The distinction between future existence and imminent tendency

Even if one ascends to the invisible things, since these are nearer and primary, and others lie beyond them and surpass them, he will never stop knowing until he reaches the limit of knowing God as He is. The one who stands over himself is known by knowledge, and he is both a knower and a scientist.

I have said this generally: that often the soul, when it is a plant being cultivated, possesses both terms. it cultivates itself, not something else; it does not cultivate things outside itself as one cultivating sensible plants; it does not care for something else, but is a technician of plants. For if he does not know what is to come, or how it will be, who will tell him? Because of this, 'much is the knowledge concerning man.' No one perceives what is to come; sensation has apprehension of the present things. But the things to come have not yet stood in existence. Therefore, there is no sensory apprehension of the things not yet standing, but a cognitive contemplation; science is that which contemplates what is to come.

Immediately, indeed, so that we may give an example, some claim to know what happens from fate, yet they do not know the things to come. For unless they take again a sequence, that this star has happened according to this zodiac, they know things that are, not things to come. Even if they sometimes speak prophetically about an eclipse of the sun or moon, they take the sequence again, that if this travels and such a state of the stars occurs, this will result. In reality, they take the theory again from the fact that it has often happened thus. For as it will be, who will announce it to him? Some have observed the difference between what is about to be and what is to come. It is said that it is sensorially possible, but they say things as if they were certainties existing and having a sequence in contemplation: 'Behold, I am with you all the days until the end of this age' (Matthew 28:20). He did not say 'I am following' this. For the being is different from the what will be. That which results according to the truth of nature, this...

It will be, but that which is not sensorially present is merely tending to be, yet is capable of existing. Look, I say: has a thunderclap become just now? I do not speak of it as having become, but that which is to be is tending to be; for it is not yet. But that which is to come is entwined with that which has preceded it, if it possesses a cause and a causal reason. I do not say that the thing caused tends to be, but that it will be. For when that of which it is the cause is found to be present, with which its existence is entwined, this will certainly be. Therefore, those things which are to come, no one was able to know, unless God is made manifest, or unless the truth directs the mind to knowledge.

He said thus: 'Behold, I will be with you' (Matthew 28:20), not 'I tend to be.' For I have been sent from you, and from you I exist and will be for all the days of the age. And so that I may speak more clearly, humans use both knowledge and sensation. When the sensible things are not present, there is an apprehension of these things tending to be; nor is it apprehended from elsewhere when the non-present is not sensed, but rather that which has already come into being. But when one has a scientific theory, and imposes it demonstratively upon each problem, he already possesses the knowledge and possesses it as something tending to be. For it does not fail like sensory apprehension.

And indeed, a certain place is attempted that is more sophistical than dialectical, because the sun is above the earth and such a motion of his appears when it is day, when the underlying air is illuminated by him. But when, they say, he is able, we do not know whether he is or is not. And even if we posit that, they say, he is able, we do not know whether he is or is not. For if we posit that he is, we have this by some assumption. But if he does not appear, we do not know whether he exists or does not exist. —I said, then, that the attempt of this is sophistical. Listen: things are accepted according to definitions. Some have defined the sun to be a day-appearing star. And in this way, the 'day-appearing' was taken as the distinction. But distinctions must always exist for the definitions; if, therefore, as a distinction of the...