that God cannot lie; hence the theory that the consequence is contingent,
which implies that He can, must be rejected.
Q27 [45]: The reference to Hebrews 6: 1320 stresses the idea that Gods self-
swearing ends controversy; also relevant is the fact that the Biblical text explic-
itly claims to have identified two matters, namely the promise and the oath,
about which God cannot lie (Hebrews 6: 18).
Q27 [47]: In 1Kings 22: 2122, Micheas, a true prophet, retails a vision in which
he has witnessed God granting an evil angel permission to deceive the wicked
king Ahab. Thus one might think that these verses are ill suited as proof texts
for Chattons project of establishing absolute divine truthfulness and trust-
worthiness. Moreover, the Augustinian passages to which Chatton refers do
not address the specific problems associated with the passage from 1 Kings,
although they do expound Augustines typically severe line on mendacity.121
However, Augustine does discuss 1Kings 22: 2122 on a number of occasions,
e.g., in De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus q. 53 [Augustinus 1975, pp. 87
88] and in the later Contra Julianum book 5, c. 3, n. 13 [Opera omnia, vol. 10,
p. 791] and c. 4, n. 15 [ibid., p. 794]. In these texts, as one might expect, he goes
out of his way to exonerate God of any culpability in the deception of Ahab: in
the earlier work he stresses the sinfulness of the messenger, while in the later
work he emphasizes human ignorance of Gods purposes and Ahabs ultimate
responsibility for being deceived. This is probably the point: Gods grant (how-
ever explicit) of permission to lie does not constitute an instruction to lie;122 if
it did, even Augustine would have to admit that God had involved Himself in
sin.
Q27 [49]: The reference is obscure; neither 1 nor 2 Maccabees contains a 20th
chapter. However, given that an insincere promise is a near relative of a lie,
120 See rss i, d. 1, q. 3 [38], [46]; ii, d. 7, q. 2 [6]; lss i, d. 1, q. 3 [31], [46].
121 The passages identified by Etzkorn and Keele are Enchiridion, c. 5, n. 18, pp. 5859, and De
doctrina christiana i, c. 36, n. 40, p. 32.
122 Cf. Aquinas, Quaestio disputata de malo, q. 3, a. 1, ad 17 [aoo vol. 3, p. 286].
commentary 443
perhaps the story of the seven brothers and their mother (2 Maccabees 7: 1
42) is the intended reference. During this tale of martyrdom, a Jewish mother
promises to the Seleucid king Antiochus iv that she will try to persuade one
of her sons to abandon his ancestral customs. When she is granted the oppor-
tunity to speak with her son, she breaks her promise and urges him to remain
steadfast even under torture (7: 2429). The insincere promise certainly seems
justified under the circumstances; perhaps Chatton is worried that adherents
of the doctrine of the contingency of the consequence will cite this plausible
Biblical text in support of their heretical belief that even God can lie for a good
cause.
Q27 [52]: Here as elsewhere, Chattons references, though generally relevant,

do not entirely support his case. Anselms Cur deus homo book i, c. 10, deals
with various hard deontological problems associated with the Sons willing
sacrifice and the Fathers acceptance of it, but contains no direct statement to
the effect that Christ cannot sin.123 Book ii, c. 10 of the same work addresses
the issue directly, but comes to a more nuanced conclusion than Chatton
suggests: Christ is formally capable of telling a lie in the sense that if He
were to will it, then He could do it, but since He cannot will it, His ability
to do it is something of a dead letter. As Anselm puts it, itaque potuit et non
potuit mentiri.124 The analysis in Proslogion c. 7 explains why this inability to
will evil is not rightly described as impotence: only in a formal or linguistic
sense is Gods lack of ability to be corrupted or to lie a case of inability.
In fact, a potency in this area would be indicative of a corrupt nature and
a concomitant inability to prevent the self-evidently undesirable opposite of
the thing willed; hence Gods impotence is actually an indication of His
omnipotence.125
Q27 [53]: According to the opinion criticized here by Chatton, the fact that
Gods utterances have hitherto proved true constitutes the decisive grounds
for believing Him in the present and the future. This opinion, which has the
look of a straw man, allows Chatton the easy retort that appears in the text.
We can strengthen the opinion in question by rephrasing it in the following
way: In the strongest sense of can and the morally opprobrious sense of lie,
God can lie; however, in fact, He has never lied, does not lie, and will never
123 Anselm, Cur deus homo i, c. 10 [Anselmi opera omnia vol. 2, pp. 6467].
124 Anselm, Cur deus homo ii, c. 10 [Anselmi opera omnia vol. 2, pp. 106108].
125 Anselm, Proslogion, c. 7 [Anselmi opera omnia vol. 1, pp. 105106].
444 chapter 3
lie. Such an approach concedes full modal scope to divine action while pro-
viding assurances that this scope is never, in fact, misused.126 An old quotation
from Ambrosiaster (misidentified by Peter Lombard as Augustine) is a possible
source.127 Closer to home, Chatton may have in mind either Adam Wodeham
or the communis opinio authors mentioned in the commentary to [31][33]
above. As we have seen, Wodeham endorses a relatively strong version of the
thesis that God can deceive. He avoids the problem of an untrustworthy God by
maintaining that God can, according to His absolute power, cause us to believe
false statements, but that by His ordained power He does not do so, at least
when our salvation is at stake.128 Holcot and FitzRalph take a similar line.129
126 According to Van Ess 1985: 64, this was the standard approach of medieval Islamic the-
ologians, who generally rejected Ab Ishq an-Nams contrary theory that God was
metaphysically incapable of evil.
127 The relevant text is from the Sentences:
Quod enim Deus omnia possit, pluribus auctoritatibus probatur. Ait enim Augustinus in
libro Quaestionum veteris et novae Legis: Omnia quidem potest Deus, sed non facit nisi
quod convenit veritati eius et iustitiae.
Sententiae i, d. 42, c. 1 [lombard 1971, p. 294, ll. 79]
It is proved by [reference to] many authorities that God can do all things. For Augustine
[i.e., Ambrosiaster] says in Questions on the Old and New Law: God can do all things, but
He does only that which befits His truth and justice.
128 Here is the relevant text:
[C]oncedendum [est] quod Deus potuisset de potentia absoluta per ora hominum, ita
bene sicut locutus est per os asini, quascumque falsas [locutiones] oratione vocali in
audientia hominum causasse, sicut et odium Dei si sibi placeret, et bene tunc fierent
a Deo. Sed de potentia ordinata non facit aliquid tale, praecise in his quae spectant ad
salutem perpetuam nostrum vel damnationem.
Lectura i, d. 2, q. 1, 8 [wodeham 1990, vol. 2, p. 18, ll. 4247]
It must be conceded that God, by His absolute power, could have caused any false state-
ments [to come about] by vocal speech from the mouths of, and in the hearing of, human
beings, just as easily as He spoke by the mouth of a donkey [cf. Numbers 22: 2830],
and just as He could cause hatred of God if it pleased Him, and then of course these
things would be from God. But according to His ordained power, He does not do any
such thing, especially in those matters that concern our perpetual salvation or damna-
tion.
129 Note that Holcot and FitzRalph, like Wodeham, appeal to the absolute / ordained power
distinction:
commentary 445
Finally, it is possible that Chatton is thinking about his own Day 2 opinion
expressed in rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1 [32][34].
Q27 [54]: Chatton has indeed previously claimed, in rss i, d. 47, q. un., a. 2 [20]
and [26], that God can cause lie and error in someones mind (quod posset
Deus causare mendacium et errorem in mente alicuius), but that, if He does so,
the action is not evil but holy and just.130 Evidently he has come to see the
threat to divine trustworthiness as more important than the implied limitation
on Gods absolute freedom of action.

Contingents is Compatible with Their Contingency
Summary (including q. 29, sections [1][5]): This Question is devoted to a review
of fifteen opinions (henceforth OP1, OP2, etc.) on the subject of revealed
future contingents. These opinions are a heterogeneous group: some are gen-
Credit enim creatura quae est beata quod semper erit beata, et ideo satis certa est; est
tamen sic certa quod potest numquam fuisse certa. Et notitia quae est certitudo vel
securitas beati potest fieri deceptio et error de potentia Dei absoluta; tamen in rei veritate
certa est.
holcot, In quatuor libros Sententiarum ii, q. 2, ll. 898901 [holcot 1995, p. 153]
For a creature believes that it is blessed because it will always be blessed, and thus it is
sufficiently certain; but it is certain in such a way that it is able never to have been certain.
And the knowledge [notitia] which is the certainty or security of the blessed one can
become deception and error by the absolute power of God; yet in the truth of the thing it
is certain.
Non enim videtur [mihi] impossibile Deum aliquem decipere; sed tamen numquam
decepit aliquem sicut nos pie credimus. Unde Augustinus vult concludere tanquam unum
inconveniens secundum legem ordinatam quod Deus aliquem decepit, non tanquam
aliquod impossibile.
fitzralph, Sentences question on revealed future contingents, Paris, BN MS lat.
15853, fol. 92va, quoted in holcot 1995, p. 49, footnote 120
It does not seem to me to be impossible that God should deceive someone; but He has
never deceived anyone, as we piously believe. Hence, Augustine treats [the idea] that
God has deceived someone as something which violates ordained law, not as something
impossible.
130 Cf. also rel prol., q. 2, a. 3, pp. 9899.
446 chapter 3
eral and traditional, while others are specific and clearly associated with par-
ticular authors or schools. Here is the complete list:

interpretation
consequence
necessity
Word
While Chatton gives each opinion a hearing (both pro and contra), a clear
pattern emerges: there is a marked resistance to ontologically radical the-
ories such as COS and backward causation, and a clear preference for the
Wylton Scope Analysis augmented by a treatment of the correct scope read-
ing as encoding a non-assertoric speech act (as emerges from the extended
defense of the WSA in [30][33]). In sections [40][44], Chatton summa-
rizes the fifteen opinions he has just reviewed, breaking down all approaches
to the problem of future contingent prophecy into three principal ways of
responding. Given the consequence God said that a would be, therefore a
will be, we may (1) concede the necessity of the consequence but analyze
the antecedent in such a way that it does not yield a necessary consequent
([40][42]); (2) concede the necessity of the antecedent but claim that the
consequence is itself contingent ([43]); or (3) simply embrace the necessi-
commentary 447
tation of the consequent ([44]). Each of the fifteen opinions is assigned to

one of these principal ways. Then, in [45] and [46], Chatton divides the
opinions in a new way: some opinions treat divine prophecy as isomorphic
with divine cognition, thus having a contingent status, while others treat such
prophecy as making claims in accordance with common law, thus requir-
ing treatment under the assumption of the contingency of the consequence.
This analysis is continued into the five sections of q. 29; then the text breaks
off.
Q28 [1]: OP1 involves crediting God with strong counterfactual power over the
past. Prophecies, once made, are past events; hence, the opinion discussed in
this section saves freedom of choice, both creaturely and divine, by assuming
that Gods prophecy at (tn) can be revoked at or after (tn) and replaced, ex post
facto, with a substantively different prophecy. The opinion thus belongs to the
tradition of divine modal pleroma initiated by Peter Damian (see Chapter i,
55.2.3); indeed it is an extreme member of this tradition, involving as it
does genuine backward causation of substantive matters of fact.
Q28 [2]: Chatton appeals to our modal intuitions to counter OP1. All past facts
and true past-tense propositions have the modal status of necessary: we have
no grounds to single out a particular subclass of true propositions, in this
case divine pronouncements, and exempt them from the otherwise general
necessitation of the past. Thus the following three items have the status of
non-contingent (i.e., necessary or impossible): (a) Gods instruction of Isaiah,
(b) the proposition God created the world, and (c) a given persons having
already died.
Chatton assumes that the blasphemy of holding (b) to be contingent on
the actions of a creaturely agent will be obvious, and concentrates on (c). His
choice of a problematic example, though bizarre, is clever: he constructs a
conditional prophecy which, unlike most such prophecies, locates the morally
relevant precondition (you will sin) at a point subsequent to the reward
promised by God (you will slay an infidel).131 In the event that you in fact
slay an infidel, then, you must be a future sinner, in which case your future
sin cannot be morally culpable. The example anticipates some of the issues
involved in Newcombs paradox.
131 Contrast Ockhams examples of conditional prophecy, in which precondition and reward
follow the usual temporal order (see commentary on [38][39] below).
448 chapter 3
Q28 [3][4]: The second opinion, OP2, appeals to the traditional division of
prophecy into various subcategories. Only some of these subcategoriesin
Chattons terms, the judicial or assertoriccommit God to a flat prediction
about future matters of fact, while comminatory prophecies warn of events
which might follow unless behavior changes (cf. conditional prophecies, dis-
cussed in commentary to [2] above, mentioned in [5][6] below, and given
their own category as OP15 later in this text) and instructive prophecies pro-
vide information.132 OP2, however, tries to characterize all prophecy as non-
assertoric in character, which (as Chatton points out in [4]) deprives God of
the ability to make any stable non-hypothetical predictions. Ockham is per-
haps a target here; in the Tractatus de praedestinatione, he claims that every
prophecy about future contingents is either an overt or a covert conditional,
and his examples are clearly comminatory.133
Q28 [5][6]: According to OP3, prophecy of future contingents can only be

taken in one of the traditional nonliteral modes of Biblical interpretation.
There is some overlap between OP2 and OP3 (e.g., comminatory prophecy
in the former and conditional prophecy in the latter); however, the primary
opposition in OP2 is assertoric / non-assertoric, while that in OP3 is literal /
nonliteral.
Chatton writes: For sometimes an expression is understood literally, some-
times parabolically, sometimes tropically, and sometimes simply and abso-
lutely, and sometimes conditionally. I have been unable to identify a thinker
who connects future contingents to this precise list of interpretive schemata
and denies the possibility of a literal or a simple and absolute interpretation.
Augustine, of course, discusses various interpretive strategies in the context of
Biblical exegesis, but he certainly does not rule out the possibility of a merely
literal interpretation.134 As in the case of OP2, Ockham might be the target here;
132 This is an ancient interpretive tradition; see Thakkar 2010: 118128 for a short survey. The
idea of a comminatory prophecy appears already in Augustines De civitate Dei xxi.18
[Augustinus 1955, pp. 784785] though it is rejected and replaced with another account in
xxi.24 [ibid., pp. 791792]. The twelfth-century Glossa ordinaria was an important source
for the subdivisions of prophecy (see Thakkar, op. cit., for references). Comminatory
prophecies are discussed in Aquinas, st iiii, q. 174, a. 1 [aoo vol. 2, p. 736], instructive
prophecies in a. 6 [ibid., p. 738].
133 Ockham, Tractatus de praedestinatione, q. 1 [OPh vol. 2, p. 513, ll. 176182]; for the text, see
commentary on OP15 ([38][39] below).
134 See Confessiones xii 18 (27) [Augustinus 1990, pp. 229230] and De Genesi ad litteram
book 8, ch. 2 [Augustinus 1894, pp. 232233] for Augustines attitude toward literal inter-
pretation.
commentary 449
however, the Venerable Inceptor reduces all prophecy to just one of the several
kinds mentioned by Chatton, namely the prophecy sub condicione. Finally,
Peter Auriol is a candidate: he indeed argues for an interpretation of prophetic
utterances going beyond the sense that the series of words literally expresses
and denies that any prophecies about future contingents are strictly true. On
the other hand, he does not give this list of nonliteral interpretive schemata,
mentioning only two cases: (1) incorrectly tensed prophecies and (2) events
(such as the destruction of Nineveh) that do not come to pass, thus requiring
some nonliteral interpretation.135
In any event, this opinion, like OP2, allows Chatton an easy reply, analogous
to that given in [4]: it is blasphemous to limit God to making prophecies that
must be interpreted nonliterally.
Q28 [7][8]: OP4 sets forth a highly plausible theory, whose authorship I
have been unable to establish,136 according to which God can reveal only
those futures which follow causally and morally from voluntary choices. The
problem, as Chatton points out in [8], is that the prohibition on the revelation
of genuinely primary movements of the will is an arbitrary one. Furthermore,
the stipulation that God can reveal only those futures that depend causally and
morally on some more primary event prevents God from being able to reveal
future contingents, or at least places severe limits on the type of contingency
that can be revealed (cf. commentary on [20] below).
Q28 [9]: OP5 represents the Neoplatonic idea of an ordered hierarchy of causes.
The idea is endorsed by Thomas Aquinas, who is perhaps the intended tar-
get in these sections. According to this approach, God, as the primary cause
of any existent, acts necessarily, but His causal agency involves a delegation of
subordinate causal power to created agents who, within their limited sphere,
exercise contingent control over outcomes.137 As Aquinas expounds this doc-
trine, it is compatible with Gods complete foreknowledge of and providence
over all future contingents inasmuch as God necessarily arranges for some con-
tingent outcomes (cf. Fallback, discussed in rss i, d. 38 [26], [29], [41], and [55]).
135 See Auriol, Scriptum i, d. 38, a. 3 [Schabel 1995, p. 142, l. 1160p. 143, l. 1180].
136 Cf., however, Aquinas opinion reviewed in the commentary on q. 27 [13].
137 See Aquinas, i S., d. 38, q. 1, a. 5, co. [aoo vol. 1, p. 102] and ii S., d. 37, q. 2, a. 2, co [ibid.,
p. 234], Summa contra gentiles iii, ch. 94, nn. 1017 [aoo vol. 2, p. 91], and st i, q. 14, a. 13, ad
1 [ibid., p. 209]. The discussion in Summa contra gentiles stresses the idea that some out-
comes are necessarily contingent (and are thus known as such by God); that in ii S. draws
more heavily on the Neoplatonic tradition associating contingency with a lack of being.
450 chapter 3
Q28 [10]: Chattons counter to OP5 generally follows the critique of Duns
Scotus: if, as the theory demands, there is an ordered hierarchy of causes,
then that very hierarchy will prevent the result that the theory seeks, since
if Gods acts necessitate their outcomes, there is no way for contingency to
enter the modal chain.138 Leaving aside the distinction between absolute and
conditional necessity, which plays a central role in [11] below but is peri-
pheral here, the essential complaint is that the theory allows the modal effi-
cacy of inferior causes, which are conceded to be intrinsically contingent, to
trump that of superior causes. Since God and creatures both depend fully
on the contingent choices of creatures, all necessity (except for the most
encompassing metaphysical variety) is banished from the world. Hence the
theory does not succeed in preserving necessity with respect to superior
causes along with contingency with respect to inferior causes. Crucially,
this critique assumes that the possible worlds encompassed by modality
respectu causarum inferiorum are a subset of those encompassed by modal-
ity respectu causarum superiorum.139 This assumption is retained in the next
section.
Q28 [11]: Section [11] takes another pass at OP5, this time setting up an iter-
ated dilemma yielding an infinite regress. Here, as opposed to [10], the distinc-
tion between absolute (i.e., simple) necessity and conditional necessity plays
a central role in the analysis. It is easy, though as we shall see not unprob-
lematic, to motivate the regress in terms of the scope interpretation of the
distinction.140 According to this interpretation, for any future effect E, simple
necessity is construed as the dangerous E, while conditional necessity is the
harmless, indeed tautological, (E E). We assume that some future effect E
is contingent with respect to inferior causes (IE) and necessary with respect
to superior causes (SE). The latter necessity is (by implicit hypothesis) either
absolute or conditioned. Given this background, the regress plays out as fol-
lows:
If the necessity is absolute, then given the subsethood assumption made

in [9], we have SE IE, which rules out IE. If the necessity is condi-
138 See Scotus, Lectura i, d. 39, nn. 3236 [Vat. vol. 17, pp. 488490]; Reportatio I-A, dd. 39
40, qq. 13, nn. 1315 [r i-a, vol. 2, pp. 469470], nn. 3234 [ibid., pp. 473474]. Sder 1999:
6675 has a good discussion of Scotus critique of Aquinas position.
139 See Chapter i, 3.2.1 for the importance of this point.
140 See Chapter i, 4.3 for a discussion of this Boethian distinction and an analysis of its
systematic ambiguity.
commentary 451
tioned, then it takes the form S(E E). The antecedent E and the conse-
quent E are at least notionally distinct: the antecedent E is the condition
that must be posited in order to yield the consequent E. Let us formally
distinguish them, and reformulate our conditioned necessity expression
as S(EA EC). EA, in this formula, stands for the lack of an impediment
by an inferior cause (see [10]), while EC is what follows from this lack,
namely the event itself. EA, however, as a thing, event, or state of affairs
in its own right, is subject to the following requirement: [SEA or S(EA
EA)]. (The formula as a whole is true because the second disjunct is
logically necessary.) If SEA, then given S(EA EC), we have SEC, and
given the subsethood assumption, IEC, which rules out IEC. If S(EA
EA), then by the notional distinctness move we reformulate as S(EAA
EAC). But EAA is a thing, event, or state of affairs in its own right; and so
on.
Two objections can be raised here. First, the notional distinctness move gives
the regress its point; otherwise it is an exercise in tedious symbol-manipulation.
This means that the distinctness has to have real content: it cannot be a mere
notational reminder intended to focus our attention on event as antecedent
and event as consequent. But to the extent that we insist on such content,
we diminish the strength of our claim to be able to move from the formulae
S(E E) to S(EA EC), from S(EA EA) to S(EAA EAC), etc. This problem
could be solved just by assuming that something other than the pure scope
interpretation is being used in the first place. We may charitably grant that
the difference between antecedent and consequent has enough content to be
more than merely formal, but not so much content that we lose our right to the
necessity operator.
The second objection is more central and applies to the previous section as
well as this one. The subsethood assumption that Chatton takes over from Sco-
tus rather obviously begs the question under discussion. The point of Fallback,
and of Boethian logical compatibilism in general (including the Aquinate vari-
ety), is precisely to let unreal futures stand as truth-makers for morally signifi-
cant claims of creaturely freedom to do otherwise. On the logical-compatibilist
view, the distinction between superior and inferior modality corresponds to the
difference between modally closed and open sentences respectively (see Chap-
ter i, 4.5, Fig. 4, and text). Hence, inferior modalitythe kind appropriate to
claims about what is attributable to creaturely agentscan range over a proper
superset of superior modality, reading the latter as Gods ultimate decision
about which future will be actualized. Thus if we translate Chattons move SE
IE into the Boethian system, we produce the false sequent (t0[TRL])(tf[TRL])E
452 chapter 3
(t0[TRL])(tf)E, and the regress cannot get started.141 There are, of course, pow-
erfully intuitive objections to the logical-compatibilist analysis, some of which
are reviewed in Chapter i, 5. But the Scotistic / Chattonian strategy of preemp-
tively rejecting that analysis and replacing it with a simpler one is an instance
of petitio principii.
Q28 [12]: Rounding out his counter to OP5, Chatton backs up and considers
a general problem that besets all attempts to reconcile strong creaturely con-
tingency with certainty of revelation, namely that the former seems to cancel
the latter. Once again it seems that Boethian logical compatibilism has been
preemptively ruled out as an interpretation of the Aquinate doctrine here dis-
cussed, since the logical-compatibilist model has a straightforward approach
to the reconciliation of contingency with certainty, indeed even with revealed
certainty (see Chapter i, 4.5.2 and 10.2). The as before may refer to Chat-
tons discussion of this dilemma in rss i, dd. 4041.
It should be noted that sections [10][12] do not imply a wholesale rejection
of Boethian logical compatibilism on Chattons part; it is merely in the context
of his refutations of the hierarchy-of-causes theory that such compatibilism is
ruled out of court. Cf. Chattons endorsement of other conceptual tools that
belong to the Boethian tradition in commentary to [40] and [46] below.
Q28 [13][14]: OP6 is the traditional appeal to modal scope disambiguation

