And especially when it comes to the free acts of rational creatures, us humans?
God is outside of time. Still, the future has not yet happened. So… how does God know the future, in principle?
God would be able to know the future and every our acts even without predestination.
The truth is, the universe and our world are
God’s design/ plan down to the minutest details.
Furthermore, every event in the universe down to the minutest details,
predestined from all eternity.
.
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA Divine Providence says;
His wisdom He so
orders all events within the universe that the end for which it was created may be
realized.
.
Hence Providence is at once universal, immediate, efficacious, yet all alike postulate Divine concurrence and receive their powers of operation from Him (I, Q. xxii, a. 3; Q. ciii, a. 6); efficacious, in that
all things minister to God’s final purpose, a purpose which cannot be frustrated (Contra Gent., III, xciv);
.
He directs all, even evil and sin itself, to
the final end for which the universe was created.
.
Nor would God permit evil at all, unless He could draw good out of evil (St. Augustine, xi in P.L, LX, 236;
.
Evil, therefore, ministers to God’s design (St. Gregory the Great, op. cit., VI, xxxii in; P.L.
.
God preserves the universe in being; He acts
in and
with every creature in each and
all its activities.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12510a.htm
.
As we see above, God is not only act
in and
with us but He acts
in and
with every creature in each and
all its activities.
.
God alone can move the will, as an agent, without doing violence to it. Hence we receive from God not only the
power of willing but its
employment also. (Bk III, Chaps 88-89)
.
Aquinas said,
“God changes the will without forcing it.
But he can change the will from the fact that
He himself operates in the will as He does in nature,” De Veritatis 22:9.
.
Phil.2:13; For it is God who works in you
BOTH to
WILL and to
ACT in order to fulfil his good purpose.
2022 The divine
initiative in the work of grace
PRECEDES, PREPARES, and
ELICITS the
free response of man.
God
effects everything, the
willing and the
achievement. … (Thomas Aquinas, S. Th.II/II 4, 4 ad 3).
.
God’s graces does NOT hinders our free wills, God’s efficacious graces enlightens our minds and we always
FREELY choose the good.
.
God bless