Future Contingents and God’s determinatio ad utrumlibet : Insights from John Wyclif’s De scientia Dei

In his De scientia Dei, Wyclif seeks to reconcile God’s immutable, simple knowledge with the genuine contingency of creation. Against views compromising either divine perfection or creaturely freedom, he advances a theory of scientia visionis in which all temporal beings or states of affairs are eternally present to God’s knowledge in their esse existere. In rejecting any temporally successive or discursive conception of divine knoweldge, he insists that God eternally and determinately knows the true member of every pair of contradictories, whilst knowing the unrealised alternative through scientia simplicis intelligentiae of their esse intelligibile. All contingent truths are necessary ex suppositione, given God’s eternal decree, yet remain contingent in themselves, for God could have willed otherwise. Wyclif thus replaces contingentia ad utrumlibet with determinatio ad utrumlibet, locating contingency’s ultimate ground not in creaturely indeterminacy but in God’s sovereign freedom.