(see Chapter i, 3.1), an appeal which, as Etzkorn and Keele point out in their
forthcoming edition of the Quodlibet, is not associated with any particular
author. Applied to prophecy, this appeal states and defuses the main threat of
necessitation as follows:
Proposition: Modal status:
1. God prophesied that a will be. contingent

2. If God prophesied that a will be, then a will be. necessary
3. Therefore, a will be. contingent
The tradition, if not the terminology, extends at least back to Boethius Con-
solation of Philosophy (see Chapter i, 4.3); for an example closer to Chattons
141 The subscript [TRL] refers to the Thin Red Line, i.e., the actual history of the world; see
Chapter i, 4.5.
commentary 453
time, see Aquinas, De veritate, q. 24, a. 1, ad 13 [aoo vol. 3, p. 142]. In [14], Chat-
ton raises the obvious objection to this analysis, which is that since the first
premise has been past-necessitated, the conclusion cannot be contingent.
The placement of OP6 and Chattons counter to it are interesting. Recall that
in Quodlibet q. 27 [42][43], he has already invoked the Ockhamist future-
dependency escape clause against the very objection he raises here in [14]. He
did this in the course of a critique of the main alternative to the analysis in
[13], namely the construal of the antecedent as necessary and the consequence
as contingent (see q. 27 [6], [31][52]). Here, however, we see him advancing
(albeit for a perhaps pro forma counter) an argument that seems to tilt in favor
of the contingency of the consequence approach. The rest of the Quodlibet
will see a certain amount of vacillation between the two approaches.
Q28 [15][18]: OP7 et contra appeal to the Boethian conditional / simple neces-
sity distinction. Since that distinction is ambiguous (see Chapter i, 4.3), it
is not clear that OP7 is different in content from OP6. In any event, sections
[15][18] seem like a rerun of previous opinions et contra: OP5 has already pro-
voked a discussion of the conditional / absolute necessity distinction and the
infinite-regress move, and OP6 has already given rise to the objection that the
antecedent God said that a would be has been past-necessitated. [18] repeats
[12].
Q28 [19][20]: OP8 makes use of language and ideas borrowed from the ars
obligatoria (see Chapter i, 8.2). While Etzkorn and Keele are doubtless correct
in their identification of Walter Burleigh as the Master of obligations referred
to in the text, some of the currents of thought appearing here suggest that
the Dominican school of obligational theology, as exemplified in the work of
Arnold of Strelley, is another source.142 The main concern in these sections, as
in the discussion of Strelley, is how to posit counterfactuals in being143 without
producing a contradiction. If in fact Socrates will sit in future instant a, and we
posit that he will not sit in future instant a, then we have, in an important sense,
posited something impossible: we have illicitly posited as actual two mutually
contradictory futures. We can, however, posit a temporally indefinite counter-
factual such as Socrates is currently seated; such a counterfactual is accept-
able only on the assumption that currently is construed indexically rather
142 Hester Gelber 2004: 102 dates Strelleys Sentences commentary to 13231330. Strelley and
obligational theology are discussed in Chapter i, 8.2; for both, I am heavily indebted to
Gelbers work (2004: 158170).
143 Posit in being being construed here in sense i(3)(a) or (b) (see Chapter i, 8.3).
454 chapter 3
than calendrically.144 Our positing of the counterfactual means that we are stip-
ulating a state of affairs which, while possible, is not assumed to be the case in
the present (otherwise we would produce a contradiction);145 the possibility of
the counterfactual depends on Socrates in fact sitting at some time other than
the present. Scotus, in developing the idea of synchronic contingency, takes
over Burleighs obligational approach and applies it to modal space: instead of
the temporally indefinite Socrates is currently seated, we have the temporally
definite but modally open Socrates will be seated in instant a, which is true
in some future instants a but not in others. Finally, Strelley builds on Scotus
approach, making no use of his Franciscan predecessors complicated instants-
of-nature apparatus but developing a model that makes use of alternate futures
which, though counterfactual, can be posited as actual for the purpose of eval-
uating current possibilities.146
The model embodied in this analysis assumes a Thin Red Line constituting
the real history of the world,147 and has an accordingly modest sense of coun-
terfactual possibility. Hence, its proponents can concede the necessity of the
consequence God said that a would be, therefore a will be, while stressing
that the necessitation of the future that this seems to entail is only necessita-
tion as-of-now: in a more encompassing sense, alternative futures are available
to God and creature, and on the counterfactual assumption that one of those
futures should take place, God would have always known (and, presumably,
said) otherwise. Chatton, in [20], counters that the mere conceptual or abso-
lute possibility of alternative futures is not sufficient: a future which is merely
144 In other words, it is the statistical reading of modality that is assumed here. Given the
similarity between the concerns in rss i, d. 38 [34] and this section, the importance of
temporally indefinite expressions here may have some bearing on the correct reading of
the rss text, and militates in favor of the first reading of true now and not newly true in
the commentary on that section.
145 For the obligational theorem to the effect that counterfactuals cannot be posited in
the present instant, as well as Duns Scotus rejection of the theorem in the context
of his development of the doctrine of synchronic contingency, see Walter Burleigh, De
obligationibus [Green 1963, vol. 2, p. 59, ll. 2031; translated in Kretzmann and Stump, eds.,
1988: 394] and William Sherwood, Obligationes (cod. Paris Bibl. Nat. lat. 16617, f. 56v), as
referred to in Scotus, Ordinatio i, d. 39, qq. 15 [Vat. vol. 6, p. 421]. (Thanks to Rondo Keele
for these references.) Gelber 2004: 139150 has a good discussion of the philosophical
dimensions of this controversy over the obligational rule.
146 For discussion and references on the doctrines of Scotus and Strelley here discussed, see
Chapter i, 5.2.3 and 8.2 respectively.
147 Cf. the Boethian model in Chapter i, 4.5, as well as commentary on the Day 1 model in
rss i, dd. 4041 q. 1 [57].
commentary 455
necessary as-of-now offers no conative freedom for agents. Both the proposed
solution to the problem of future contingents and Chattons counter to it fit
into the general pattern of Boethian logical determinism (see Chapter i, 4.5)
and the reaction against it (see Chapter i, 5).
Q28 [21][24]: Some recapitulation of earlier material. OP9, the thesis that God
can lie, has been dealt with at length in q. 27 [33][52], while OP10, the doctrine
of the Contingency of Signification, was dispatched in q. 27 [5][29].
Q28 [25][27]: OP11 is the Boethian-Aquinate thesis of Gods eternal present;

see Chapter i, 4.4.2 and 4.6.2. For Chattons previous discussion and crit-
icism of this thesis, see rss i, d. 39 [18][20] and commentary. Section [26]
attacks OP11 by setting up an elimination argument using the idea of dimin-
ished being (esse diminutum), a concept normally associated with discussions
of intentional objects.148 In these sections, diminished being is evidently meant
to be a halfway-house between full in-advance being, of the sort which would
provoke truth-to-necessity worries, and absolute non-being, which would be
unknowable even to God. Chatton counters that no such compromise is possi-
ble.
Q28 [28]: OP12 is explicitly credited to Duns Scotus; however, the position pre-
sented by Scotus in his mature works is much more complex than Chatton
here suggests. For example, the mechanism of instants of nature and the
intricacies of negotiable determinacy (see Chapter i, 5.25.2.3) are entirely
absent from Chattons presentation. Indeed, more than anything else, OP12
resembles the Ockhamist future-dependency escape clause, a conceptual
tool of quite general use with origins extending back to the early history of
the debate on future contingents (see Chapter i, 4.5.4; for previous treat-
ments of the clause in these texts, see rss i, d. 38 [41], [49]; dd. 4041, q. 1
[7], [18]; and Quodlibet q. 27 [42]). To be sure, the escape clause is of such
general applicability that it can be reconciled both with Scotus and with Ock-
148 See, e.g., Chattons rss i, d. 27, q.u., a. 2 [51][60]; Scotus, Ordinatio i, d. 36, q. u., nn. 3036
[Vat. vol. 6, pp. 282285]; Auriol, Scriptum i, d. 27, p. 2, a. 2 [Peter Auriol 2009, ed. Friedman,
p. 23]. In all these texts, the term esse deminutum (the alternate spelling) is given as a
variant of some form of intentional being. As a comparison to Scotus use of the term in
Ordinatio i, d. 36, Auriols Scriptum i, d. 36, q. 1, p. 1 [ed. Romae 1596, 826a840a] provides
a systematic demolition of various defenses of the Aquinate thesis based on various kinds
of being, although the term esse deminutum does not occur. For the relation of Scotus and
Auriol, see Perler 1994.
456 chapter 3
hams theories (and many others); hence attributing it to Scotus is not definitely
wrong. Moreover, Scotus does make some explicit remarks bearing a concep-
tual similarity to the escape clause in his early commentary on De Interpreta-
tione.149
Q28 [29]: Chattons counter to OP12 stresses the pastness and facticity of divine
pronouncements that are supposedly exempt from the necessity of the past on
the grounds of future-dependency. If God has already committed Himself to
one side of the contradiction, how can the content of His prediction be strongly
contingent? Notice that in this section, truth is conceded while contingency is
in question; contrast rss i, dd. 4041 [7] and [18], where contingency was con-
ceded and truth was in question. Chattons endorsement of the escape clause
in Quodlibet q. 27 [42] suggests that the current section does not represent his
own view; cf. the counter in [14] above.
You have slain a person refers back to [2] above, in which you have slain
an infidel is, because of a divine conditional guarantee, a sufficient condition
for you will sin.
Q28 [30][35]: OP13 is the opinion of Thomas Wylton, i.e., the Wylton Scope
Analysis (WSA), which played a large role in Chattons discussions of future
contingents in the Reportatio material. There are also some indications that
Chatton is here uniting certain aspects of the WSA with Ockhams supposi-
tional analysis in Summa logicae pars. i c. 66 (see commentary on [30] and
[33] below). For the WSA, see rss i, dd. 3841 and commentary; see also
Chapter i, 6.1 and 10.1.2.2, which should be read in tandem with these sec-
tions. Sections [30][33] present the opinion and [34][35] present counters
to it.
Q28 [30]: The two senses correspond mainly to the Wyltonian (ultimately
Boethian) distinction between two ways of construing future-tense utterances
(see Chapter i, 4.2 and 6.1, as well as rss i, d. 38 [22][23] and commentary,
some of which is repeated in this section). The incorrect sense assumes the
current existence of a truth-maker, which thus amounts to an in-advance
necessitator; the other, correct sense merely asserts that such a truth-maker
will exist. In terms of propositional structure, the correct analysis is not
149 See Scotus, Quaestiones in duos libros Perihermenias, lib. 1, qq. 79, n. 14 [Opera philosoph-
ica vol. 2, pp. 189190].
commentary 457
(1) (True) (FUTURE(a)) [Antichrist runs], i.e., It is true now that Antichrist
will run in a,
but rather
(2) (FUTURE(a)) (True) [Antichrist runs], i.e., It will be true that Antichrist
runs in a.
The sentence beginning In the same way, if you were to ask blocks an attempt
by an objector to prefix a necessitating truth operator to version (1): every truth-
declaration of the correctly formed proposition must be inserted within the
scope of the main FUTURE(a) operator, producing further contingent propo-
sitions not of the form (True) (FUTURE(a)) (True) [Antichrist runs], (True)
(True) (FUTURE(a)) (True) [Antichrist runs], etc.these, as Chattons objector
insists, are indeed all falsebut rather (FUTURE(a)) (True) (True) [Antichrist
runs], (FUTURE(a)) (True) (True) (True) [Antichrist runs], etc.and these are
all, at least for theology (cf. [32] below), true. At the end of the section, Chat-
ton brings up prophecy (not a central concern of Wyltons), which connects the
Wyltonian doctrine to Peter Auriols theory of the semantics of prophecy.150
In addition to the Wylton connection, mention should be made of Ock-
hams discussion, in Summa logicae pars i, c. 66, of the problems involved in
the analysis of sentences such as Man is primarily capable of laughter.151 Such
propositions, Ockham claims, are badly formed, since there is no plausible con-
strual of the reference of the word man that makes the proposition come out
true: if man has personal supposition (i.e., refers to individual men), then all
substitution instances falsify the sentence, since no individual is primarily, i.e.,
qua that individual, capable of laughter; if man has simple supposition (i.e.,
refers to intentions in the soul), then it is clearly false, since no intention of the
soul is capable of laughter. Nevertheless, what those who utter such a proposi-
tion mean is correct, since it can be reformulated in two ways, one of which is
as follows: Every man is capable of laughter, and nothing other than a man is
capable of laughter.152 Here the supposition is unproblematically personal.153
Apart from the reference to what people say and what they mean to say, the
150 See Auriol, Scriptum i, d. 38, a. 3 [Schabel 1995: p. 142, l. 1160p. 143, l. 1191]; for discussion
of Auriols application of his theory of future contingents to the issue of prophecy, see
Schabel 2000: 116123 and Thakkar 2010: 128138.
151 Homo est primo risibilis: man is, qua man, capable of laughter.
152 For the second legitimate reformulation, see commentary to [33] below.
153 See Ockham, Summa logicae pars i, c. 66 [OPh vol. 1, pp. 199203].
458 chapter 3
connection between this passage in Ockhams Summa and Chattons presen-

tation of the WSA in [30] is perhaps not yet clear, but it will become so when
we examine the other correct analysis of the proposition in the commentary to
[33].
Q28 [31]: Continuing his defense of the WSA, Chatton claims that there are
two ways in which a proposition can assert itself as true. The first, dangerous
way is to say that it is true now that Antichrist will run in instant a. Switching
to an abbreviated form of the notation used in the previous section, this can
be expressed as (t0[TRL]) T (ta) P, where (ta) is some moment post-dating (t0).
Assuming some instant (tn) such that 0 < n < a, then at (tn), (t0[TRL]) T (ta) P will
be past-necessitated. This yields (tn[TRL]) (t0) T (ta) P, which reduces to (tn[TRL])
(ta) P; thus Antichrist will run in instant a is necessitated in advance.154 The
second way in which a proposition can assert itself as true is by switching the
order of operators: the bald statement (ta) P can assert that its present-tense
[form] is going to be true, which can be expressed as (t0[TRL]) (ta) T (ta) P. Note
that what follows the T operator in this case makes no reference to futurity vis-
-vis instant a: the sequence (ta) T (ta) P should be read at instant a, it is true
that, at instant a, P is (currently) the case. For Wylton (and apparently also
for Chatton), this mode of expressing future truth does not allow in-advance
necessitation.
Q28 [32]: The WSA allows us to reconcile philosophy and theology with respect
to claims of future truth. The text is somewhat ambiguous. On one reading,
philosophy reads a future contingent proposition like Antichrist will run in a
as (True) (FUTURE(a)) [Antichrist runs], which is not true (in fact it is false,
since it implies necessity); and theology applies the WSA to yield (FUTURE(a))
(True) [Antichrist runs], which is true. But this reading, though it stays close
to the text, is strained: surely both philosophy and theology should agree that
a wide-scope truth operator necessitates (and therefore falsifies the contin-
gency)? Thus I prefer to read the in hoc quod asserit se esse veram of the text
as referring to the same kind of self-assertion of truth as we find in rss i, d. 38
[23], i.e., the second way of self-assertion discussed in the commentary to [31]
above, namely a narrow-scope reading of the truth operator. On this reading,
philosophy looks at an expression like (FUTURE(a)) (True) [Antichrist runs]
and sees absence of truth; theology looks at the expression and sees truth. It
is possible to link this analysis with the alethiology of rss i, d. 39 [29][32]:
154 This is standard Master Argument material; see Appendix A0 and A1.21.
commentary 459
philosophy is looking for (and not finding) type 2(a) truth, while theology is
finding type 2(b) truth.
Q28 [33]: Chatton rounds out his defense of the WSA. First comes a nod to
Ockhams tensed truth-definitions (here repeated from commentary to rss i,
d. 38 [15]):
(1) S is P is true just in case S stands for what P stands for

(3) S will be P is true just in case S is P will be true
Chatton concentrates on (3), again laying great emphasis on the distinction

between S is P will be true and S will be P is true. He considers the first
an example of a non-assertoric speech act to which the assignment of a truth-
value is inappropriate; the second is an assertoric speech act which, if true,
must be necessary, and which given the assumption of contingency is therefore
false. According to this analysis, which derives ultimately from Boethius by
way of Wylton and Ockham, grammar compels us to make future-tense claims
which, because their form suggests interpretation as assertoric, are strictly
false, but whose deep structure has the correct non-assertoric form. It is this
form that we intend to signify (cf. [30] and [32] above). With respect to (3), it
should be borne in mind that the first occurrence of true is pretheoretical (or
theological; cf. [32]), while the second occurrence is necessitating.
Chatton also makes use of two terms which require comment. By the early
fourteenth century, the distinction between actus exerciti and actus sign(ific)ati
had a complex history behind it.155 Its origins lie in early thirteenth-century
studies of categoremata and syncategoremata. According to many early theo-
rists, syncategoremata (basically, function-words such as conjunctions, quan-
tifiers, and various kinds of semantically parasitic adjectives and adverbs) are
more basic, from a speech-act-theoretical perspective, than are categoremata
(basically nouns, verbs, and normal adjectives). An example often adduced is
the distinction between the connective non and the words negatio and negare:
the word non, if it is the main connective of a proposition, is the direct expres-
sion of a mental act of denial, whereas negatio and negare refer more indirectly
or formally to the same act. The fact that the two kinds of reference come apart
155 This history is retailed in magisterial fashion in Nuchelmans 1988, of which the paragraph
that follows is a partial summary. See also Rosier 1993. Signatus, the form Chatton uses,
seems originally to have been a scribal abbreviation for significatus (Nuchelmans 1988:
57).
460 chapter 3
can be illustrated by the example of the proposition Negatio negat, which

despite referring to negationis an affirmative proposition. By the early four-
teenth century, the distinction has acquired new terminology: basic speech acts
are exercised, while the nominalized and verbalized versions of these acts
are merely signified. In the work of Walter Burleigh, Duns Scotus, and Ock-
ham, predication is an actus exercitus in such a sentence as Homo est animal,
in which the words homo and animal appear as first intentions, while it is an
actus sign(ific)atus in such a sentence as Genus praedicatur de specie, in which
the terms involved are second intentions.
Here we pick up on the discussion in the commentary to [30] above. The
immediate background of Chattons treatment of the actus exercitus / signatus
distinction is likely to have been Ockhams Summa logicae pars i, c. 66 and/or
his Quodlibet vii, q. 9. In the former, Ockham analyzes the proposition Man is
primarily capable of laughter as faulty in its surface grammar but amenable to
two correct deep-structure interpretations. The first, already discussed in the
commentary to [30] above, is Every man is capable of laughter, and nothing
other than a man is capable of laughter. This is the correct actus exercitus
form of the proposition, in which the supposition of the terms, which are first-
intention, is personal. Its actus signatus pendant, also correct, is Of man is
primarily predicated capable of laughter. In this interpretation, supposition is
simple; in other words, the second-intention terms man and capable of laughter
refer to intentions in the soul. Thus a surface-structure proposition that seemed
to pose intractable problems in semantic theory is resolved by correct analysis.
While neither Ockhams Summa text nor his Quodlibet vii, q. 9 makes any ref-
erence to future contingents, his general tactic of using an accepted distinction
to solve a logico-semantic puzzle is highly similar to what we find in Chattons
Quodlibet q. 28 [30] and [33]. Given these parallels, I think it likely that Chatton
is here grafting Ockhams suppositional analysis, and his evocation of the actus
exercitus / signatus distinction as suggesting a division into ill-formed surface
structures and well-formed deep structures, onto the speech-act-theoretical
issues associated with the Wylton Scope Analysis.
There remains the question of how the actus exercitus / signatus distinction
is supposed to do the work Chatton wants it to do. It is clear from the text that
the fronting of the truth operator is associated with an interpretation of the
prediction as an actus signatus, while embedding it yields an actus exercitus.156
156 Cf. the remarks of Perler 1992: 4445, who points out that on Ockhams interpretation of
actus exercitus and actus signatus, truth-declarations are most naturally associated with
the latter.
commentary 461
I see two possibilities:
(1) Chatton views (True) (FUTURE(a)) [Antichrist runs], as a whole, as an

actus signatus, and (FUTURE(a)) (True) [Antichrist runs], as a whole, as
an actus exercitus. On this reading, the syntactic scope distinction directly
encodes a difference in speech act; an analogue would be question-forma-
tion in many European languages, in which statements are transformed
into questions by switching subject and verb positions.
(2) Chatton reads both versions of the proposition as consisting of a basic
or main-clause actus exercitus governing a subordinate actus signatus.
On this reading, the operators switch roles between the two versions of
the proposition. In the analysis (True) (FUTURE(a)) [Antichrist runs],
the FUTURE(a) operator is an actus signatus, and the truth operator, as
actus exercitus, necessitates the content of the actus signatus by asserting
that matters now stand in such a way that Antichrist will run in a. If we
read (FUTURE(a)) (True) [Antichrist runs], then the FUTURE(a) operator
occupies the position of actus exercitus. The speech act is thus, as a whole,
a prediction rather than a declarative statement. Since predictions, on
this reading, are non-assertoric, the content of the subordinate truth oper-
ator, which now occupies the actus signatus position, is not necessitated.
On either reading, we have a split in interpretations: according to one inter-

pretation, the (FUTURE(a)) operator is reduced to a formal counter and its
contents are necessitated, while according to the other interpretation it is the
truth operator that is thus formalized while the (FUTURE(a)) operator retains
its status as a non-necessitating prediction. See Chapter i, 10.2.3 (2) for more
discussion.
Q28 [34][35]: The pro forma impression made by these sections constitutes
further evidence that the Chatton of the Quodlibet still endorses OP13 (the
WSA). However, while they may be perfunctory, the counters remain strong.
OP13s scope analysis of truth has not been so much proven as simply proffered
and elaborated on; it is still open to the opponent to insist on a unitary reading
of truth, thus either exposing the scope analysis as a useless piece of subtlety (as
in [34]) or depriving God of certain knowledge (as in [35]). These two sections
should be compared with rss i, dd. 4041, q. 1 [60][65], which they resemble
in content.
Q28 [36][37]: OP14 distinguishes between perfect revelation, which reveals

things that are going to happen infallibly and inevitably, and imperfect reve-
462 chapter 3
lation, which reveals defeasible or avoidable events. The former type of reve-
lation seems here to depend on a kind of necessitas ut nunc: given pre-existing
merits and faults, certain results are inevitable. The latter type of revelation, on
the other hand, depends on what is described elsewhere as common law (see
[45], as well as q. 29 [3] and [5] below).
Both of Chattons counters are directed at perfect revelation. The medium
of this revelation is the Word of God (cf. Quodlibet q. 27 [13] ff.); hence OP14
is vulnerable to Chattons first counter. His second counterthat the futures
revealed in perfect revelation would not be contingentconnects OP14 with
OP8 (see [19][20] above).
Q28 [38][39]: OP15 is Ockhams opinion, expressed in the Tractatus de prae-

destinatione, that all prophecies are to be construed as conditional sentences.
Here is Ockhams text:
All prophecies about any future contingents were conditional, though the
condition was not always expressed. But sometimes [the condition] is
made explicitly, as in [the prophecy about] David and his throne [Ps. 131];
sometimes it is implied, as is clear in the destruction of Nineveh [which
was] prophesied by Jonah: Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be over-
thrown [Jonah 3: 4], that is, unless they repented; and since they
repented, it was not destroyed.157
This opinion avoids necessitation of the prophesied event by making it depend

on the willed action or inaction of some agent prior to that event. This refor-
mulation can be handled by a version of the simple / conditional necessity
distinction:
Incorrect analysis: E (= Necessarily: the event will occur)

