TheInquirer
Puritan Board Junior
Wrestling through a tough section on God's knowledge in Turretin's Institutes Topic 3, Question 12, part 18:
XVIII. The principal foundation of the divine knowledge about future contingent things is not either the nature of second causes (which is supposed to be indifferent [adiaphoros]) or simply the divine essence, as immutable by creatures and as capable of producing them because it is the foundation of the possibility of things; the decree alone by which things pass from a state of possibility to a state of futurition (in which he sees them as it were determined and certainly future); and because the decree of God is not occupied about the thing, but also about the mode of the thing (i.e., that the thing may take place according to the nature of its cause, necessarily if necessary, freely if free, God sees them in the decree not only as certainly future, but also as certainly future contingently).
Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., trans. George Musgrave Giger, vol. 1 (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992–1997), 210.
My questions:
XVIII. The principal foundation of the divine knowledge about future contingent things is not either the nature of second causes (which is supposed to be indifferent [adiaphoros]) or simply the divine essence, as immutable by creatures and as capable of producing them because it is the foundation of the possibility of things; the decree alone by which things pass from a state of possibility to a state of futurition (in which he sees them as it were determined and certainly future); and because the decree of God is not occupied about the thing, but also about the mode of the thing (i.e., that the thing may take place according to the nature of its cause, necessarily if necessary, freely if free, God sees them in the decree not only as certainly future, but also as certainly future contingently).
Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., trans. George Musgrave Giger, vol. 1 (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992–1997), 210.
My questions:
- What does "indifference" refer to regarding the nature of second causes?
- Does Turretin come to a positive conclusion in this section or does he simply rule out several options? The punctuation (semicolons) and language are giving me some trouble. I can't tell if he is affirming God's decree alone as the foundation of divine knowledge or not (I would suspect "yes"...)