Correct analysis: (C E) (= Necessarily: given some prior action
or inaction by an agent, the event will
occur)
157 Ockham, Tractatus de praedestinatione q. 1 [OPh vol. 2, p. 513, ll. 176182]: [O]mnes
prophetiae de quibuscumque futuris contingentibus fuerunt condicionales, quamvis non
semper exprimebatur condicio. Sed aliquando fuit expressa, sicut patet de David et throno
suo; aliquando subintellecta, sicut patet de Ninive destructione a Iona prophetata: Adhuc
post quadraginta dies et Ninive subvertetur, nisi scilicet poeniterent; et quia poenituerunt,
ideo non fuit destructa.
commentary 463
Chatton offers two counters to this opinion. First, he claims that it grants
to God no more knowledge than humans have. Strictly speaking this is false,
since OP15 concedes to God a complete knowledge of the modal field, which
humans do not have.158 Second, he applies the same iterated-dilemma-cum-
infinite-regress move that he has used twice previously (see [11] and [17]): C is
either necessary in itself (hence God can give absolute assurances about it), in
which case E after all; or C depends, in turn, on some prior action or inaction
C by an agent, so that (C C); but C is either necessary in itself, i.e., C,
or depends on a prior C, i.e., (C C), etc. The regress applies much more
naturally to OP15 than to OP5 or OP7, since (a) it involves no petitio principii
(the subsethood assumption of the counter to OP5 plays no role here) and (b)
each new condition C is temporally distinct from its predecessor, thus giving
an intuitive interpretation to the conditional sentence form. The only external
assumption needed is a causal version of the principle of sufficient reason (to
motivate the generation of (C C), (C C), etc.).
Q28 [40]: Starting with this section, Chatton attempts to organize the fif-
teen opinions into conceptually coherent groups. The first principal way of
responding focuses on the antecedent as having some status that amounts to
contingency. This way has three variants. Variant (1a), dealt with in this sec-
tion, simply treats the antecedent as contingent. Under this heading fall the
following analyses:

consequence
necessity
158 Only God knows that there is a modally guaranteed link between the non-repentance of
Ninevehs inhabitants and its destruction; only He knows just how much, and what kind
of, repentance is required; and so on.
464 chapter 3
Of these five opinions, only OP1 assumes a type of contingency that one
might be inclined to call radical; the rest must be given some reading com-
porting with the right-branching model expounded in Chapter i, 4.5, but just
which reading is as yet unclear. The fact that OP1 is something of an outrider in
this group is tacitly acknowledged by Chatton in [46] below, where he leaves it
out of the list.
Q28 [41]: The first principal way of responding, variant (1b), divides the senses
of the prophetic utterance into literal and prophetic:

The literal sense of the prophecy is modally fixed (i.e., necessary), but the
prophetic sensei.e., what the prophecy means in a deeper or more ultimately
correct senseis contingent. Given the specific contents of OP3 and OP13,
this apparently means that the prophetic sense depends on or presupposes
some freedom, at the time the prophecy is made, to do otherwise at the time
designated by the prophecy. On this reading, for OP3, Chattons categorization
focuses on the status of the prophecy as conditional, while for OP13 it implies
that the power of Wyltons scope distinction depends on the analysis of the
future operator in a proposition like (FUTURE(a)) (True) [Antichrist runs] as
non-necessitating.
The grouping together of OP3 and OP13 is strange in two respects. First, OP3
makes reference not only to conditional prophecy but also to other nonliteral
senses, specifically the parabolic and tropical senses. It is far from clear that
these two senses can be read as contingent or as depending on contingency.
Second, the focus in OP13, unlike in OP3, is on the non-assertoric status of cor-
rectly formulated future-tense claims, specifically their status as actus exerciti.
In both respects, a pairing of OP2 and OP13 would seem to make more sense:
OP2 is limited to exegetical approaches that focus on conditions (namely the
comminatory, informative, and instructive approaches) and its central division
is assertoric / non-assertoric.
Q28 [42]: The first principal way of responding, variant (1c), denies that the
contents of Gods utterance are simply contingent (simpliciter contingens):
commentary 465

interpretation
Word
If Chatton is following Ockhams usage, simply contingent means something

like logically non-repugnant or necessary as-of-now.159 In other words, these
opinions deny that prophesied future contingents are contingent merely in
some exiguous sense; they must be strongly contingent. The distinction recalls
Chattons type A and type B contingency (see commentary on rss i, dd. 4041,
q. 1 [10][13]). This is a natural grouping in itself, in that all four opinions imply
some kind of avoidability with respect to the content of the revelation. The
inclusion of OP14 is somewhat troublesome, since it includes the possibility of
imperfect revelation, which latter is described in terms highly suggestive of
the common law approach that Chatton will later assign to the contingency
of the consequence (see [45] below as well as q. 29 [3], [5]).
Q28 [43]: The second principal way of responding, which treats the antecedent
as necessary and the consequence as contingent, has been discussed in the
commentary to q. 27.

Q28 [44]: The third principal way of responding concedes the necessitation of
the consequent:
159 Cf. Ockhams discussion of immutability and necessity in Ordinatio i, d. 40, q. u. [OTh vol. 4,
p. 594, l. 14p. 595, l. 5] as well as Summa logicae pars. i c. 26 [OPh vol. 1, p. 87, ll. 97100].
466 chapter 3

These doctrines, says Chatton, tacitly concede necessitation; therefore, he

implies, they cannot be accepted.
Q28 [45]: Chatton rounds out q. 28 by reiterating the content of q. 27: can a
creature be apprised of the outcome of a future contingent? Unsurprisingly,
the answer is yes; such a thing is conceivable, and therefore it is in Gods
power. Then the focus shifts back to establishing the contingent status of that
outcome.
In this section, Chatton abandons the division of opinions sketched in [40]
[44] in favor of a new analysis that concedes a legitimate role for the contin-
gency of the consequence. There are, Chatton says, two ways of establishing
the desired result (a known and yet contingent future thing, event, or state of
affairs): (i) We take note of the fact that Gods utterances derive from, and there-
fore faithfully reproduce the structure of, His cognitive states. These states, as
we know from rss i, d. 38 [28], etc., have a two-part structure: God cognizes a,
and a will be. The second part of this expression is a future-tensed proposition,
and is ex hypothesi contingent; hence the entire expression is contingent. This
analysis is used for what I call hard prophecy, i.e., prophecy taken literally. (ii)
We interpret the prophecy loosely, as expressing the probable but avoidable
outcome, under common law, of some currently or previously obtaining state
of affairs (e.g., bad behavior on the prophets part). I call this soft prophecy
(see Chapter i, 10.2.2 for the hard / soft prophecy distinction).
Q28 [46]: Of the two approaches outlined in the previous section, Chatton
concentrates on option (i), leaving (ii) for the next Question. The language here
is vague, but it seems to imply that the first principal way of responding, which
focuses on the antecedent, is best dealt with by the Copulative Analysis plus
the array of analytic tools in group (1a) (see [40] above), with the important
exception of OP1, which is left out of the list in this section. Of the remaining
doctrines in (1a), three of themOP6, OP7, and OP12are expedients of quite
general applicability in the problem of future contingents, and can be adapted
to open- or closed-future models; the fourth, OP8, is used by Strelley in a
closed-future sense (see Chapter i, 8.2). Option (i) can thus be characterized
commentary 467
as follows: Divine prophetic utterances derive from, and reflect the structure
of, the corresponding divine knowledge claims. The latter have a two-part
(copulative) structure, which ensures the contingency of the whole expression.
This contingency can be established by applying a group of analytical tools,
namely the Copulative Analysis and those in group (1a) (minus OP1), to a
closed-future model of the world. Although the WSA is not mentioned here,
it can be subsumed under the heading of the Copulative Analysis as a crucial
tool in establishing the contingency of the second conjunct; the space Chatton
devotes to it in q. 28 [30][35] suggests that it, too, is part of his final response
to the problem.

Occur in this Matter Can be Resolved
Q29 [1]: In this context, the arguments clearly means the arguments denying
that divine knowledge-cum-prophecy can be reconciled with future contin-
gency. As examples, Chatton takes the necessitation arguments that appear
early in q. 27:
First argument: Necessarily, God made you believe that a will be; there-
fore, necessarily, a will be. (See q. 27 [1])
Second argument: Necessarily, Christ said that Peter was going to deny him;
therefore, necessarily, Peter was going to deny him. (See
q. 27 [5])
According to the faith, we must hold that these arguments are either faulty
in matter, i.e., have false or contingent antecedents (whatever their formal
validity), or faulty in form, i.e., are formally invalid (whatever the truth or
necessity of their antecedents). The first approach is (i), the contingency of the
antecedent; the second is (ii), the contingency of the consequence (see q. 28
[45] and [46]).
Q29 [2][3]: These sections develop the analysis from the closing sections of
q. 28. Noteworthy here is the codicil to (ii), the contingency of the consequence:
And thus it does not follow that God made you believe something false. Appar-
ently Chatton is countenancing some version of the contingency of the conse-
quence that does not have the fatal conceptual disadvantages of OP9 (God can
lie) or OP10 (the COS doctrine), both of which have already been refuted at
length in q. 27. The content of this new version, (ii), seems to derive from the
468 chapter 3
various opinions that moot the possibility of conditional or fallible prophecies

(i.e., OP2, OP3, OP4, OP14, and OP15). If this is so, it means that Chatton has
reshuffled his categories, since all of these opinions were previously assigned
to variants of the first principal way of responding, which focused on the
antecedent, not the consequence (see q. 28 [41][42]). As for the type of con-
tingency that is supposed to pertain to the consequence on this new division
of opinions, it need not be anything stronger than mere creaturely epistemic
uncertainty (see Chapter i, 10.2.3 (1)).
Q29 [4][5]: Chatton repeats the foregoing analysis for the second argument
(Peters threefold denial). As with the first argument, there are two options, (i)
and (ii). Chattons text breaks off just as he is about to explain why Peters real
ability to remain steadfast does not entail an ability to falsify Gods prophecy.
Clearly soft prophecy is unproblematic, since a harmless kind of falsifiability
is built into the very concept of such prophecy. The question is how to handle
hard prophecy, i.e., category (i). We may speculate that Chattons answer would
have involved a mixture of standard logical-compatibilist maneuvers, the WSA,
and the Copulative Analysis; see Chapter i, 10.2.310.2.4 for discussion.
appendix
Natural-Deduction Derivations of the Pattern

Arguments
A0 Introductory Remarks
The fundamental issues surrounding future contingents have to do with the

formalization of time, the nature of cross-temporal truth, the relationship
between modality and truth, the structure of divine cognition (including its dif-
ference from creaturely cognition), and the nature of agentic freedom (human
and divine). In Chapter i of this study (3.1), I suggest a diagnostic, argument-
based approach to the various systems developed in the thirteenth and four-
teenth centuries to deal with these questions, and I explicitly discuss three pat-
tern arguments: Divine Foreknowledge Necessitates ( 3.1), God Can Be Wrong
( 3.1), and John Can Be Wrong (3.2.2). In the analysis below, JCBW is pre-
sented as Pattern Argument 3, DFN as Pattern Argument 4, and GCBW as Pat-
tern Argument 5. Here I add four more (details below):
Pattern Argument 1: The Necessity of the Present/Past.

Socrates is sitting now / sat yesterday.
Therefore, it is necessary that Socrates is sitting now / sat yesterday.
The first Pattern Argument enshrines the principle that all facts about the
present and past are irrevocable. The necessity in question is not, of course,
metaphysical or logical, but agentic-conative. The argument is an attempt
to derive this principle as a theorem of the system. The principle is almost
universally accepted in antiquity and the Middle Ages (see footnotes 4042 in
Chapter i, 3.2.1.)
Pattern Argument 1 must be affirmed. (Duns Scotus, of course, carves out a
crucial exception for the present.)
Pattern Argument 2: The Necessitation of the Future through the Past.

Socrates will sit tomorrow.
It was true yesterday that Socrates will sit tomorrow.
Therefore, necessarily, Socrates will sit tomorrow.
According to the second Pattern Argument, facts of the matter about the future
can be located in the past, and so necessitated in advance. The second sentence
of the argument is not a premise, but can be derived from the first sentence by
the locative-logic S5 principle discussed in A1 below.

470 appendix
This is the argument at the heart of De Interpretatione ch. 9; it appears in

various guises throughout antiquity (e.g., as the Lazy Argument, the Mower
Argument, and the Master Argument). It is also featured in Chattons rss i, d. 38
[34]. This argument must be rejected.
Pattern Argument 3: John Can Be Wrong.

John believed yesterday that Socrates will sit tomorrow.
It is possible that Socrates will not sit tomorrow.
Therefore, it is possible that John will turn out to have been wrong.
This is the principle of creaturely fallibility. This argument is not discussed
explicitly in any ancient or medieval text familiar to me,1 but it is important to
ask each system how it could, in principle, handle the argument; specifically, it
must not be the case that the same procedure that rejects Pattern Argument 5
(God Can Be Wrong) also rejects Pattern Argument 3. In any case, this argument
must be affirmed.
Pattern Argument 4. Divine Foreknowledge Necessitates.

God believed yesterday that Socrates will sit tomorrow.
Therefore, necessarily, Socrates will sit tomorrow.
This is the strengthened and apparently valid form of the theological argument
naf. It is an argument to the effect that Gods in-advance knowledge of some
future action A, domiciled in the past, necessitates and thus renders unfree
that action A. The premise is often rendered in the past tense, although this
is not crucial; there are other ways in which Gods knowledge might directly
necessitate, having mostly to do with the perfect nature of divine cognition.
This argument must be rejected.
Pattern Argument 5. God Can Be Wrong:

God believed yesterday that Socrates will sit tomorrow.
It is in Socrates (or someones) power that Socrates not sit tomorrow.
Therefore, God can turn out to have been wrong.
This argument, an old standby of scholastic sophistry, must be rejected. Once
again, it must not be rejected in such a way as to entail the rejection of Pattern
Argument 3.
The following are open arguments, i.e., arguments on which there is indis-
putably some difference of opinion:
1 But see Part i, 3.2.2, on JCBWs underground presence in one of Scotus arguments, as well
as 4.6.1 for a hint in Abelard.
natural-deduction derivations of the pattern arguments 471
Pattern Argument 6. God-will-know-that.

It is possible that Socrates will not sit tomorrow
Therefore, God knows that Socrates will sit tomorrow and it is possible
that God knows that Socrates will not sit tomorrow.
From Peter Lombard on (see Introduction 3.1, 5, 7.3), most thinkers want
this argument affirmed. That is, most thinkers do not want creaturely (or any
other) conative power to outstrip divine knowledge. On the assumption (or the
positing) of some counterfactual, so goes this reasoning, we necessarily posit
counterfactual divine knowledge of that counterfactual. On the other hand, the
idea of counterfactual divine knowledge detracts, at least superficially, from the
necessary quality of knowledge, especially divine knowledge. Thinkers with a
strong sense of that necessity, such as Abelard and Auriol, must reject Pattern
Argument 6.
Pattern Argument 7. God-will-always-have-known-that.

It is possible that Socrates will not sit tomorrow.
Therefore, God has always known that Socrates will sit tomorrow and it is
possible that God has always known that Socrates will not sit tomorrow.
The issues here are essentially the same as those in the previous argument;
here, however, the time element has been added, which heightens the sense of
paradox in the conclusion. The psychological danger of affirming this argument
is that we seem to create a contradiction in the divine mind (and therefore in
reality) at every time prior to the posited counterfactual. Once again, opinions
are divided regarding this Pattern Argument. Ockham affirms it (see Introduc-
tion 7.2.3); Abelard and Auriol must reject it.
The use of the Pattern Arguments gives us not only a tool with which to
analyze systematic answers proffered by individual thinkers; it allows us to
characterize the debate on future contingents as a whole. That debate can be
loosely and anachronistically characterized as a collective attempt to build
a system that is complete and sound with regards to more or less orthodox
intuitions regarding this group of related arguments, all of which have to do
with time, modality, Gods foreknowledge, creaturely anticipatory belief, and
freedom.2 All intuitively valid arguments must be capable of being proven, and
no intuitively invalid arguments may be proven. An ideal balance sheet for the
Pattern Arguments would thus be as follows:
2 The terms completeness and soundness are used metaphorically. As noted in the next
section, I provide no rigorous completeness and soundness proofs for these systems.
472 appendix
1. Affirmed, 2. Rejected, 3. Affirmed, 4. Rejected, 5. Rejected, 6. Affirmed,

7. Affirmed
As indicated, the results for Pattern Arguments 6 and 7 show some variation.
It goes without saying that the Pattern Arguments do not exhaust the inven-
tory of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century scholastic puzzles having to do
with divine foreknowledge and freedom, nor are all such puzzles somehow
reducible to them. However, the pressure to produce the above balance sheet
conditions the approaches taken by thinkers to other questions as well. Tak-
ing the measure of the various formal systems that develop in response to
that pressure affords us a clearer picture than would otherwise be possible
of those systems responses to such more complicated questions as the fol-
lowing: Can God know more than He knows? Is the Incarnation the source
of human predestination? If God has predestined Peter, can Peter fail to be
saved?
A0.1 Formalization
The temporal logic systems here presented are based on the work of Prior,
Rescher, hrstrm, Burgess, and J. Martin, in addition to the pioneering work
on modal logics by Saul Kripke and Jaakko Hintikka. Other debts will be men-
tioned when relevant. Nothing especially new is introduced. My intention here
is the very modest one of sketching a series of deductive systems with certain
practical features that the classical models often lack. These features enable
me to express the conceptual structure that seems to underlie various ways
of looking at precisely these problems. No attempt at proving completeness
or soundness for these systems is made, nor is any such attempt obviously
needed, given that the intent is purely expressive and historical. That same
intent explains the lack of any rigorous notational distinction between axioms
and theorems. The role played by individual propositions in this exposition
is explained by the surrounding prose; and when I think I need a new axiom
or derivational rule to achieve some specific result, I sometimes simply add it
without proof.
All the derivational systems used here are based on a Fitch-style natural-
deduction calculus for first-order predicate logic and make use of all the rules
normally found in those systems.3 The reason for this choice is that such a
calculus fits the textually attested structures of reasoning routinely used in
3 Additionally, second-order propositional expressions are used to formalize creaturely and

divine belief clauses.
scholastic sources; it is especially helpful in formalizing the procedure of posit-

ing in being, a concept which, as explained in Chapter i, 88.5, is central
to the evaluation of non-actualized possibilities throughout the literature. To
this system I add derivational rules for the prefixing and removal of temporal,
modal, and, in the right-branching systems, temporal-modal operators. Deriva-
tion A1.13 provides an initial illustration of how these rules operate. Validity
(or affirmation) derivations work in the normal way; invalidity (or rejection)
derivations, at times informal, are based on the construction of countermodels
as in semantic tableaux or Jeffrey-style truth-trees. The style of presentation is
similar to that found in Girle 2009. Details will become clear in the examples
below.
Throughout this Appendix, I construe time as a calendrically indexed line
or right-branching tree with (t0) representing a notional now. The reader may
consider (t0) as the frozen instant of a dispute in the ars obligatoria.4 The
subscript numbers represent not intervals or iterative movements along the
time-line but arbitrary points on that line; hence an expression (t0)(t+1)(t-3)P is
equivalent not to (t-2)P but simply to (t-3)P. In contrast to Chapter i of this study,
in which it plays a role in the discussions of Ockham and Auriol, the issue of an
A-series sliding along a B-series is simply ignored as formally epiphenomenal.
Although I define the normal temporal operators P, H, F, and G, in this
Appendix I normally express claims about the future or past by the prefixes
(t+1) and (t-1) respectively. This form of expression corresponds to instant a in
scholastic analyses.5 Instant a is represented by (t+1).
In all systems, unless otherwise indicated, standard propositional and pred-
icate logical truths are assumed.
In the paragraphs that follow, each of the systems here reviewed is assigned
to one section (A1A3), and each Pattern Argument falls under one subheading
(i.e., A1.1A1.7 for Pattern Arguments 17 in the non-branching system, etc.).

A1 The Non-Branching System (NB)
In NB, the simplest of the systems, time is conceived as a single line:
4 For Burleighs rules about the tempus obligationis, see Kretzmann and Stump 1988: 396397;
for discussion see Gelber 2004: 142144.
5 The strong past operator H, however, plays an important role in Pattern Argument 7.
474 appendix
figure a1 The world according to NB. In this scenario, now, the current instant, is , while ,
the Creation, is three instants ago (whether instants be construed as days, aeons, or
whatever)
The time-structure is an ordered set of world-times related by the derivational

rules A1.01A1.03 and the relation R. In these rules, normally stands for a tem-
porally unspecified proposition but may also stand for a temporally specified
one:
A1.01. [(tn) (tn)]
A1.02. [(tn) (tm)(tn)]
Related to A1.02 is A1.03:
A1.03. | | (tn)
A1.01 defines negation with respect to the temporal operators (the relationship
of other connectives to the temporal operators emerges from the system). A1.02
establishes the equivalent of S5 for topological (or, in the jargon of Garson 2006:
5253, locative) logic. In other words, at every world-time, there is a complete
inventory of stable facts about other world-times.6 This feature, which is crucial
for generating dilemmas of logical determinism, will stay with us throughout
all the systems here used. A1.03, in which the bar to the left of both expressions
represents their presence in the first temporal frame of a given derivation
and therefore their omnitemporality, captures the idea that omnitemporal
truths are true at any given time while allowing divine omnipotence to be
defined in a way that does not specifically mention omnitemporality (see
A1.401).
The relation R establishes the ordering of the time-line and lets us define
conative and tense operators. R is left-total (but not right-total: there is a first
instant, the Creation, which I designate (t)), forward-only (i.e., (a,b) [aRb
a<b]), irreflexive, transitive, and connected in both directions (i.e., both
6 This rule corresponds to the truth-value links of Dummett 1969: 245. In the system of
Rescher 1966a, A1.02 appears as axiom T5-I.
(a,b,c)[(aRc bRc) (a>b b>a a=b)] and (a,b,c)[(aRb aRc) (b>c

c>b b=c)] apply). The last condition establishes a single line going into the
future. Neither density nor discreteness is assumed; that is, neither (a,b)[aRb
(c)(aRc cRb)] nor (b)[(a)aRb (a)(aRb (c)(aRc cRb))] are
conditions on R. (All systems here are, so to speak, agnostic about the existence
of time-atoms.)
A consequence of these conditions is A1.04:
A1.04. (tn)R(tm>n).
A1.05. The conative modal operators and are defined as follows (the sub-
script p indicates a time prior to n, and f subsequent to n):
A1.051. (tn) =def (f)[(tn)R(tf) (tf)]
A1.052. (tn) =def (f)[(tn)R(tf) (tf)]
A1.053. (tn)(tm) =def (f)[(tn)R(tf) (tf)(tm)]
A1.054. (tn)(tm) =def (f)[(tn)R(tf) (tf)(tm)]
Given these definitions, it is clear that = , = , (tm) = (tm), and

(tm) = (tm).
A1.06. The tense operators P, F, H, and G abbreviate the following (note that
the lowercase letters p and f stand for any arbitrary past or future time respec-
tively):
A1.061. (tn)P =def (p)[(tp)R(tn) (tp)]
A1.062. (tn)F [= (tn)] =def (f)[(tn)R(tf) (tf)]
A1.063. (tn)H =def (p)[(tp)R(tn) (tp)]
A1.064. (tn)G [= (tn)] =def (f)[(tn)R(tf) (tf)]
With the important exception of H, the tense operators are not much used in
these analyses; instead, as indicated in A0.1, I designate (t0) as a notional now
and allow individually specified times prior or subsequent to (t0) to stand for
arbitrary points in the past or future.
476 appendix
Here, positing-in-being is interpreted as the use of the formal instrument

R, which allows us to articulate the contents of a stipulated possible future;
in Chapter i, 8.3, this is positing-in-being i(2). See A1.13 for an example. As
discussed below in A3.2, this interpretation may prove inadequate in more
complicated models.
A1.07. Rule A1.03, along with the definitions of the modal terms, yields A1.071
A1.074:
A1.071. | | (tn)
A1.072. | | (tn)(tm)
A1.073. | | (tn)
A1.074. | | (tn)(tm)
A1.1. NB affirms Pattern Argument 1, the necessity of the present and past, in a
straightforward way:
A1.11. The necessity of the (relative) present:
{(tn)} (tn)(tn)
1. (tn) Premise
2. (tn)R(tf) Assumption
3. (tf)(tn) 1, A1.02 [(tn) (tm)(tn)]
4. [(tn)R(tf) (tf)(tn)] 23, -in
5. (f)[(tn)R(tf) (tf)(tn)] 4, -in (f was selected arbitrarily)
6. (tn)(tn) 5, def. (tn)(tm)
A1.12. The necessity of the (relative) past:
{(tp)} (tn>p)(tp)
1. (tp) Premise
2. (tn)R(tf) Assumption
3. (tp)R(tn) (tn)R(tm>n)
4. (tp)R(tf) 3, 2, transitivity of R
5. (tf)(tp) 1, (tn) (tm)(tn)
6. [(tn)R(tf) (tf)(tp)] 25, -in

7. (f)[(tn)R(tf) (tf)(tp)] 6, -in (f was selected arbitrarily)
8. (tn>p)(tp) 10, def. (tn)(tm)
Hence we have A1.121 and A1.122:
A1.121. (tn) (tmn)(tn)
An alternative form, useful inside world-time subderivations:
A1.122. (tmn): [(tn) (tn)]
A1.13. Here is another option, which makes no direct use either of A1.121 or of
A1.122, and which illustrates some more derivational rules:
{(t-1)S} (t0)(t-1)S
1. (t-1)S Premise
2. (t0)(t-1)S Assumption for reductio
3. (t0): World-time subderivation
4. (t0): (t-1)S 2, 3, wt-out
5. (t0)R(tf) 4, R
6. (tf): World-time subderivation
7. (tf): (t-1)S 4, 5, 6, wt-out. With this step, we have posited (t-1)S
in being (sense i(2))
8. (t0)(tf)(t-1)S 3, 5, 7 segment recovery
9. (t-1)S 8, (tn) (tm)(tn) (2)
10. (t-1)S 9, (tn) (tn)
11. 1, 10,
12. (t0)(t-1)S 211, reductio
13. (t0)(t-1)S 12, operator exchange, double-negation elimination
The rule of segment recovery assumes that the positing-in-being (i)(2) of

(t-1)S, having allowed us to derive (t0)R(tf) and (tf): (t-1)S, thereby allows us to
conclude that (tf)(t-1)S is a fact about (t0); hence we may recover the proposi-
tion (t0)(tf)(t-1)S, i.e., establish it as a segment of the time-structure. We then
apply the locative-logic S5 rule, which yields (t-1)S and therefore (t-1)S as a
fact about the time-structure. But we have assumed (t-1)S; hence by positing
something which is putatively possible, we have deduced an impossibility. The
same procedure, of course, yields {(t0)S} (t0)(t0)S.
478 appendix
A1.2. Here is a formalization of Pattern Argument 2. (t0) is, as always, now;

we set (t+1) as tomorrow, and (t-1) as yesterday. The argument states that
if Socrates will sit tomorrow, it follows that it is now necessary that he will
sit tomorrow. This is as much as to say that the proposition Socrates will sit
tomorrow entails the denial of the proposition It is possible that Socrates will
not sit tomorrow. The latter can be demonstrated as follows.7
A1.21. {(t+1)S} (t0)(t+1)S
1. (t+1)S Premise
2. (t0)(t+1)S 1, (tn) (tm)(tn)
3. (t0)(t+1)S Assumption for reductio
5. (t0): (t+1)S 2, 4 wt-out
6. (t0): (t+1)S 3, 4 wt-out
7. (t0): (t-1)(t+1)S 5, (tn) (tm)(tn)
8. (t0): (t-1)(t+1)S 7, (tmn): (tn) (tn)
9. (t0)R(tf) 6 R
11. (tf): (t+1)S 6, 9, 10, -out
7 Recall that the Master Argument is the claim that the following sentences form an inconsis-
tent triad:
(1) Every past truth is necessary.

(2) Something impossible does not follow from something possible.
(3) There is something possible which neither is nor will be true. (quoted in Long and
Sedley 1987: 230)
As remarked in Part i, footnote 3, a sticking point is whether follow in sentence (2) should be
construed logically or chronologically. The 12th14th century discussion of these argument-
complexes provides at least indirect evidence for the logical interpretation, particularly
Gaskins version, in the sense that the extensive and detailed scholastic literature on this
Pattern Argument reads like an extended explanatory gloss on the issues that apparently
troubled the enthusiasts of the original Master. Consider that sentence (3) of the Master,
There is something possible that neither is nor will be true, is embodied in lines 13
of A1.21, while sentence (1) Every past truth is necessary, is the principle appealed to
in line 8. Sentence (2), Something impossible does not follow from something possible,
corresponds to the derivational principles that allow us to consider and reject (t0)(t+1)S,
i.e., the sequence (t0): (t+1)S (t0)R(tf) (tf): yielding a global within the scope of the
simple assumption (t0)(t+1)S, followed by the use of reductio.
12. (tf): (t-1)(t+1)S 8, 9, 10, -out

13. (tf): (t+1)S 12, (tn) (tm)(tn)
14. (tf): (t+1) S 11, (tn) (tn)
15. (tf): 13, 14,
16. (t0) 9, 15, -in
17. (t0) 16, (tn) (tn)
18. 17, (tn)
19. (t0)(t+1)S 318, reductio
20. (t0)(t+1)S 19, operator exchange, double-negation
elimination
The justifications appealed to in steps 17 and 18 are easily derivable theorems

in this system.
A number of observations are in order at this juncture. First, it should be
noticed that the appeal to the principle of the necessity of the past (in line 8 of
A1.21) is superfluous. The ancient and medieval bases for this argument indeed
make use of this principle, but NB has no need of it; a valid proof of (t+1)S
(t0)(t+1)S can be produced by replacing (t-1) in A1.13 by (t+1) throughout. A1.21
is presented not as a maximally efficient formal proof but as a formal pendant
or expression of the psychological structure of the arguments actually used in
the sources. This procedure, which I adopt throughout this analysis, results
in derivations which, while clearly valid, often turn out longer than strictly
necessary. A special problem attends derivations that reject arguments (see the
discussion at A2.21 and A2.22).
The necessity of the past is not the only detour that is obviated by this
simple system: in NB, proofs of (tn) (tn) need not (and here, do not) make
use of the assumption of the discreteness of the time-line, as does one of the
main reconstructions of the classic Master Argument, Prior 1967: 3233. The
culprits in NB are the right-connectedness of R and the locative S5 rule, which
allows us to recover segments posited by R; nothing else need be assumed.8
The model of time presupposed in the system, together with the definitions of
modal terms, guarantees the necessitation of the future as well as the present
and past.
The system NB, in other words, effectively turns Pattern Argument 2 into a
petitio principii. However, this is not a reason to reject this interpretation (pace
8 Pattern Argument 2 thus resembles Michael Whites reconstruction of the Master (White
1999: 226227) rather than Priors. White, too, points out that discreteness is an unnecessary
assumption (ibid., 233234), as does Gaskin 1995: 292.
480 appendix
Purtill 1973: 33). What counts as a petitio principii, after all, can be defined only
against the background of a given discourse community; within the precincts of
strictly deductive reasoning, one persons empty and tautologous inference is
another persons surprising and substantive dialectical result.9 And the valida-
tion of Pattern Argument 2 is indeed rather surprising. Seen from the perspec-
tive of some of the more complicated systems outlined below, the argument
can be characterized as stemming from a persistent psychological confusion in
our attempt to spatialize time. In opting for NB in order to evaluate the argu-
ment, we extend the scope of the derivational rule (tn) (tm)(tn) into the
future, imagining that because things will turn out somehow or other, there
must already, in some occult but defeasible sense, be a way things will turn
out to be right now. This unwarranted inference imposes a strictly statistical
or chronological interpretation of the modal operators and , with the result
that (tn) (tn), the necessitation of all time-indexed propositions, emerges
as a derived rule. To be sure, in NB, (tm) = (tm) = (tm); but without any
means to formalize temporal and modal logic, it is far from obvious, at the
moment when we begin to think about the problem, that we have set this trap
for ourselves. For Diodorus Cronus as well as some of the thinkers of the thir-
teenth and fourteenth centuries who dealt with the puzzle that it represents,
A1.21 may well have seemed like a case of close and unobvious reasoning, every
step of which was required to reach the conclusion. Psychologically, after all,
it makes sense to reach for an accepted necessitation principle such as (tn)
(tmn)(tn) and use it, surprisingly, to necessitate the future.10
A1.3. In order to formalize Pattern Argument 3, John Can Be Wrong, we must

first formalize doxastic operators and define correctness and incorrectness. In
this case, we must express the idea of the (in)correctness of a creaturely belief
9 For the attempt to characterize all deductive reasoning as petitio principii, see Outlines of
Pyrrhonism ii 195203 [Sextus Empiricus 1933, pp. 276283] and Mills System of Logic ii
ch. 3 [Mill 1961, pp. 119136]. For modern treatments, see Cohen 1934: 173181 and Hamblin
1970: 226228 and 246248. All these writers accept the charge of question-begging leveled
at deductive reasoning; except for Sextus, all of them nevertheless carve out space for such
reasoning as a useful tool of thought.
10 Gaskin 1995: 293 makes essentially the same point in his similar reconstruction of the
Master Argument: [T]here is some epistemic distance to traverse between the premisses
and the conclusion. It can be an intellectual discovery that, if the contingent is that which
can be assumed to be actual without incoherence, and given the plausible understanding
of modality as relative to the facts, then there can be no such thing as an unactualized
possibility.
at (t0) about an event at some (tf). To keep matters simple, I shall deal only
with beliefs about state-descriptions, leaving aside beliefs about counterfactual
scenarios, conditionals, and so forth. First we introduce the familiar doxastic
operators B (strong) and C (weak). Doxastic R can be construed as serial and
transitive (as in the standard approach following Hintikka 1962), although this
is not relevant here. The two clauses come out as follows:
A1.301. (tn): [(tm)/C is correct] =def (tn): BC(tm) and (tn): (tm)
(Within any world-time (tn), a creaturely believer C is correct in his belief that
(tm) iff BC(tm) and (tm).)
A1.302. (tn): [(tm)/C is incorrect] =def (tn): BC(tm) and (tn): (tm)
(Within any world-time (tn), a creaturely believer C is incorrect in his belief that
(tm) iff BC(tm) and (tm).)
The precise form of these definitions will make more sense when we come to
the right-branching systems. For this system, they amount to the claim that,
given a belief BC(tm), that claim is correct if (tm) and incorrect if (tm).
Since, in NB, (tm) = (tm) = (tm), it is hardly surprising that Pattern Argu-
ment 3 goes through in this system.
A1.31. {(t-1)BC(t+1)S, (t0)(t+1)S} (t0)(t-1)[(t+1)S/C is incorrect]:
1. (t-1)BC(t+1)S Premise
2. (t0)(t+1)S Premise
3. (t0)(t-1)BC(t+1)S 1, (tn) (tm)(tn)
5. (t0): (t+1)S 2, 4, wt-out
6. (t0): (t-1)BC(t+1)S 3, 4, wt-out
7. (t0): (t-1)BC(t+1)S 6, (tmn): (tn) (tn)
8. (t0)R(tf) 5
10. (tf): (t+1)S 5, 8, 9, -out
11. (tf): (t-1)BC(t+1)S 7, 8, 9, -out
12. (tf): (t-1)(t+1)S 10, (tn) (tm)(tn)
13. (tf): (t-1): World-time subderivation
14. (tf): (t-1): BC(t+1)S 11, 13, wt-out
15. (tf): (t-1): (t+1)S 12, 13, wt-out
482 appendix
16. (tf): (t-1): [(t+1)S/C is incorrect] 13, 14, 15, def. [(tm)/C is
incorrect]
17. (t0)(t-1)[(t+1)S/C is incorrect] 8, 16, -in
A1.4. Pattern Argument 4, Divine Foreknowledge Necessitates, introduces

divine beliefs. Within NB, we can for simplicitys sake treat human and divine
beliefs in the same way. Divine omniscience is secured by rule A1.401:
A1.401. BG
Given the limitations enshrined in A1.02 and A1.03, there is no need to limit
A1.401 to eternal truths (as in e.g., J. Martin 2004: 61). Gods knowledge of a
particular fact, say (t+1)S, can be asserted omnitemporally, as in | BG(t+1)S, or
located within the world-time (t+1), as in | (t+1)BGS; these two propositions
are equivalent and interderivable. As hrstrm 2009: 18 points out, for many
systems, BG can be treated as a disquotational truth operator, i.e., we can read
BG as simply . A1.41 is thus a modified form of A1.21:
A1.41. {(t-1)BG(t+1)S} (t0)(t+1)S
1. (t-1)BG(t+1)S Premise
2. (t0)(t+1)S Assumption for reductio
3. (t0)(t-1)BG(t+1)S 1, (tn) (tm)(tn)
5. (t0): (t-1)BG(t+1)S 3, 4, wt-out
6. (t0): (t+1)S 2, 4, wt-out
7. (t0): (t-1)BG(t+1)S 5, (tmn): (tn) (tn)
8. (t0): (t+1)S 6, operator exchange
9. (t0)R(tf) 6, R
11. (tf): (t+1)S 8, 9, 10, -out
12. (tf): (t-1)BG(t+1)S 7, 9, 10 -out
13. (tf): (t-1)(t+1)S 11, (tn) (tm)(tn)
14. (tf): (t-1): World-time subderivation
15. (tf): (t-1): BG(t+1)S 12, 14, wt-out
16. (tf): (t-1): (t+1)S 13, 14, wt-out
17. (tf): (t-1): (t+1)S 16, (tn) (tn)
18. (tf): (t-1): (t+1)S 15, BG
19. (tf): (t-1): 17, 18,
20. (tf): (t-1) 19 wt-out
21. (tf): 20, (tn)

22. (t0) 9, 21, -in
23. (t0) 22, (tn) (tn)
24. 23, (tn)
25. (t0)(t+1)S 224, reductio
26. (t0) (t+1)S 25, (tn) (tn)
27. (t0)(t+1)S 26, double-negation elimination
The formal considerations that applied to A1.21 apply here as well. The past-
necessitation of BG(t+1)S is psychologically powerful but, in this system, unnec-
essary; the derivation could be shortened considerably by taking (t-1)BG(t+1)S
directly to (t-1)(t+1)S and thence to (t-1)(t+1)S via the established result A1.21.
A1.5. The system gives us no way to formally distinguish divine from creaturely
knowledge, except by appealing to the divine-omniscience rule BG .
Hence, Pattern Argument 5, God Can Be Wrong, goes through just as in A1.31;
we simply replace (t-1)BC(t+1)S by (t-1)BG(t+1)S.
In NB, a problem arises in connection with Pattern Argument 5: the prop-

erty of right-connectedness, together with the rule BG , renders the
premise set {(t-1)BG(t+1)S, (t0)(t+1)S} inconsistent. From the perspective of
modern classical logic, this circumstance suggests a trivial proof of any
by the principle of explosion. However, that principle, although known and
widely discussed under the name of ex impossibili sequitur quidlibet, was by
no means universally accepted in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries;
indeed, we can find thinkers covering the entire period from Lombard to Chat-
ton (and indeed onward to the fifteenth century) who articulate senses in
which explosion must fail or who argue against it.11 But, crucially, A1.51, being
exactly isomorphic to A1.31, does not formally depend on explosion. I shall
give the name effectively valid to an argument with an inconsistent premise set
whose validity is in fact established without recourse to explosion.12 So we have
A1.51:
11 See Iwakuma 1993 and Spruyt 1993 for discussion.

12 It is not difficult to find a medieval warrant for this idea. Peter of Spain, in his discussion of
explosion, endorses a tripartite scheme to evaluate the validity of inferences from impos-
sible or contradictory premise sets. From an impossible insofar as it is impossible, as from
an impossible through composition or division, nothing follows; the two categories seem
to be intended to block inferences that violate relevance criteria, i.e., inferences involving
484 appendix
A1.51. {(t-1)BG(t+1)S, (t0)(t+1)S} (t0)(t-1) [(t+1)S/G is incorrect]
The same situationinconsistent premise set, effectively valid argument

applies to the next two Pattern Arguments.
A1.6. Pattern Argument 6, which claims that divine knowledge tracks counter-
factual possibilities, is affirmed in NB in an effectively valid proof:
A1.61. {(t+1)S, (t0)(t+1)S} (t0)[BG(t+1)S BG(t+1)S] (effectively valid)
1. (t+1)S Premise
2. (t0)(t+1)S 1, (tn) (tm)(tn)
5. (t0): (t+1)S 2, 4, wt-out
6. (t0): BG(t+1)S 5, BG
7. (t0): (t+1)S 3, 4, wt-out
8. (t0)R(tf) 7
10. (tf): (t+1)S 7, 8, 9, -out
11. (tf): BG(t+1)S 10, BG
12. (t0)BG(t+1)S 6, wt-in
13. (t0)BG(t+1)S 8, 11, -in
14. (t0)[BG(t+1)S BG(t+1)S] 12, 13, (tn) distribution
A1.7. Pattern Argument 7 goes through in a way analogous to A1.61, although

the issue of the H operator makes the derivation a bit longer:
A1.71. {(t+1) S, (t0)(t+1)S} (t0)[HBG (t+1) S (t0)(t+1)HBG(t+1)S] (effectively

valid)
antecedents and consequents sharing no propositional variables. However, from the res
in which impossible or contradictory predicates are said to inhere, valid inferences can be
drawn in the normal way. For example, if a man is an ass, a man is an animal is a valid
inference in virtue of the fact that ass is a species of animal and a species always implies
its genus (Syncategoreumata, ch. 5, 42, pp. 234235, tr. Spruyt). See Spruyt 1993: 171173
for discussion of this doctrine and its apparent adoption by Henry of Ghent.
A1.71. {(t+1) S, (t0)(t+1)S} (t0)[HBG (t+1) S (t0)(t+1)HBG(t+1)S] (effectively

valid)
1. (t+1)S Premise
3. (t0)HBG(t+1)S Assumption for reductio
4. (t0)PBG(t+1)S 3, operator exchange
6. (t0): PBG(t+1)S 4, 5, wt-out
7. (tp)R(t0) 6 PR
8. (tp): World-time subderivation
9. (tp): BG(t+1)S 6, 7, 8, P-out
10. (tp): BG(t+1)S 9, operator exchange
11. (tp)(t+1)S 1, (tn) (tm)(tn)
12. (tp): (t+1)S 11, 8, wt-out
13. (tp): BG(t+1)S 12, BG
14. (tp): (t+1)S 10, BG
15. (tp): 12, 14,
16. (t0)(tp) 5, 7, 15, segment recovery
17. (tp) 16, (tn) (tm)(tn)
18. 17, (tn)
19. (t0)HBG(t+1)S 318, reductio
21. (t0): (t+1)S 2, 20, wt-out
22. (t0)R(tf) 21 R
24. (tf): (t+1)S 21, 22, 23, -out
25. (tf): (t+1)HBG(t+1)S Assumption for reductio
(2640 analogous to 418)
41. (tf): (t+1)HBG(t+1)S 2540, reductio

42. (t0)(t+1)HBG(t+1)S 22, 41, -in
43. (t0)[HBG(t+1)S (t0)(t+1)HBG(t+1)S] 19, 42, (tn) distribution
A1.8. Now we can draw up a balance sheet for NB with respect to the Pattern
Arguments:
Pattern Arguments:
486 appendix
1. Affirmed, 2. Affirmed, 3. Affirmed, 4. Affirmed, 5. Affirmed, 6. Affirmed,

7. Affirmed
Desired result?
1. Yes, 2. No, 3. Yes, 4. No, 5. No, 6. Yes, 7. Yes
NB affirms all the Pattern Arguments, including the ones it should (optimally)
reject. It is therefore unacceptable.
A2 The Simple Right-Branching System (SRB)
An obvious way to avoid the freedom-imperiling aspects of the foregoing sys-

tem is to suspend our belief in a unique line of events leading into the future.
This step leads to our second system. The time-structure is now a set of world-
times in which relation R is left-connected but not right-connected. In other
words, we retain the condition [(aRc bRc) (a>b b>a a=b)] but drop [(aRb
aRc) (b>c c>b b=c)]. R is still left-total but not right-total, forward-only,
irreflexive, and transitive. The derivational mechanisms remain the same, but
modal operators now quantify over both instants of time and maximal chains,
i.e., individual histories; the latter are kept track of by adding a history subscript
to each world-time-index except when such indices immediately follow modal
operators.
SRB, in short, is a member of the family of temporal logics that includes the
so-called Peircean and Ockhamist systems developed by Prior in the 1960s (see
Prior 1967, ch. 7) and the model explored by Nishimura (1979), called Leibnizian
in hrstrm and Hasle (2011). It is, however, simpler than those models and
ignores a number of salient differences between them. SRB is simply a model
of time as a set of branching histories labeled according to their (notional and
arbitrary) end-states. The set of possible world-states, or moments, has the
form of a forward-branching tree with a single initial state. The tree is indexed
for both time and modality: that is, every node (every possible world-state or
moment) can be specified horizontally (i.e., in terms of when on the time-
line it is located) and vertically (i.e., in terms of where in modal space it is
located). The system assumes cross-modal instants; that is, for any n, there is
some sense in which different histories at (tn) are in the same instant. Each
maximal chain within this tree structure represents a possible complete history
of the world. A full index for a given temporal-modal node will have the form
(tn[]), where n is the temporal subscript and is the history subscript.
figure a2-1 The Simple Right-branching system. At (t0), (t+1) is contingent. Two concessions
to diagrammatic simplicity have been made: (1) branching is presented as binary,
but in fact it need not be so; (2) previous branchings, which are conatively
inaccessible to (t0), could be represented but are not; these would represent past
counterfactuals.
Leaving other sources of indeterminacy undiscussed, the branching nodes

correspond to decisions makeable by free agents in time.13 The accessibility
relation R between two nodes (tn) and (tm>n) indicates that, at node (tn), God
or creature can bring about the state of affairs corresponding to node (tm>n).
Sequences of fully specified temporal-modal indices indicate a proposition
that takes into account the precise conditions of a given course of events
happening. Taking to mean The Stock Market crashes, [(t0[F])(t+2[F])
(t0[F])(t+2[G]) ] means On Monday, the Stock Market will crash if x (leading to
the F branching) happens, and it will not crash if y (leading to the G branching)
happens, where x and y are under the presumptive control of some agent.14
The entire modal map implied in Fig. 2.1 displays all currently live possibilities,
although the precise conditions that would lead to them are not displayed. The
labelling of individual histories represents the fact that each maximal chain
is somehow identifiable by God; by A1.401 (BG ), retained here, He has
13 These are substantive decisions, not, as it were, vacuous or trivial ones: in consequence,
(t1[K]) and (t1[L]) must be distinct with regards to some sentence of the language (or,
otherwise expressed, with regards to some state of affairs that obtains in the one but not
the other). Moreover, that sentence must not depend, in the Ockhamist sense, on the
future.
14 Note that the coindexation in the expression (t0[F])(t+2[F]) encodes a presumptive favor-
ing of whatever happens on the F line; in this system, however, I treat this as a mere
notational quirk with no real-world significance.
488 appendix
figure a2-2 The parallel-line model contains the same information as the branching model.
complete knowledge of the modal field and its structure. That is to say, He
knows the precise conditions for every possible event.15
In principle, as hrstrm and Hasle 2011: 5.2 point out, this structure could
be represented as a parallel-line model, with every branching-point corre-
sponding to a set of world-times that are qualitatively identical up to that point,
as in Fig. A22.
In these systems, however, I assume that real branching takes place, i.e., that
all the nodes A in the left column of Fig. 2.1 are identical, as are the nodes B and
C. This assumption plays a role in various derivations and in the justification
for various principles (cf. the proofs of Pattern Argument 1, the necessity of the
past, under A2.1 below).
Here are some other important derivational rules, which are simply right-
branching analogues to the rules in NB:
A2.01. [(tn[]) (tn[])]
A2.02. [(tn[]) (tm[])(tn[])]
A2.03. | | (tn[])
A2.04. (tn[])R(tm>n[])
A2.02 is especially noteworthy: it makes the complete state-description of every

node in the time-structure a fact about every other node, irrespective of history
15 In other words, among the many things God knows in virtue of His omniscience are all
facts of the form (tn[])[(tn) (tn)], where the latter means (f)() ((tn[])R(tf[])
[(tf[])(tn[]) (tf[])(tn[])]).
subscript. What this means, essentially, is that the modal field is stable and non-
perspectival within the time-structure.
A2.05. The conative modal operators and now abbreviate the following:
A2.051. (tn[]) =def (f)()[(tn[])R(tf[]) (tf[])]
A2.052. (tn[]) =def (f)()[(tn[])R(tf[]) (tf[])]
A2.053. (tn[])(tm) (tm) =def (f)()[(tn[])R(tf[]) (tf[])(tm[]) (tm[])]
A2.054. (tn[])(tm) (tm) =def (f)()[(tn[])R(tf[]) (tf[])(tm[]) (tm[])]
A2.055. (tn[])() =def (f)[(tn[])R(tf[]) (tf[])]
A2.056. (tn[])() =def (f)[(tn[])R(tf[]) (tf[])]
A2.051 and A2.052 correspond to temporally unspecified conative modality;

A2.053 and A2.054 (by far the most common types in the derivations consid-
ered here, and the types for which derivational machinery is specifically devel-
oped below) represent modality-for-an-instant; and A2.055 and A2.056 repre-
sent modality along a single history, which we might call Diodorean modality.
Analogously to NB, = , = , (tm) = (tm), (tm) = (tm), () =
(), and () = (). In expressions containing multiple temporal oper-
ators and/or negation signs following a modal operator, the temporal nodes are
associated with the same history-variable, e.g.
A2.057. (t0[A])(t+1)(t+2): (f)()[(t0[A])R(tf[]) (tf[])(t+1[])(t+2[])]
A2.058. (t0[A])(t+2)(t2): (f)()[(t0[A])R(tf[]) (t+2[])(t2[])]
A2.06. The tense operators P, F, H, and G now abbreviate the following:
A2.061. (tn[])P =def (p)[(tp[])R(tn[]) (tp[])]
A2.062. (tn[])F [= (tn[])()] =def (f)[(tn[])R(tf[]) (tf[])]
A2.063. (tn[])H =def (p)[(tp[])R(tn[]) (tp[])]
A2.064. (tn[])G [= (tn[])()] =def (f)[(tn[])R(tf[]) (tf[])]

490 appendix
As in NB, so here: except for H, the tense operators are not much used. Socrates
sat yesterday can be expressed as (t-1[A])S or as (t0[A])(t-1[A])S, which can be
thought of as an abbreviation of [(t-1[A])R(t0[A]) (t-1[A])S], Socrates will sit
tomorrow = (t+1[A])S or (t0[A])(t+1[A])S, thought of as an abbreviation of
[(t0[A])R(t+1[A]) (t+1[A])S]; the maximal-chain marker A stands arbitrarily for
@ (the actual world). Note that in these useful abbreviations the whole force of
will as opposed to might is here borne by the maximal-chain coindexation
of (t0[A])(t+1[A]).
A2.07. As in NB, omnitemporal truths imply time-specific modal truths:
A2.071. | | (tn[])
A2.072. | | (tn[])(tm)
A2.073. | | (tn[])
A2.074. | | (tn[])(tm)
A2.08. The distinction between the Law of Excluded Middle and the Principle
of Bivalence is easy to express in this system. Reading truth-in-advance as
conative necessity, we have
A2.081. (tn[])(tm)(P P) (LEM), but
A2.082. / [(tn[])(tm)P (tn[])(tm)P] (Biv)
The distinction trades on the fact that the expressions (tm)(P P), (tm)P, and
(tm)P are open with respect to the history index. When we close them, both
LEM and Biv emerge as theorems:
A2.083. (tn[])(tm[])(P P) (LEM)
A2.084. [(tn[])(tm[])P (tn[])(tm[])P] (Biv)
The distinction between closed and open sentences also plays a crucial role in
A2.2, A2.4, and A2.5 below.
A2.09. The derivational rules are fitted out with history subscripts. Here are
some particularly useful ones:
A2.091. (tn[])H (tm<n[])
A2.092. (tn[]) (tm>n[])
A2.093. (tn[])(tm) (tm>n[])(tm)
An immediate consequence of these features of SRB is that an intuitive version

of the necessity of the present/past remains (A2.11A2.12), while the future is
necessitated only in a harmless sense (see A2.21 and Chapter i, 4.5.4).
The treatment of the Pattern Arguments in SRB is analogous to that in NB,
but the results are crucially different. SRB, in short, is the simplest system that
seems to have a fighting chance at adequacy with respect to the Pattern Argu-
ments. The reasons will emerge from the treatment of individual arguments, as
will the problematic aspects of the system.
For the remainder of this analysis, the mechanism of world-time subderiva-
tions is simplified in an obvious way except when perspicuity makes the
spelled-out version preferable (e.g., in some treatments of Pattern Argument 7).
A2.1. Pattern Argument 1 is affirmed in SRB:
A2.11. (tn[]) (tn[])(tn) (the necessity of the relative present):
1. (tn[]) Premise
2. (tn[])R(tf[]) Assumption
3. (tn[])R(tf[]) (tn[])R(tm>n[])
4. (tn[])=(tn[]) 2, 3, left-connectedness of R
5. (tn[]) 1, 4, =-out
6. (tf[])(tn[]) 5, (tn[]) (tm[])(tn[])
7. [(tn[])R(tf[]) (tf[])(tn[])] 26, -in
8. (f)()[(tn[])R(tf[]) (tf[])(tn[])] 7, -in (f and T were selected
arbitrarily)
9. (tn[])(tn) 8, def.
A2.12. (tp[]) (tn>p[])(tp) (the necessity of the relative past):
1. (tp[]) Premise
2. (tn>p[])R(tf[]) Assumption
3. (tp[])R(tn[]) (tn[])R(tm>n[])
4. (tp[])R(tf[]) 3, 2, transitivity of R
5. (tp[])R(tf[]) (tn[])R(tm>n[])
492 appendix
6. (tp[])=(tp[]) 4, 5, left-connectedness of R
7. (tp[]) 1, 6, =-out
8. (tf[])(tp[]) 7, (tn[]) (tm[])(tn[])
9. [(tn[])R(tf[]) (tf[])(tp[])] 28, -in
10. (f)()[(tn[])R(tf[]) (tf[])(tp[])] 9, -in (f and T were selected
arbitrarily)
11. (tn>p[])(tp) 10, def.
A2.11 and A2.12 yield A2.13, whence A2.14 by the Deduction Theorem:
A2.13. (tn[]) (tmn[])(tn)
A2.14. [(tn[]) (tmn[])(tn)]
Here is a SRB version of A1.122, which allows us to move from (tn[]) to (tn)
within a world-time subderivation:
A2.15. (tmn[]): [(tn[]) (tn)]
A2.2. In SRB, the attempt to necessitate the future by way of the past, as per
A1.21, fails. If, in a given history, Socrates will sit tomorrow, it does not follow
that he must sit tomorrow:
A2.21. {(t+1[A])S} / (t0[A])(t+1)S
1. (t+1[A])S Premise
2. (t0[A])(t+1)S Assumption for reductio
3. (t0[A])(t+1)S 2, operator exchange
4. (t0[A])(t-1[A])(t+1[A])S 1, (tn[]) (tm[])(tn[]) (3)
5. (t0[A])(t-1)(t+1[A])S 4, (tn[]) (tmn[])(tn)
6. (t0[AB])R(tf[B]) 3, R. The rule R introduces a new history-
constant to the derivation. (t0[AB]) indicates the
node shared by histories [A] and [B] at (t0).
7. (tf[B])(t+1[B])S 3, 6, -out
8. (tf[B])(t-1[B])(t+1[A])S 5, 6, -out. The history-index [A] remains on
the immediate prefix of S; after all, it was
(t+1[A])S, not (t+1)S, that was necessitated.
9. (t+1[B])S 7, (tn[]) (tm[])(tn[])
10. (t+1[A])S 8, (tn[]) (tm[])(tn[]) (2)
11. (t+1[B])S 9, (tn[]) (tn[])
After 11, we break off: no contradiction can be derived. This is the first rejec-
tion proof we have seen, and it furnishes an opportunity to discuss the method
here adopted. As in the affirmation proofs, the idea is to follow the concep-
tual path indicated by idealized versions of the arguments found in the actual
sources, rather than the most efficient path to a formal result. In this light,
A2.21 can be taken as a failed attempt to necessitate the future via the past,
contrasting with the successful attempt at A1.21. The failure is instructive: in
NB, future truths are necessitated because of R and the definitions of modal
terms, whereas here they fail to be necessitated (in any sense we need care
about) because the last temporal-modal operator is unaffected by the neces-
sitation rule. Put another way, SRB actually affirms Pattern Argument 2, but
only for any fully specified node (t+1[]), not for all nodes (t+1). Indeed, it is
clear that {(t+1[A])S} (t0[A])(t+1[A])S. This sequent is simply an instance of
A2.22:
A2.22. {(tn[])} (tm[])(tn[]) (by A2.073, (tn[]) / )
Since the modal field is stable, every fully specified proposition is conatively
necessary from all nodes in the model.
A2.21 not only shows a failed attempt at proving the claim {(t+1[A])S}
(t0[A])(t+1)S; it also directly shows the falsehood of that claim. A sequent is
false if and only if we have reached, by the application of deduction rules
corresponding to the decomposition rules in truth-trees (including a system-
atic decomposition of all propositions prefixed by modal and temporal-modal
operators), a consistent set of propositions comprising the premises, the
negated conclusion, and the results of all decomposition rules. The above failed
attempt contains, as a proper part, just such an application. True, it makes a
needless (though psychologically necessary) detour into the past;16 neverthe-
less, the end result is that we are left with the propositions at lines 1, 2, 10, and
11, a consistent set of propositions which would be precisely those yielded by a
straightforward decomposition of the set {(t+1[A])S, (t0[A])(t+1) S}.
The upshot is that in SRB, it is possible to past-necessitate anything in a
trivial sense, but only hard facts in a significant sense. For expressions that
consist of a series of fully specified world-time indices and end in a state-
16 The attempt is needless here, but in order to prove the sequent (t-1[A])S (t0[A])(t-1)S we
must indeed build in machinery that somehow forces us to apply A2.13 or its equivalent.
One possibility would be to require that for every sentence of type (tn[])R(tf[]) and every
sentence (tmn[]), we introduce a sentence (tmn[]).
494 appendix
description, the rule (tmn[]): (tn[]) (tn) will necessitate in the strong
sense all and only those expressions whose last time-index does not exceed m.
A2.3. Pattern Argument 3, John Can Be Wrong, is affirmed.
Like all these systems, SRB treats creaturely beliefs in a way that brings the
result of John Can Be Wrong in line with common-sense expectations. First,
however, as in NB, we must get clear on how to express the correctness or
incorrectness of a belief at t0 about an event at some tf. In NB, belief about
a tensed proposition was simply a special case of belief about a proposition:
the basic idea/C is correct iff BC and required only minor formal
adjustments (made, indeed, mainly in anticipation of complications in the
models described below) and in any case presented no conceptual problems.
Moreover, there was no need to distinguish divine and creaturely beliefs except
by the addition of the rule BG . In this model, when considering what
it means for a creature to have beliefs about the present and the past, we
are also (more or less, with various conceptual and formal caveats) in the
clear; but when it comes to the future, we are immediately presented with a
problem.17 What constitutes, after all, a correct creaturely belief about the
future? In a branching model (or at least this branching model), all paths to
the future are of equal weight: facticity, or actuality, is divided among all
accessible paths. Hence we cannot speak of correctness pure and simple, but
only of correctness relative to an individual history. In other words, unlike truth,
creaturely correctness is a matter of perspective: from the point of view of
some futures, a belief is correct, from others not. The fact that SRB does not
permit beliefs about future contingents to be simply correct or incorrect has an
effect on our interpretation of the idea that a belief about a future contingent
can be wrong now: to talk coherently, we must construe it as the claim that
a belief about a future event can turn out to have been wrong. So, for timed
creaturely beliefs, we keep the basic idea (/C is correct iff BC and ) but
add a clause stipulating that if the content of a creaturely belief is a timed
proposition, then what is believed is a sentence which is open with regards to
the history index.18
17 As stated in Part i, footnote 99, my ideas about the correctness of creaturely beliefs about
the future owe much to the theories of MacFarlane (2003, 2007), Belnap and Green 1994,
and Thakkar 2006 on future truth.
18 This analysis of creaturely beliefs is thus in line with Belnap and Greens analysis of
assertions about the future as having (modally) open sentences as objects:
Derivational rules for creaturely doxastic operators (B-in/out and C-in/out),

though not used in these proofs, would work analogously to those for alethic
operators: BR and CR take us from a history [] to a history [] in which what is
believed is the case. Segment recovery could not be applied to the results of B-
out and C-out, since the resulting segments belong to merely notional histories
(it is possible that (t0[A])BP(t+1)S and (t0[A])(t+1)S, for example).
The criterion of creaturely correctness is correctness-in-a-context, that con-
text being provided formally by a world-time subderivation, thus:
A2.301. (tn[])[(tm)/C is correct] =def (tn[]): BC(tm) and (tn[]): (tm[])
(Within any world-time (tn[]), a creaturely believer C is correct in his belief

that (tm) iff, within (tn[]), BC(tm) and (tm[]).)
A2.302. (tn[])[(tm)/C is incorrect] =def (tn[]): BC(tm) and (tn[]): (tm[])
(Within any world-time (tn[]), a creaturely believer C is incorrect in his belief

that (tm) iff, within (tn[]), BC(tm) and (tm[]).)
The interpretation of belief in timed propositions as beliefs about open sen-

tences has bite only when it comes to beliefs about the future, since within
(tn[]), if mn, the truth-value of [(tm)/C is correct] is determinate, since any
relevant (tmn[]) is identical with (tmn[]).
In any case, the definitions of correct and incorrect allow doxastic facts
to track alethic modality; the result is that creaturely belief is falsifiable in some
world-times.
A2.31. {(t-1[A])BC(t+1)S, (t0[A])(t+1)S} (t0[A])(t-1)[(t+1)S/C is incorrect]
1. (t-1[A])BC(t+1)S Premise
2. (t0[A])(t+1)S Premise
3. (t0[A])(t-1[A])BC(t+1)S 1, (tn[]) (tm[])(tn[])
In contrast to the senselessness of asserting an assignment-open sentence such as x is

brindle, there is no radical defect in asserting a typical future-tensed sentence such as
The die will show six, even under conditions, even known to the speaker, of radical
indeterminism.
belnap and green 1994: 377
What Belnap and Green say about assertions, I say about beliefs.
496 appendix
4. (t0[A])(t-1)BC(t+1)S 3, (tn[]) (tmn[])(tn)

5. (t0[AB])R(tf[B]) 2, R
6. (tf[B])(t+1[B])S 2, 5, -out
7. (tf[B])(t-1[B])BC(t+1)S 4, 5, -out
8. (tf[B])(t-1[B])(t+1[B])S 6, (tn[]) (tm[])(tn[]) (3)
9. (tf[B])(t-1[B]) [(t+1)S/C is incorrect] 7, 8, def. [(tm)/C is incorrect]
10. (t0[A])(t-1) [(t+1)S/C is incorrect] 5, 9, -in
There is a crucial difference between the affirmation of this argument in NB

and that in A2.31. In the former, although the result was reached by an appeal to
sequent necessity, it was in any case guaranteed by the triviality of the operators
(tn) and (tn), both of which simply reduced to (tn). Here, the result depends
on the left-connectedness of R in the sense that proving the argument requires
some formal maneuver (in this case, the appeal to sequent necessity at line 4)
that depends on that property.
A2.4. Pattern Argument 4, Divine Foreknowledge Necessitates, is rejected in

SRB. The reason is that God believes only sentences which are closed with
respect to the history index (a result which follows from the fact that we
have taken over the NB formulation of divine omniscience, BG , without
modifying it as we have modified creaturely belief clauses). The argument thus
succumbs to the same analysis as do the arguments considered under A2.2.
BG(t+1)S in A1.41 appears in every line as BG(t+1[A])S, i.e., it is history-coindexed
with (t0[A]).
A2.41. {(t-1[A])BG(t+1[A])S} / (t0[A])(t+1)S
1. (t-1[A])BG(t+1[A]) S Premise
2. (t0[A])(t+1) S Assumption for reductio
3. (t0[A])(t+1) S 2, operator exchange
4. (t0[A])(t-1[A])BG(t+1[A]) S 1, (tn[]) (tm[])(tn[])
5. (t0[A])(t-1)BG(t+1[A]) S 4, (tn[]) (tmn[])(tn)
6. (t0[AB])R(tf[B]) 8, R
7. (tf[B])(t+1[B]) S 3, 6, -out
8. (tf[B])(t-1[B])BG(t+1[A]) S 5, 6, -out
9. (tf[B])(t-1[B])(t+1[B]) S 7, (tn[]) (tm[])(tn[]) (3)
10. (tf[B])(t-1[B])(t+1[A]) S 8, BG
11. (t+1[B]) S 9, (tn[]) (tm[])(tn[]) (2)
12. (t+1[A]) S 10, (tn[]) (tm[])(tn[]) (2)
13. (t+1[B]) S 11, (tn[]) (tn[])
Lines 1, 2, 12, and 13 form a consistent set. Notice that this analysis does not
call the past necessitation of divine knowledge into question. The antecedent,
here, can indeed be trivially necessitated (thus (t0[A])(t-1)BG(t+1[A])S at line 5),
which can be used to derive the trivial (t0[A])(t+1[A])S but not the nontrivial
(t0[A])(t+1)S; hence, the intended consequence fails to go through.
A2.5. Pattern Argument 5, God Can Be Wrong, is rejected in SRB. As was

remarked in A2.4, divine beliefs always have closed sentences as their objects:
not simply (t0[A])BG(t+1)S, but, e.g., (t0[A])BG(t+1[A])S, (t0[A])BG(t+1[B])S, etc. In
consequence, GCBW is invalidated for the same reason as is the argument
from necessary divine foreknowledge. Just as (t+1[A])S and (t+1[B])S yield no
contradiction, BG(t+1[A])S and (t+1[B])S do not yield a scenario in which God
believes something false.
The stipulation that God believes only closed sentences allows us to unprob-
lematically retain the divine omniscience clause BG . Correctness and
incorrectness definitions for God are simpler than for creatures: [/G is cor-
rect] iff [BG ], [/G is incorrect] iff [BG ]. Of course, given BG
, [/G is incorrect] is equivalent to , but this plays no role in the following
derivation.
A2.51. {(t-1[A])BG(t+1[A])S, (t0[A])(t+1)S} / (t0[A])(t-1)[(t+1[A])S/G is incorrect]:
1. (t-1[A])BG(t+1[A])S Premise
3. (t0[A])(t-1)[(t+1[A])S/G is incorrect] Assumption for reductio
4. (t0[A])(t-1)BG(t+1[A])S 1, (tn[]) (tmn[])(tn)
5. (t0[A])(t-1)[(t+1[A])S/G is incorrect] 3, operator exchange
6. (t0[AB])R(tf[B]) 2, R
7. (tf[B])(t+1[B]) S 2, 6, -out
8. (tf[B])(t-1[B])BG(t+1[A])S 4, 6, -out
9. (tf[B])(t-1[B]) [(t+1[A])S/G is incorrect] 5, 6, -out
10. (tf[B])(t-1[B]) [BG(t+1[A])S (t+1[A])S] 9, def. incorrect
11. (tf[B])(t-1[B]) [BG(t+1[A])S (t+1[A])S] 10, De Morgan, double
negation elimination
12. (tf[B])(t-1[B])(t+1[A])S 8, 11, disjunctive
syllogism
13. (tf[B])(t-1[B])(t+1[A])S 8, BG
14. (t+1[B])S 7, (tn[]) (tm[])(tn[])
15. (t+1[A])S 12/13, (tn[])
(tm[])(tn[]) (2)
498 appendix
16. (t+1[B])S 14, (tn[]) (tn[])
1, 2, 3, 15, and 16 form a consistent set of propositions.

Of course, the sequent {(t-1[A])BG(t+1[A])S, (t0[A])(t+1[A])S} (t0[A])(t-1)
[(t+1[A])S/G is incorrect] is effectively valid, but it is also necessarily unsound.
A2.6. SRB affirms Pattern Argument 6. First, in order to have an expression

meaning something like the natural-language God can know that Socrates will
sit tomorrow without having the formalization of this proposition refer to a
particular history generated by the derivational process, we say [God believes
that (tn[])] just in case God believes some closed sentence locating in a
specific temporal-modal node (tn[]). Thus , in this formulation, stands not
for a variable but for some constant, specifically the constant indicating the
local history, i.e., the history in the world-time in which it was first introduced.
It retains this reference in all other derivational frames; hence it, too, like an
expression such as BG(t+1[B])S, can be harmlessly necessitated. Further history-
constants can be tracked by further Greek indices, e.g., BG(t+1[C]) S yields [God
believes that (t+1[])S], etc. The sequent thus comes out as follows:
A2.61. {(t+1[A])S, (t0[A])(t+1) S} (t0[A])[BG(t+1[A])S [God believes that

(t+1[])S]]
3. (t0[A])(t+1[A])S 1, (tn[]) (tm[])(tn[])
4. (t0[AB])R(tf[B]) 2, R
5. (tf[B])(t+1[B])S 2, 4, -out
6. (tf[B])BG(t+1[B])S 5, BG
7. (tf[B])[God believes that (t+1[])S] 6, def. [God believes ]
8. (t0[A])BG(t+1[A])S 3, BG
9. (t0[A])[God believes that (t+1[])S] 4, 7, -in
10. (t0[A])[BG(t+1[A])S [God believes 8, 9, (tn[]) distribution
that (t+1[])S]]
A2.7. The same result holds for Pattern Argument 7 (If tomorrow S, and it is
conatively possible that tomorrow S, then in fact God has always believed that
tomorrow S, but it is conatively possible that God will always have believed that
tomorrow S).
A2.71. {(t+1[A])S, (t0[A])(t+1)S}

(t0[A])[HBG (t+1[A])S (t+1)H[God believes that (t+1[])S]]
3. (t0[A]) HBG (t+1[A])S Assumption for reductio
4. (t0[A]) PBG (t+1[A])S 3, operator exchange
5. (t0[A])(tp[A]) BG (t+1[A])S 4, P-out
6. (t0[A])(tp[A])(t+1[A])S 1, (tn[]) (tm[])(tn[])
7. (t0[A])(tp[A]) BG (t+1[A])S 6, BG
8. (t0[A])(tp[A]) (t+1[A])S 5, BG
9. (t0[A])(tp[A]) 6, 8,
10. 9, (tn[]) (tm[])(tn[]),
(tn[])
11. (t0[A]) HBG (t+1[A])S 310, reductio
12. (t0[AB]) R (tf[B]) 2, R
13. (tf[B])(t+1[B])S 2, 12, -out
14. (tf[B])(t+1[B]) HBG (t+1[B])S Assumption for reductio
15. (tf[B])(t+1[B]) PBG (t+1[B])S 14, operator exchange
16. (tf[B])(t+1[B])(tp[B]) BG (t+1[B])S 15, P-out
17. (tf[B])(t+1[B])(tp[B]) (t+1[B])S 13, (tn[]) (tm[])(tn[])
(4)
18. (tf[B])(t+1[B])(tp[B]) BG (t+1[B])S 17, BG
19. (tf[B])(t+1[B])(tp[B]) (t+1[B])S 16, BG
20. (tf[B])(t+1[B])(tp[B]) 17, 19,
21. 20, (tn[]) (tm[])(tn[]),
(tn[])
22. (tf[B])(t+1[B]) HBG (t+1[B])S 1421, reductio
23. (tf[B])(t+1[B]) H[God believes that (t+1[])S] 22, def. [God believes ]
24. (t0[A])(t+1)H[God believes that (t+1[])S] 12, 23, -in
25. (t0[A])[HBG (t+1[A])S (t+1)H[God believes 11, 24, (tn[]) distribution
that (t+1[])S]]
A2.8. The balance sheet for SRB:
Pattern Arguments:
1. Affirmed, 2. Rejected, 3. Affirmed, 4. Rejected, 5. Rejected, 6. Affirmed,

7. Affirmed
Desired result?
500 appendix
1. Yes, 2. Yes, 3. Yes, 4. Yes, 5. Yes, 6. Yes, 7. Yes
A2.81. Although this balance sheet looks quite promisingall the Pattern Argu-
ments come out as desiredthere are nevertheless a number of problematic
features of SRB that merit discussion.
First let us review some advantages of the system. One interesting feature of
SRB is that it yields a version of William Ockhams famous analysis of future-
dependent propositions as excluded from sequent necessity (cf. Chapter i,
4.5.4). Ockhams formulation of his fourth supposition reads as follows:
That all propositions in these matters [i.e., predestination and reproba-

tion], although they are vocally about the present or the past, are never-
theless equally about the future, since their truth depends on the truth of
propositions that are formally about the future.19
The propositions (t0[A])(t+1[A])S and (t-1[A])(t+1[A])S are vocally about the present
and past respectively, but their truth clearly depends on the future in the
Ockhamist sense. Thus, while (t0[A])(t-1[A])S (t0[A])(t-1)S, nevertheless
(t0[A])(t+1[A])S / (t0[A])(t+1)S and (t-1[A])(t+1[A])S / (t-1[A])(t+1)S (as is clear
from A2.12 and A2.21 respectively). The system itself thus obviates the need to
carve out a special subclass of expressions that are immune to present/past
necessitation (as in the A-formulae of Prior 1967: 124). In like manner, it
reduces the distinction between precedent and sequent necessity to a single
parameter, namely the relative temporal positions of m and n in expressions of
the form (tn[])(tm).
Furthermore, SRB not only lets us affirm John Can Be Wrong while rejecting
God Can Be Wrong, but lets us do so in a way that formally depends on sequent
necessity (for the first) and on an intuitive and plausible distinction between
creaturely and divine beliefs (for the second).
Along with these advantages, some problems associated with the Priorian
and Thomasonian models remain in SRB. In the SRB derivations, the represen-
tation of the future, as of Gods knowledge of the future, seems unsatisfactory.
The problem is that there is no privileged line in the model, including no priv-
ileged actual future. Actuality, in other words, is simply unrepresentedor
19 Ockham, Tractatus de praedestinatione [OPh 2: p. 515, ll. 221224]: Quod omnes proposi-
tiones in ista materia, quantumcumque sint vocaliter de praesenti vel de praeterito, sunt
tamen aequivalenter de futuro, quia earum veritas dependet ex veritate propositionum
formaliter de futuro.
if represented at all, then merely by the coindexation of history-subscripts.

This curious feature, shared by the models known in the literature as Ock-
hamist and Peircean, violates both medieval and modern intuitions about
time, actuality, and counterfactuality, as hrstrm 2009: 2526 rightly remarks.
It thus renders problematic the idea of divine knowledge of the real world (as
opposed to His knowledge of the modal field, i.e., of the field of conditional
truth). One way of showing the importance of this feature is to point out that
at the branching-point (t0), history indices A and B refer to the same world-
time. So, absent some factor that further distinguishes between the factual and
the counterfactual, God knows that Socrates will sit (i.e., (t0[A])BG(t+1[A])S) and
God knows that Socrates will not sit, (i.e., (t0[B])BG(t+1[B])S) could both be con-
strued as true.
Of the four models shown in Chapter i, Fig. 3, SRB lends itself most readily to
an interpretation as B(mr) (though A(mr) is also a possibility, if we assume that
the selection of (t0[A]) represents the real now rather than a merely notional
or indexical now). In other words, the SRB model seems a good fit for some
species of across-the-board modal realism; and the latter seems a bad fit for a
medieval theory of time.
A3 Stationary Thin Red Line (strl)
An alternative to SRB, which preserves almost all of its structure, is STRL. This
model, which is the one I call Boethian in Chapter i, 4.5 simply assumes
that, of the many histories passing through (t0[A]), one specific history (I shall
arbitrarily assume [A] itself) contains the actual future. In other words, [A]
represents the true history of the world, from alpha to omega; all other histories
are merely notional. [A] thus represents the Thin Red Line (see Chapter i, 4.5).
A privileged history can be formally expressed by placing an exclamation mark
after its history index. An SRB expression such as (t0[A])P comes out simply as
(t0[A!])P, which can be considered an abbreviation of the conjunction (Act[A]
(t0[A])P). If we want to countenance the possibility of multiple true histories
of the world, even if only to rule it out, we can assume axiom A3.01:
A3.01. [(Act[] Act[]) ([] = [])] (alternatively, ([!] = [!]))
A3.02. The derivational rules are all the same as in SRB, as are the interpreta-
tions of modal, temporal, and tense operators. The retention of the SRB defi-
nitions of the tense operators leads to the useful result that we can talk about
counterfactual futures; this is something of an arbitrary choice, and we might
502 appendix
figure a3 The world according to STRL. Although all possibilities FH are available to node C,
only history G will be actualized.
also have tied these operators to the TRL, with, however, a resulting loss of
certain principles that we would generally like to see come out as theorems.
For example, if PHFG move us only along (or onto) the TRL, then (tn[])
(tn[])PF fails if (tn[]) is not on the TRL, as hrstrm 2009: 2829 points out.
Proofs for Pattern Arguments 15 are isomorphic with those in A2.
A3.1. Pattern Argument 1 is affirmed as in SRB (see A2.1A2.2), but with [!]
indicating actuality:
A3.11. (tn[!]) (tmn[!])(tn)
A3.12. [(tn[!]) (tmn[!])(tn)]
A3.13. (tmn[!]): [(tn[!]) (tn)]
A3.2. Pattern Argument 2 is rejected. Formally, the invalidity proof follows

A2.21, but with [A!] indicating actuality. The proposition Socrates will sit
tomorrow, (t+1[A!])S, does not entail Necessarily, Socrates will sit tomorrow,
(t0[A!])(t+1)S, but only the trivially necessitated Necessarily, in the actual
world, Socrates will sit tomorrow, (t0[A!])(t+1[A!])S.
In STRL, however, it is legitimate to ask whether R is an adequate formaliza-

tion of positing-in-being (i). Just as in A2.21, we reach (tf[B])(t+1[B])S at line 7;
but we are inspecting the contents of an unreal world considered as unreal.
A3.3. Pattern Argument 3 is affirmed. Creaturely belief remains contextually

correct or incorrect as in SRB. The correctness criterion makes no reference to
objective actuality (the TRL). John Can Be Wrong therefore goes through just
as in A2.31:
A3.31. {(t0[A!])BC(t+1)S, (t0[A!])(t+1)S} (t0[A!])(t0)[(t+1)S/C is incorrect].
A3.4. Pattern Argument 4 is rejected as in SRB. Here, however, the TRL gives
us a way of distinguishing factual from counterfactual futures and lets us
distinguish Gods cognition of the two. In this model, God knows which future
is actual. Formally, therefore, use of exclamation marks, or sentences of the
form Act[], are part of what God knows under the omniscience clause. For
example, if Socrates will in fact sit tomorrow, Gods knowledge of this fact can
be expressed as follows:
A3.401. BG[(t+1[A])P (TRL = A)]
Alternatively,
A3.402. BG(t+1[A!])P
Or, with reference merely to the exclusive actuality of the specific history and
not to its constant:
A3.403. BG(t+1[TRL])P
God also knows that, given certain conditions enshrined in the selection of the
history-constant [B], Socrates would not be going to sit tomorrow:
A3.404. BG(t+1[B])P
On this construal of divine knowledge, the past-necessitation of that knowl-

edge will fail to necessitate its contents:
A3.41. {(t-1[A!])BG(t+1[A!])P} / (t0[A!])(t+1)P
The derivation follows A2.41.
A3.5. As in SRB, God believes only closed sentences; hence, Pattern Argument
5, God Can Be Wrong, fails precisely in the same way as in A2.51. That is, just
504 appendix
as BG(t+1[A!])S and (t+1[B])S do not yield a contradiction, they do not yield a

scenario in which God believes something false:
A3.51. {(t-1[A!])BG(t+1[A!])S, (t0[A!])(t+1)S} / (t0[A!])(t-1)[(t+1[A!])S/G is incor-

rect]
The derivation follows A2.51. Expressing the conclusion as (t0[A!])(t-1)[(t+1[TRL])

S/G is incorrect] produces, of course, the same result, since TRL = [A].
A3.6. Pattern Arguments 6 and 7 represent a crucial difference between SRB

and STRL. It is worth stressing that a version of Pattern Argument 6 goes
through, just as in SRB:
A3.601. {(t+1[A!])S, (t0[A!])(t+1) S} (t0[A!])[BG(t+1[TRL])S [God believes that

(t+1[])S]].
However, this sequent no longer counts as proving that it is possible that God
should know some actual counterfactual. Since node (t+1[B]), the source of
[God believes that (t+1[])S], is off the TRL, Gods knowledge that (t+1[B])S
is conditional or counterfactual knowledge. This may not bother us (see
discussion in A3.81); however, any thinker desiring to establish the conative
possibility that God will know the contents of our freely chosen doing as actual
must be able to derive something along the lines of (t0[A!])BG(t+1[TRL])S. This
is clearly impossible: TRL = [A], and the R rule will take us to a node (t+1[B]) in
which God will still, rightly, believe (t+1[TRL])S, since (t+1[A!])S. So:
A3.61. {(t+1[A!])S, (t0[A!])(t+1) S} / (t0[A!])[BG(t+1[A!])S [God believes that

(t+1[TRL])S]].
A3.62. Indeed, {(t+1[A!])S} (t0[A!])BG(t+1[TRL])S:
1. (t+1[A!])S Premise
2. (t0[A!])BG(t+1[TRL])S Assumption for reductio
3. (t0[A!])BG(t+1[TRL])S Operator exchange, including divine
omniscience
4. (t0[A!B])R(tf[B]) 3, R
5. (tf[B])BG(t+1[TRL])S 3, 4, -out
6. (tf[B])(t+1[TRL])S 5, BG
7. (tf[B])(t+1[A!])S 6, TRL = [A]
8. (t+1[A!])S 7, (tn[]) (tm[])(tn[])
9. (t+1[A!])S 8, (tn[]) (tn[])

10. 1, 9,
11. (t0[A!])BG(t+1[TRL])S 210, reductio
A3.7. Matters stand similarly with Pattern Argument 7, which we can affirm
only in the SRB sense:
A3.701. {(t+1[A]!)S, (t0[A]!)(t+1)S}
(t0[A!])[H[God believes that (t+1[TRL])S] (t+1)H[God believes that (t+1[])S]]
In the sense which is relevant here, Pattern Argument 7 is rejected:
A3.71. {(t+1[A!])S, (t0[A!])(t+1)S} / (t0[A!])[HBG(t+1[A!])S HBG(t+1[TRL])S].
A3.72. In fact, {(t+1[A!])S} (t0[A!])HBG(t+1[TRL])S:
1. (t+1[A!])S Premise
2. (t0[A!])HBG(t+1[TRL])S Assumption for reductio
3. (t0[A!])PBG(t+1[TRL])S Operator exchange, including divine
omniscience
4. (t0[A!B])R(tf[B]) 3, R
5. (tf[B])PBG(t+1[TRL])S 3, 4, -out
6. (tf[B])(tn<f[B])BG(t+1[TRL])S 5, P-out
7. (tf[B])(tn<f[B])(t+1[TRL])S 6, BG
8. (tf[B])(tn<f[B])(t+1[A!])S 7, TRL = [A]
9. (t+1[A!])S 8, (tn[]) (tm[])(tn[]) (2)
10. (t+1[A!]) S 9, (tn[]) (tn[])
11. 1, 10,
12. (t0[A!])HBG(t+1[TRL])S 217, reductio
A3.8. The balance sheet for STRL reads as follows:
Pattern Arguments:
1. Affirmed, 2. Rejected, 3. Affirmed, 4. Rejected, 5. Rejected, 6. Rejected,

7. Rejected
Desired result?
506 appendix
1. Yes, 2. Yes, 3. Yes, 4. Yes, 5. Yes, 6. No, 7. No
A3.81. STRL, unlike SRB, is a model that allows us to give content to the distinc-
tion between factual and counterfactual futures. This ability comes at a price,
however.
STRL satisfies certain intuitions regarding the pre-existence of a fixed future

and, at the same time, a kind of notional openness of the future, the latter
represented by the nonactual histories branching from (t0[A!]). However, by
privileging a single actual line, it immediately raises (or begs) the question of
alternative actualities. A system that allows us to posit such actualities would
give more conceptual weight both to alternative lines of agency and to the
counterfactual divine foreknowledge needed to track such alternatives. If giv-
ing alternative histories as much weight as possible is what matters to us, we
will want to formulate a system that allows us to do so. If such alternative
TRLs are unnecessary, we should be satisfied with STRL. And some thinkers
are satisfied. Indeed, one might say that there is an actualist vein running
throughout the scholastic literature on future contingents, motivated (among
other things) by the feeling that to attribute contingency to Gods action or cog-
nition is somehow degrading. According to this vein, Gods activity, including
His knowledge, exhibits absolute modal stability: it cannot be other than what
it is. As discussed in the Introduction, Peter Abelard and Peter Auriol are two
such thinkers.
A3.82. Let us return to the disadvantages of this model. As the results for Pattern
Arguments 6 and 7 show, the advocate of divine actualism is faced with a hard
choice: he must either loosen the requirements for divine knowledge so as to
allow it to embrace explicitly nonactual propositions, res, or states of affairs, in
which case Pattern Arguments 6 and 7 come out valid, or he must simply bite
the bullet and invalidate them, as STRL indeed does.
Furthermore, the idea of positing in being seems no longer adequately ex-

pressed by the formal instrument R, since the latter takes us off the TRL (see
A3.2). That is to say, the application of R does not posit anything in esse, but
simply explores unreal modal territory. One could have said the same thing of
SRB, of course, but STRL highlights the problem by introducing an asymmetry
into the system. The result is that the victories in Pattern Arguments 2, 4, and
5 seem unearned: the dangerous future counterfactuals are not imagined as
actual, so it is hardly surprising that they cause no trouble. On the other hand,
if we extend to unreal futures the courtesy of taking them seriously as conative
options for creatures, we encounter a violation, as shown in the results for

Pattern Arguments 6 and 7, of the principle If we can do it, God can know it.
These considerations suggest the possibility of changing the TRL. If alterna-
tive actualities are in our (or someones) powerfor example, in a model in
which there is a default but changeable futurethen we could test out Pattern
Arguments 2, 4, and 5, as it were, more honestly. Furthermore, we could allow
divine foreknowledge to track the modal range of creaturely conative freedom.
The problem, of course, is that if we retain the rule ([!] = [!]), we get a con-
tradiction. That is the point of the argument which is reviewed by Chatton in
his Sentences commentary, a version of Pattern Argument 2:
Let it be posited in being that [something that will contingently be] will
not be. [In that case, the following consequence is valid:] this will not be,
therefore this [proposition], this will be, was not true. The consequent is
impossible, since, from the fact that the [proposition] this will be, now,
has been true, and every past truth is necessary, it is necessary that this
[proposition] was true; and thus from something less impossible there
would follow something more impossible.20
This argument is formalized in A3.821, with (t0[!]) abbreviating [], (t0[]):
A3.821. {(t+1[A!])P} (t0[A!])(t+1)P
1. (t+1[A!])P Premise
2. (t0[A!])(t+1)P Assumption for reductio
3. (t0[A!])(t-1[A!])(t+1[A!])P 1, (tn[]) (tm[])(tn[]) (2)
4. (t0[A!])(t-1)(t+1[A!])P 3, (tn[]) (tmn[])(tn)
5. (t0[A!B!]) R (tf[B!]) 2, R
6. (tf[B!])(t+1[B!])P 2, 5, -out. The content is placed into a
history that is assumed to be actual.
7. (tf[B!])(t-1[B!])(t+1[A!])P 4, 5, -out.
8. (tf[B!])(t-1[B!])(t+1[B!])P 6, (tn[]) (tm[])(tn[]) (3)
9. (tf[B!])(t-1[B!])(t+1[B!])P 7, [!]=[!]
10. (t+1[B!])P 8, (tn[]) (tm[])(tn[]) (2)
11. (t+1[B!])P 9, (tn[]) (tm[])(tn[]) (2)
20 Chatton, rss i, d. 38 [34]: Ponatur in esse quod hoc non erit, sequitur hoc non erit, igitur
haec non fuit vera hoc erit ; consequens impossibile, quia ex quo haec modo fuerit vera
in praeterito hoc erit, et omne praeteritum verum est necessarium, igitur necesse est hanc
fuisse veram, et ita ex minus impossibili sequeretur impossibilius.
508 appendix
12. (t+1[B!])P 10, (tn[]) (tn[])

13. 11, 12,
14. (t0[A!])(t+1)P 213 reductio
The move at steps 5 and 6, which assumes that the history posited for the
counterfactual future P is an actual future, is motivated by the feeling that
in order to do justice to the counterfactual we must imagine it really being the
case, i.e., being actual. But this leads to a contradiction deriving from the fact
that we have not retracted our demand that there be only a single actual future:
the axiom ([!] = [!]) applies to all (tn[]) in the model. These same elements
combine to produce a valid version of GCBW. Indeed, the balance sheet for
this system would be the same as that for NB, which is hardly surprising given
that such a system would essentially generate a single time-line with no real,
modally available alternatives. A system combining the TRL and real conative
power over the future has resulted in a system that is indistinguishable from a
Diodorean single-line model, with all its failings.
The solution to this problem is to adopt a system with multiple time-struc-
tures, each of them with its own unique TRL, and enable the conative modal
operator to range over them, making all proper restrictions on accessibility
conditions. The TRL in the current time-structure would constitute a default
but defeasible future. Such an approach, omitted due to considerations of
space, would serve as a model for William Ockhams system or (what on my
reading is the same thing) the system known as the communis opinio (see
Chapter i, 7.2.2 and 7.3).
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lss Walter Chatton. Lectura super Sententias
OPh William Ockham. Opera philosophica.
OTh William Ockham. Opera theologica.
r i-a John Duns Scotus. Reportatio I-A.
rel Walter Chatton. Reportatio et lectura super Sententias: collatio ad librum pri-
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rss Walter Chatton. Reportatio super Sententias.
st Thomas Aquinas. Summa theologiae.
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Index of Names
Ab Ishq an-Nam 444n126 Brower-Toland, Susan 4n8, 183, 184n383,

Ackrill, John Lloyd 2n4, 7n11 186n388, 190, 193n414, 259, 265n1,
Adam Wodeham 73n139, 163, 179n364, 376n45
184n383, 262, 364n32, 438n114, 439, Burgess, John P. 472
444
Adams, Marilyn McCord 11n17, 22n40, Calcidius 14n
60n110, 148n309, 196 Celestius 13n19
Alain de Lille 20n34 Cicero 1618
Alexander of Aphrodisias 10, 11n15, 14n, 355 Cleanthes 22n40
Alexander of Hales 97n188 Courtenay, William J. 4n8, 22n40, 24n43,
al-Frb 7, 73n139 182n379, 262, 387
al-Ghazl 13n21, 14n Craig, William Lane 2n4, 11n17, 69n127,
Ammonius 2, 4, 7, 44, 46, 259n525 70n129, 98n190
Anselm of Besate 50n94
Anselm of Canterbury 6, 15, 41, 42n76, Diodorus Cronus 2n3, 177, 480
50n94, 61, 81, 88, 90, 91n174, 101n198, Dummett, Michael 52, 53n97, 132, 474n6
235n499, 258, 330, 355, 389n63, 443 Dumont, Stephen 108
Aristotle 14, 68, 19, 22, 28, 29, 34, 37, 44, Durandus of Saint-Pourain 6
45, 47n88, 55, 60, 71, 72n135, 73n139,
74, 117, 120, 121, 124, 146, 160, 165, 175 Epictetus 22n40
178, 203, 204, 254, 259, 266, 267, 268, Etzkorn, Girard J. 179n363, 189n400, 202,
275, 345349, 359, 366, 377, 404n77, 209n446, 233n497, 265n1, 266, 269n13,
426 290n60, 297n68, 318n92, 329n100,
Arnold of Strelley 167172, 173, 175, 178, 330n106, 335n120, 364n3233, 399, 423,
453 442n121, 452, 453
Augustine of Hippo 6, 13n19, 18, 22, 47n88,
81, 87, 125, 235n499, 298n70, 307, 309, Francisco Suarez 116
329, 330, 355, 383n49, 389n63, 431, 442, Frede, Dorothea 55n102
444, 445n129, 448 Frege, Gottlob 183, 196, 223
Averroes 87, 195n419 Friedman, Russell 124n252, 142, 179, 233
Avicenna 87, 92, 94 Frost, Gloria 101n, 102n201
Belnap, Nuel 36n63, 51, 54n99, 57n105, Gaskin, Richard 22n40, 31, 40n70, 61, 73n139,
400n73, 494nn1718, 495 74, 84n158, 478n, 479n, 480n10
Bobzien, Susanne 2 Gelber, Hester Goodenough 112n, 167nn343
Bochvar, Dmitri 1n1 345, 169n348, 170, 453n142, 454n145
Boethius 6, 7, 1012, 1518, 26, 2850, 55, 57 Genest, Jean-Franois 42n76, 156n322, 164
60, 6771, 73, 81, 82, 88n168, 107, 116, Gerard of Novara 236, 240n505, 242, 426n97,
118120, 122, 123, 125, 139, 141, 146, 177, 427n99
204, 205, 210, 259, 351, 355, 376n46, 377, Gersonides 10, 11n15, 14n, 209n448
391n65, 452, 459 Goris, Harm 8n, 97
Boethius of Dacia 303 Gottschalk of Orbais 418
Bonaventure 62, 7582, 97n188, 183, 196n423, Green, Mitchell 36n63, 51, 54n99, 57n105,
346, 371, 372, 431 400n73, 494nn1718, 495
Borges, Jorge Luis 14n Gregory of Rimini 10, 42n76, 74n140,
Broad, Charlie Dunbar 10n14, 12n18 165n338, 236, 241n, 242, 418, 426n97
index of names 529
Hasle, Per 488 Lewis, David 10, 36n63

Hasse, Dag Nikolaus 268n7 Lewis, Neil 87, 88nn169171, 108n213
Henry of Ghent 97, 99n193, 108, 165n336, Long, A.A. 22n40
196197n, 358, 359, 364n32, 366, 372, Luis Molina 116, 263
428, 429, 484n
Henry of Harclay 355 McCall, Storrs 8, 10, 12, 136n285
Henry of Zomeren 263 MacFarlane, John 54n, 494n17
Hintikka, Jaakko 56, 472, 481 McTaggart, John E.M. 9n13
Hoenen, M.J.F.M. 5, 201 Maimonides 13n21
Holopainen, Toivo 50 Marenbon, John 16, 18, 20n34, 21, 41n74, 48,
Hunt, David 208n444 59, 63n115, 67, 68n123, 114
Husik, Isaac 14n Marsilius of Inghen 197n423
Martin, Christopher 41
Iamblichus 46 Martin, John N. 49n93, 51n, 472, 482
Marx, Groucho 207n441
Jerome 22 Mary 209, 212215, 218, 297, 306, 308, 310,
Jesus Christ 235n499, 237, 238, 240n, 242, 387, 389, 396398, 408
245, 251, 253, 255257, 260262, 286, Meinong, Alexius 70, 196
296, 299, 306308, 310, 319321, 324, 325, Mignucci, Mario 29, 34n59, 44, 71n133
327, 329, 330, 333, 342, 343, 381383, 398, Mill, John Stuart 480n9
408, 409, 427, 428, 431434, 438, 440, Mller, Jrn 68n124, 108n213
441, 443, 467
John of Damascus 87 Normore, Calvin 70n129, 98n190, 103,
John Duns Scotus 6, 20, 27, 65, 74, 82n153, 134n284
91, 97116, 117, 138141, 143, 145, 148, 153, Nuchelmans, Gabriel 192n409, 459n
156160, 164, 167, 169, 172175, 177179,
183, 186, 196n423, 274, 277, 280282, 290, hrstrm, Peter 15n23, 472, 482, 488, 501,
307, 337, 346, 355, 360, 362, 365367, 502
369373, 376, 383n49, 385, 404, 410, 424, Origen 46
429, 431, 450, 451, 454456, 460, 469,
470n1 Pelagius 13n19, 162
John Lutterell 162 Perler, Dominik 109n215, 160n328, 460n156
John Scotus Eriugena 87 Peter Abelard 10, 11, 18, 49, 61, 6265, 66, 70
John Wyclif 359 73, 74n139, 8183, 92, 124n253, 141, 145,
Johnson, Samuel 405 156, 258, 470n1, 471, 506
Julian of Eclanum 13 Peter Auriol 4, 6, 15, 49, 74n139, 89n, 101n,
116, 123, 124144, 148, 152, 153, 156, 157,
Kaye, Sharon 237, 437n111, 438n114 160, 175, 176n362, 178, 189, 203205, 209,
Keele, Rondo 4, 70n128, 121n245, 180n366, 210, 212, 215n459, 217, 221, 231, 232, 254,
183n380, 185n385, 191, 198n426, 207, 259, 263, 267, 268, 272, 281n43, 283n48,
233n495, 259, 265n1, 268n10, 273n22, 288, 293, 298, 344, 345, 349, 351, 355,
318n92, 330n106, 335n120, 354, 355, 367, 372, 373, 381, 382, 384, 385, 387389,
356n23, 358, 363, 380, 437n42, 452, 453, 392394, 397401, 404, 410, 412, 416, 418,
454n145 424, 435n110, 437n111, 449, 455n148, 457,
Knuuttila, Simo 42, 55n102, 89 471, 473, 506
Kretzmann, Norman 2n5, 28n47, 30, 58n, Peter Damian 6, 22n40, 50n94, 83, 84, 87,
59n106, 226n484, 376n46, 407, 415n88 90, 98, 108, 138, 139, 140, 141, 164, 177,
Kripke, Saul 472 447
Knne, Wolfgang 119n240, 352n14 Peter John Olivi 108
530 index of names
Peter Lombard 18, 19n32, 21, 24, 82, 83n155, Thomas Aquinas 10, 11, 57n104, 62, 6570,
85, 86, 91, 92, 96, 101n, 113n223, 123, 156, 72, 7376, 80, 81, 87, 96, 97, 99101, 114,
160, 179n365, 209, 228n492, 260, 298, 117, 119n241, 123126, 138, 143, 145, 156,
306, 307, 368, 380, 385, 405, 444, 471, 483 160, 183, 204, 282n47, 290n, 346, 355,
Peter of Poitiers 20n34, 59 370, 372, 376n45, 383n49, 385, 389n63,
Peter de Rivo 13, 73n139, 263, 351 417n91, 424, 431, 449, 453
Peter of Spain 364n32, 483n12 Thomas Bradwardine 22n40, 163165,
Pike, Nelson 22n40, 60n110 427n98
Plato 47 Thomas Buckingham 236, 240n, 242, 262,
Prior, Arthur 2n3, 49n93, 472, 479, 486, 500 319n93, 426, 428n, 432n108, 433, 437n111
Proclus 46 Thomas Wylton 6, 50, 116123, 124, 131, 143,
Pseudo-Dionysius 87 145, 175, 178, 187, 188, 204, 210, 221, 231,
235, 253, 254, 259, 269n13, 345, 352, 353,
Rescher, Nicholas 2n3, 7n11, 472, 474n 354, 373, 389, 402, 456, 457, 458, 459, 464
Richard Campsall 269n13 Thomason, Richmond 134, 500
Richard FitzRalph 163, 262, 439, 444,
445n129 Uckelman, Sara 168n347
Richard Kilwardby 181n371, 182
Robert Grosseteste 41, 42n75, 8791, 9597, Van Ess, Josef 444n126
108, 109, 115, 156, 243, 383n49, 389n63
Robert Holcot 163, 167n345, 235n, 236, 240n, Walter Burleigh 73n139, 191192n409,
259, 260262, 439, 444, 445 335n121, 353n18, 407n79, 429n100, 453,
Roland of Bologne 20n34 454, 460
Rupert of Deutz 383n Walter Chatton 3n5, 46, 15, 18, 50, 61n111,
Russell, Bertrand 198, 199n428, 235n 66, 70n128, 74, 97, 98, 102, 116, 121124,
138n287, 144, 160n329, 165, 167, 169n349,
Schabel, Chris 13, 22n40, 116n230, 124n252, 173176, 178264 passim, 334468
125n258, 126n264, 127n266, 131n279, 138, passim, 470, 483, 507
139n288, 179, 180n366, 204, 211, 222n474, Wey, Joseph C. 189n400, 200, 202, 209n446,
232n494, 263n532, 349, 355n21, 367, 265n1, 266n2, 269n13, 281n43, 283n48,
372n40, 400, 457n150 290n60, 297n68, 364n32, 399, 423
Sedley, D.N. 22n40 White, Michael 2n3, 479n8
Sextus Empiricus 404n75, 480n9 William of Auvergne 6, 11n15, 87, 9195, 97,
Sharples, Robert 49n92, 82n153 156
Siger of Brabant 6, 182 William of Champeaux 18
Simon Peter 60, 104, 152, 209, 235n499, 237 William Ockham 46, 14n, 20, 50, 51n95, 59,
239, 241n, 242, 245, 251, 253, 255, 256, 61n111, 98, 116, 119n241, 123, 124n., 253,
257, 261, 319321, 327329, 332, 333, 343, 128, 130n273, 144163, 167, 172178, 182
384, 388, 389, 392, 398, 427, 428, 438, 184, 189, 190, 192194, 196, 203, 205, 217,
440, 441, 467, 468, 472 228n492, 238n504, 243, 259, 264, 267n5,
Smart, J.J.C. 136n285 277nn3235, 278n36, 283, 284, 287, 288,
Sorabji, Richard 7n11, 30, 36n63, 47n88, 48, 296, 329n100, 344346, 348350, 352,
54n99, 56 355, 360, 365371, 373n., 374378, 381,
Stephen Langton 20n34 382, 384, 386, 387, 389, 391, 397, 400,
Strauss, Leo 163 405, 406, 407n80, 424, 429n101, 432,
437439, 441, 447, 448, 456460, 462,
Thakkar, Mark 36n63, 54n99, 124n253, 127, 465, 471, 500, 508
160n327, 165n338, 236n500, 253n522, William Sherwood 454n145
437n111, 448n132, 457n150, 494n17 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 198
Subject Index
A(a) (a-series / actualist model of future) 10, 209, 210, 212, 217, 220, 221, 240n505, 269,
1214, 30, 33, 34, 41, 45, 50n., 53, 60n109, 270, 282, 284, 285, 321, 326, 327, 328, 338,
66, 70, 74n140, 79, 100, 105, 115, 116, 118, 339, 343, 353, 379, 388, 396, 400, 402,
123, 139, 143, 160, 178, 200, 205, 209, 218, 439, 458, 494n18
221, 231 strong vs. weak 3436, 36n63, 5759, 118
accessibility relation 52, 110, 112, 115, 133, 501, 123
508
accident 65, 99n., 193, 145, 188, 192n409, 194, BC(a) (b-/c-series / actualist model of future)
197, 198, 225, 227, 321, 345, 356, 375, 276, 10, 11
379, 394, 423 BC(mr) (b-/c-series / modal realist model of
act future) 10
apprehensive vs. judicative 183, 184, b-/c-series 9, 9n13, 10, 11, 52, 136n286, 137, 151,
190n403, 191 155n, 321, 160
actualism 10, 62, 66n120, 8183, 92, 133, 141, belief 17n27, 25, 26, 56, 57, 59, 65, 68, 70, 75,
161, 506 110, 115, 144, 213, 258, 395, 471, 480482,
actus exercitus vs. actus sign(ific)atus 253, 494497, 500, 503
255, 256, 259, 339, 354, 424, 459 Bipolarity, Principle of 198n426
461 Bivalence, Law of 1, 1n1, 7, 12, 29, 30, 33, 45,
Alternative Possibilities, Principle of (pap) 106, 115, 147, 158, 200, 224, 225, 346348,
9n12 378, 392, 393, 413, 414, 490
A(mr) (a-series / modal realist model of See also Excluded Middle, Law of
future) 1012, 14, 31, 33, 41, 85, 103, 115, bivalence, broad 2830, 34, 34n59, 45, 57
116, 134, 143, 156, 158, 160, 162, 163, 178,
200, 209, 210, 212, 231, 251, 260, 421, Cambridge change 14n, 98n192, 150, 152, 155,
501 218, 230, 254, 394
Angels 233, 324, 333, 425, 442 cause 72, 105, 112, 118, 121, 141, 163n20, 174,
Antichrist (as example) 89n172, 127n267, 180n365, 193, 195, 202, 208211, 216, 217,
394n67 223, 224, 245, 250, 269, 276, 280, 282,
anti-razor 192, 437, 437n112 286, 289292, 294, 296, 297304, 306
a-series 9, 9n13, 10, 11, 66n120, 69n126, 310, 312, 313, 315317, 320, 323, 329, 334,
136n286, 151, 155n321, 161, 174, 401, 336, 341, 342, 381384, 397399, 407, 411,
473 414, 422, 423, 435, 442, 444, 445, 449,
See also A(mr) 451
assent inferior 334, 451
divine 97, 184, 186, 202, 207, 208, 210, 211, superior 289, 334
218223, 231, 237, 261n529, 274, 291, 293, causation 259, 296
300306, 309, 351, 361, 391, 393, 395, backward 84n158, 246, 248, 446, 447, 463
401408 closed-future model 3, 8, 124, 139, 159, 162,
broad vs. narrow 200n429, 223, 226, 227, 178, 210, 227, 229, 232, 257259, 405, 466,
229, 231, 312318, 378, 406, 411, 412, 415 467
420, 422 cognition 4, 5, 15, 17n27, 26, 48, 50, 56,
human 183, 188, 190, 191, 193, 194, 196, 57n104, 6163, 66n119, 67, 68, 72n135,
210212, 217, 223, 229, 246, 258, 269, 291, 73, 7481, 83, 97n189, 98, 99n193, 125,
293295, 303305, 315, 317, 350, 395, 402, 126n221, 136n286, 141, 181197, 199, 200,
405, 407, 436 203, 207210, 215n459, 217219, 222, 223,
assertion 54n99, 72, 75, 118, 178, 180, 193, 199, 226, 230, 234, 246n514, 252, 258, 259,
532 subject index
cognition (cont.) 270, 271, 274, 280282, 291, Type a 209, 213, 214nn458459, 218, 229,
293, 294, 300, 305, 311, 325, 328, 344, 345, 230, 289290, 381, 387, 389, 392, 396,
350, 355, 356, 360, 361, 368373, 375 403, 405, 411, 424, 464
377, 380, 381, 391, 394, 400403, 405, Type b 210, 212215, 217, 218, 229, 230,
406, 408, 411413, 415, 416, 418424, 429, 289290, 387, 388, 389, 394397, 403,
431, 437, 438441, 447, 469, 470, 503, 405, 411, 417, 419, 424, 426, 465
506 Contingency of Signification (cos)
intuitive 160n329, 371, 429n101, 439 209n448, 233, 236, 237, 246, 249, 319
common law 250, 251, 255, 341343, 447, 462, 329, 424426, 446, 455, 465
465, 466 Contradictories, Doctrine of 183, 196200,
communis opinio 51n, 156n322, 163165, 172, 224, 225, 231, 234, 258, 276n28, 344, 364,
177, 260, 262, 406, 439, 444, 508 376, 377, 411415, 420, 424
compatibilism 123, 142144, 170, 235, 264 Copulative Analysis of divine cognition 66,
See also logical compatibilism 183, 186, 196, 199, 200, 202n432, 205208,
complacentia et delectatio 142 210, 215n459, 216218, 223, 227, 230, 231,
complex 261n529, 271, 282286, 291, 294, 234, 236, 240n, 252, 254, 257260, 262,
300, 301, 304, 305, 311, 312, 314, 316, 317, 344, 345, 356, 360362, 365368, 371
350, 355, 374, 376379, 386, 391, 393, 402, 373, 381, 390, 394, 398, 408, 412, 416, 419,
412, 414, 415, 421 423, 424, 466468
condemnations (Paris 1277 and Oxford 1315) correspondence theory of truth see Corre-
181182 spondence Assumption
conjunctive analysis of divine cognition 74 Correspondence Assumption 1215, 31, 34,
81, 82, 98n192, 177, 178, 187, 252n520, 70, 103, 116, 123, 143, 200, 205, 221, 246,
371 402
See also Copulative Analysis of divine counterfactuals 11, 21, 25, 27, 36n63, 50, 51,
cognition 51n95, 63, 64, 66n119, 70, 79, 8184, 86,
connotation 7779, 260 91, 9397, 111113, 115, 126, 133, 136, 150,
consequentia 233, 236243, 245252, 255, 153, 154, 156, 159, 166168, 170, 171, 194,
260n529, 265, 268, 271, 273, 279, 281, 289, 197, 198, 213, 222, 257, 260, 263, 358, 367,
294, 301304, 314, 316, 318, 319, 322329, 385, 417, 418, 431, 432, 447, 453, 454,
331, 332, 334, 335, 337, 338, 340343, 345, 471, 481, 484, 487, 501, 503, 504, 506,
346, 349, 351, 353, 356, 358, 366, 397 508
399, 419, 424, 425, 427, 428, 432, 434,
437, 438, 440443, 446, 447, 453, 454, Day 1 doctrine 202208, 209, 218220, 223,
463, 465468, 497 227, 230, 231, 235, 246, 254, 255, 258, 299,
formal vs. material 243n507 305, 382, 400, 401, 403, 407, 408, 424,
contingency 454n147
ad utrumlibet/utrumque 8891, 358, 365, Day 2 doctrine 51n95, 174, 202n432, 208219,
394 222, 223, 229, 231, 232, 258, 300, 361, 382,
in maiori parte 72, 358, 359, 360, 365 401, 403, 408, 445
of the antecedent 240, 247250, 255, 341 Day 3 doctrine 199n428, 202n432, 210,
343, 356, 425, 467 212n455, 219230, 231, 232, 234, 258,
of the consequence 233, 236238, 240 300301, 362, 379, 382, 401403, 406
242, 245, 246, 249, 251, 252, 254, 255, 319, 410, 413, 418, 424
327, 342, 343, 441443, 447, 453, 465, deception, divine 323, 426, 427, 438, 442,
466, 467 445n129
synchronic 106109, 114, 115, 117, 127, 145, de dicto / de re distinction 18n31, 19, 42n76,
158, 159, 164, 172, 345, 365, 366, 367, 454, 64n, 346
516 definite operator see in/definite operator
subject index 533
de inesse ut nunc vs. de inesse simpliciter 20, 410, 411, 412, 419, 422, 423, 427, 431, 432,
111n220, 346 469471, 482, 496, 506507
determinacy, negotiable 106, 109, 110, 115, formal vs. ontological solutions 2, 3, 5, 34,
167, 455 64, 8183, 115, 116, 141, 160163, 177, 178,
determinate operator see in/determinate 200, 201, 257258, 263264, 380, 401, 416,
operator 446
determinism future-dependency escape clause 59, 61, 75,
causal 53, 177, 259 76, 80, 149, 248, 292, 337, 338, 360, 361,
logical 2, 12, 15, 50, 53, 72, 77, 82, 110, 161, 363, 386, 391, 430, 441, 446, 453, 455, 456,
162, 177, 199, 234, 258, 259, 272, 345, 357, 463
363, 393, 405, 406, 455, 474 future tense (Boethian) 26, 28, 3436, 5759,
See also logical compatibilism 118, 119
theological 15, 161, 162, 199, 234, 259
diachrony 212, 217, 218, 246, 258, 368, 390 General Election theory 149, 298, 388, 398,
Divine Foreknowledge Necessitates (dfn) 399, 400
16, 18, 20, 21, 2326, 50, 56, 66, 67, 70, 74, God Can Be Wrong (gcbw) 18, 2127, 50, 56,
75, 78, 82, 110, 114, 115, 117, 122, 144, 158, 62, 66, 67, 70, 74, 75, 78, 82, 87, 90, 110,
200, 207, 208, 214, 215nn459461, 223, 112115, 123, 144, 155, 158, 167, 170, 173,
226, 227, 230, 247, 255, 256, 260, 265 200, 207, 214217, 226, 227, 239, 240, 255,
266, 311, 346, 392, 411413, 419, 425, 427, 256, 257, 304, 311, 313, 314, 403, 405, 411
469, 470, 482, 496 413, 418, 423, 441, 469, 470, 483, 497, 500,
503, 508
epistemic hierarchy (Boethius)
Consolatio 46, 47 hard/soft fact distinction 22n40, 60n110, 61,
Second commentary 32, 33 236, 426, 493
esse apparens 189n399, 435n heresy 6n, 13, 125, 162, 201, 244, 320, 384
esse diminutum 455 Holy Spirit 142, 143, 325, 339
esse objectivum 189 hypostatic union 324, 325, 409, 437
eternal present, Gods 4749, 72, 73, 84,
100, 143, 233n497, 246, 249, 282, 336, imposition 243, 428, 440
337, 369, 370, 372, 373, 442, 446, 455, immutability, divine 13, 14n, 15, 8688, 91,
466 125, 142n295, 146, 150, 156, 158, 184, 187,
Excluded Middle, Law of 1n1, 490 199, 207, 218, 258, 271, 282, 293, 312, 314,
See also Bivalence, Law of 368, 370, 372, 379, 384, 392, 411, 415, 419,
experience 191, 266, 270, 302305, 312, 354, 422
404 Incarnation of Christ 286, 287, 297, 299, 306,
381384, 397, 409, 411, 472
Fallback doctrine 70n128, 187n393, 206, contingent on human sin 289, 306, 383n
207, 231, 270, 271, 273, 355, 356, 360, 361, in/definite operator 7, 8n, 2834, 36, 44, 49,
365, 368, 400, 423, 424, 449, 451 58, 59, 71, 204
fictum 183, 189, 190, 193, 194, 196, 375 in/determinate operator 3, 7, 12, 7174, 98,
foreknowledge, divine passim; see esp. 4, 15 99, 101, 105, 106, 108110, 115, 118120, 125,
28, 3233, 4449, 56, 57, 62, 63, 6670, 130132, 137, 138, 140, 141, 145, 146, 148,
72, 73, 7883, 110115, 122, 123, 125127, 157, 158, 160, 161, 174, 175, 178, 188, 202,
138, 139, 145148, 156, 160, 161, 164, 183 203, 204, 209, 210, 12, 223, 224, 228, 229,
187, 205211, 217, 218, 220230, 236246, 234, 253, 266, 267, 270, 273, 281, 285, 290,
255257, 265286, 291295, 299302, 294297, 299, 303, 313, 316, 338, 346
304306, 313318, 344346, 355, 370, 348, 360, 365, 378, 387, 390, 391, 392,
371, 381, 387, 390, 392, 393, 400, 402, 405, 394, 397, 402, 404, 405, 495
534 subject index
instants of nature 98110, 114117, 140, 141, metaphysical 2224, 37, 89, 90, 116, 142,
143, 145, 158, 159, 167, 173, 177, 178, 186, 144, 173, 199, 369, 411, 419, 434, 431, 441,
362, 373n41, 454, 455 419, 434, 441, 444, 450, 469
institution 243244, 428 statistical 40n70, 89n, 107, 150, 152, 421,
intellectualism 108 454n144, 480
monks 303
John Can Be Wrong (jcbw) 2428, 50, 56, Mower Argument 2, 15, 470
65, 110, 122, 144, 157, 200, 213, 230, 255,
469, 470 natural-deduction calculus 111, 173, 472
necessity
knowledge a fronte vs. a tergo 68n125, 384
indistant 126, 131, 132, 133, 135, 136, 138, conditional vs. simple 28, 3743, 48, 53
143, 205, 212, 231, 344, 349, 350, 351, 401 56, 60, 61, 66, 88, 106, 118, 120, 122, 129,
knowledge1 / knowledge2 185, 187, 200, 165, 359, 364, 368, 450, 453, 462
217, 252, 257, 260 of the consequence vs. of the consequent
See also foreknowledge, divine 20, 22n40, 42n75, 247249, 255, 265, 273,
314, 318, 319, 326329, 332, 334, 340, 342,
Lazy Argument 2, 470 343, 356, 419, 440, 446, 451, 463, 465
liars paradox 193, 405 of the present/past 2123, 25, 37, 55n102,
liberty of indifference 87, 88, 89n, 134, 141, 61, 69, 106, 164, 177, 236, 237, 244, 347,
143, 157, 211, 219, 270, 272, 273, 276, 278, 348, 360, 386, 426, 427, 430, 433, 456,
281, 287, 292, 295, 300, 301, 304, 305, 384 469, 476, 479, 488, 491
logic precedent vs. sequent 15, 50n94, 61, 88,
modal 16, 1928, 49, 56, 63, 112, 165, 352, 91, 120, 122, 354, 363, 364, 500
441, 472 ut nunc 289, 335, 336, 387, 454, 455, 465
multivalued 12, 120, 121, 136, 137 negation 63, 64, 197199, 275, 364, 377, 411,
syllogistic 18, 19, 20, 110, 166, 238n504, 460, 474
345346 Newcombs paradox 447
temporal-modal 4961, 483508 Non-Contradiction, Law of 72n135, 155
logical compatibilism 5, 4980 passim, 81, nontraditional interpretation of De Int 9 7,
82, 87, 97, 107, 138, 142, 147, 170, 177, 178, 72, 74, 347
185, 187, 206, 222, 231, 235, 248, 252, 256
258, 382, 400, 446, 451, 452, 463, 468 obligational disputes 120, 166172, 176178,
logico-semantic tradition 5, 201, 247, 258, 248, 255, 256, 335, 407, 424, 446, 453,
460 454, 463, 473
open-future model 1, 3, 8, 34, 82, 143, 148,
Master Argument 2n3, 22n40, 61, 169n349, 161164, 178, 201, 205, 209, 210, 217, 222,
177, 391, 470, 478n7, 479, 480n10 230232, 236, 246, 258260, 262, 263,
modal realism 1012, 95, 112, 141, 161, 401, 501 349, 358, 366, 376, 380, 397, 400, 406,
modality 423, 466, 506
alethic 29, 38, 5254, 58, 74, 128, 130, 132 open sentence 54n, 5559, 65, 6870, 81, 82,
133, 137, 151, 238, 245, 377, 495 110, 119122, 144, 199, 200, 205, 255, 451,
conative 7, 12, 2224, 30, 33, 34, 43, 50, 490, 495
52, 53, 55, 60, 69, 82, 90, 96, 107, 110, 114, Open Theism 209
130, 131, 133, 134, 137, 138, 152, 157, 174, 194, Oxford 116, 181n371, 182, 187, 262, 269, 438
222, 227, 235, 345, 362, 383, 385, 386, 389,
396, 405, 423, 434, 437, 438, 455, 469, Paris 116, 181
471, 474, 475, 487, 489, 490, 493, 498, Passion of Christ 299, 306307, 310, 382,
504, 506508 383n49, 409
subject index 535
pattern arguments 5, 20, 26, 56, 70, 110, 122, propositio in mente / in scripto / in re 191
144, 157, 213, 230, 255, 469508 passim 192n409
See also Divine Foreknowledge Necessi- proposition passim
tates; God Can Be Wrong; John Can Be See also complex
Wrong.
Pelagianism 13, 79, 141, 162164, 182, 367, 383, regress, infinite 94, 95n183, 190, 192n409,
400, 408, 409, 416 334, 335, 340, 354n20, 450453, 463
See also semi-Pelagianism reprobation 60, 87, 104, 139141, 144, 149, 150,
per se notum 131, 134, 139, 222, 229, 302304, 153, 154, 210, 215, 216, 286, 296, 298, 299,
382, 384, 404 305309, 383, 384, 386388, 398, 399,
pleroma, divine modal 6, 70, 8387, 90, 96, 408410, 413, 418, 500
97, 108, 116, 138, 140, 141, 144, 164, 177, 178, res 2n5, 8, 44, 48, 128, 173, 174, 176, 183, 187,
197, 447 188197 passim, 198200, 202205, 207,
polarity-switch interpretation 107, 108, 115, 209, 210, 212, 213, 215, 218, 221227, 231,
156 234, 258, 263, 291, 344, 345, 350, 352,
See also contingency, synchronic 354, 356, 359363, 367369, 375, 381,
ponere [in esse/in actu] 5, 43, 72, 78, 105, 386, 391395, 397, 398, 403, 408, 411418,
106, 109112, 117, 129, 130, 154, 158, 165, 420422, 424, 438, 484, 506
177, 185, 187, 188, 197, 198, 200, 202205, res respectivae 189, 192
210, 215, 218, 221, 223, 226, 227, 266 Revocable Default Future (rdf) model 51n,
278, 326, 350, 360, 361, 362, 367, 368, 156158, 172, 173, 209n448, 228n492, 237,
372, 399, 439, 441, 280, 287295 passim, 426, 432, 433
298, 299, 301, 304306, 313318, 320,
328, 344, 345, 347, 356, 359, 386, 391, salvation 13, 60, 209213, 215218, 227229,
395, 398, 407, 414, 423, 454, 477, 479, 286292, 295299, 309, 310, 313, 351, 356,
507 378, 381384, 386392, 395, 396397,
possible worlds 10, 101, 111, 112, 173, 182, 184, 417, 444, 472
198, 450, 486 scientia approbationis 97
See also logic, modal; logic, temporal- scientia simplicis intelligentiae 66n119, 96,
modal 126, 160n329, 184, 431
potentia absoluta / ordinata 22n40, 24n43, scientia visionis 66n119, 96, 97, 126, 184, 431
84, 164, 444 sea-battle 1, 35, 58n, 89n, 294
predestination 5, 6n9, 13n19, 60, 85, 98n190, semi-Pelagianism 13n19, 211, 216, 229
139, 140, 141, 144, 149, 153, 154, 182, 209 sensus compositus / sensus divisus distinction
212, 216, 286, 287, 296299, 305310, 315, 19, 20, 74, 111, 113, 296
317, 355, 381390, 392, 396399, 407 similitude, eminent 126, 141
413, 418, 420, 422, 472, 500 sophismatic solution 21, 38, 82, 90, 106, 110,
present-to-eternity doctrine see eternal 113, 158, 165, 177, 200, 214, 385, 396
present, Gods speculativa cognitio 66, 70
prophecy 13, 43, 58, 89n172, 124, 125, 164, speech acts, non-assertoric 36, 73, 252,
187n392, 211, 212, 215n460, 216, 217, 220, 253, 256, 260, 332, 446, 448, 459, 461,
221, 229, 234, 236, 237, 240, 243, 246 464
248, 251253, 255258, 260, 268, 303n, stone
315, 317, 318343 passim, 344, 351, 379, apprehended by a human 245, 320, 429,
381, 382, 392, 395, 397, 402, 408, 412, 420, 430
425430, 432, 433, 437, 438, 440, 446, known by God 274, 281, 294, 372
447, 448, 449, 457, 462, 464, 465, 466 mysterious motion of 302, 404
468 nescient 6265
propositio famosa 102 potential 193, 195, 196
536 subject index
Subject-Relativized Knowledge, Principle of truth-bearers 3, 189, 191, 192, 225, 263, 345,
(srk) 4547, 48, 49n92, 56, 68n124, 375, 377
70n129, 76, 79, 81, 91, 97 truth-declaration 119, 121123, 187, 202, 352
substance 145, 188, 192n409, 197, 198, 225, 354, 402, 460n
227, 255, 345, 356, 375, 376, 378, 379, truth-makers 3, 12, 52, 87, 118, 131, 137, 189,
386n54, 388n59, 414, 421 191, 192, 197, 203, 204, 213, 216, 223, 263,
sufficient reason, principle of 463 344, 345, 350, 352, 355, 359362, 367,
supposition theory 147, 148, 457, 460 368, 375, 379, 386, 388, 393, 395, 398,
syllogistic 19, 20, 110, 166, 238n504 422, 424, 451, 456
truth-to-necessity argument 2, 15, 41, 50, 57,
Thin Red Line (trl) 51, 68, 160, 213, 400, 454, 73, 74, 116, 117, 120, 127, 130, 138, 157, 187,
501 214, 219, 220, 353, 357, 358, 379, 391, 401,
time-structure 5052, 60, 69, 70, 109, 134 402, 455
138, 143, 144, 153, 156159, 212214, 237,
474, 477, 486, 488, 489, 508 vision
traditional interpretation of De Interpreta- beatific 325, 430, 434
tione ch. 9 7, 29, 34n58, 74, 117, 124, 160, in the Word 240n505, 321, 322, 324, 339,
346, 347, 358 340, 425, 431436, 446, 465
Trinity 182, 325, 431, 437, 440 sensitive 322, 323, 435, 436
truth voluntarism 108, 184, 186, 229, 367, 369372,
determinate 3, 71, 73, 98, 99, 101, 109, 110, 413
115, 137, 145, 158, 160, 161, 174, 175, 177,
204, 266n3, 290n60, 294, 338, 360, 390, will
392, 397, 405 creaturely 95n183, 101, 102, 115, 186, 237,
expectative 130, 131, 133, 137, 138, 157, 388, 365, 372
399, 401403, 407 divine 86, 95, 96, 98, 99, 101105, 108, 114,
type 1 (res-borne) 221, 225n482, 377380, 140, 141, 174, 186, 211, 227, 229, 281, 298,
391, 403, 421 361, 362, 365, 367, 370372, 381, 427
type 2(a) (res-dependent) 221, 378, 379, of good pleasure 101n, 227, 418
388, 390396, 403, 421, 459 willing
type 2(b) (res-directed) 221, 379, 393, 396, extrinsic vs. intrinsic 139, 140, 372, 412,
403, 421, 459 416, 418
t2 theory of 7, 8, 1215, 28, 29, 31, 33, 45, Wylton Scope Analysis 116123, 131, 136, 144,
59, 7074, 104, 106, 115, 146, 161, 163, 205, 183, 187, 199, 200, 204, 211, 234, 236, 248,
231, 254 252, 253, 256, 259, 344, 352, 373, 379,
t3 theory of 7, 8, 12, 13, 15, 28, 29, 3134, 387, 413, 415n87, 422, 424, 446, 456, 460,
70, 73, 74, 103, 123, 143, 203, 210, 221, 231, 464
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Walter Chatton on Future Contingents

Investigating Medieval Philosophy

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/imp

Copyright 2017 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.

This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

1 Introduction: History and Logical Analysis of the Problem 1

7.2 Ockhams Open Future 148

2 Translations of Chattons Reportatio super Sententias i, dd. 3841 and

Appendix: Natural-Deduction Derivations of the Pattern

negation (P: not P, P is not the case)

1. They indicate second-order propositional variables in quantified expres-

My basic policy with respect to citation and quotation has been to be as

Ockham, Tractatus, q. 2, a. 2 [OPh vol. 2, p. 522, l. 68p. 523, l. 81]

The above citation refers first simply to Ockhams Tractatus de praedestina-

Introduction: History and Logical Analysis of the

1 The Heart of the Problem: A Question of Truth-Makers and

Aristotles De Interpretatione, chapter 9, sets out the problem of future con-

koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/9789004338340_002

(1) Every past truth is necessary.

2 Models of the World and Theories of Truth

conative freedom. Aristotles solution, however, is not so clear. The text of De

2.1 Two Models of the World

figure 1 Model 1 figure 2 Model 2

A-Series: A(a): A(mr):

B-/C-Series: BC(a): BC(mr):

Obviously, this schema by no means exhausts the conceptual possibilities

2.2 Fitting Truth Operators to Ontology: The Correspondence

19 The various references in this study to Pelagius, Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism

3 Either the Fallibility of God as Foreknower, or the Necessitation of

Before analyzing individual thinkers treatments of the problem of future con-

3.1 A First Try: The Appeal to Scope Disambiguation

1. Necessarily, if A knows that P, then P.

The argument, though psychologically plausible,24 is a formal fallacy. In any

24 See Swartz 2011 for a thorough discussion.

turely freedom. It is in this form that we encounter the argument in Boethius

Using the notation of standard second-order propositional logic with tempo-

The Ciceronian version of the argument:

1. ()(BGFut Fut) ()(Fut Fut)27

The Boethian version of the argument:

1. ()(Fut Fut) ()(BGFut Fut)

By the twelfth century, these two arguments acquire an enthymematic charac-

Everything known by God is, of necessity, true; that Antichrist will be is

Nunc autem illam callidam, sed cavillatoriam ponamus et solvamus argumentationem,

The subsequent history of these two sophisms can be sketched as follows. As

Accidit autem quandoque et altera propositione necessaria necessarium fieri syllogis-

It sometimes happens that if one of the propositions is necessary, a necessary syllogism

The exposition is problematic because it virtually compels a de re reading, according to

All B is (necessarily A) Some A is (necessarily B)

See Lagerlund 2010 for details.

sus divisus distinction, the distinction between necessitas consequentiae and

Divine Foreknowledge Necessitates:

Wide scope: {()(BG ), BGFutP} FutP (Invalid)

Narrow scope: {()(BG ), BGFutP} FutP (Valid but unsound)

God Can Be Wrong:

Wide scope: {BGFutP, FutP} ()(BG ) (Invalid)

Narrow scope: {BGFutP, FutP} ()(BG ) (Valid but harmless)

Indeed, something can fail to happen, even though it is foreknown that

As we shall see, this move is anything but unproblematic.

3.2 The Inadequacy of the Sophismatic Solution

3.2.1 The Validation of DFN and GCBW in Their Strengthened

fore necessary.39 The necessity in question is not, of course, metaphysical or

DFN: {()(BG ), BGFutP} FutP (Valid)

Gods past knowledge of what I will do succeeds in necessitating my future