temporally originated human beings. The distinctions that human beings perceive between temporally originated knowledge of the past, the future, and the present are peculiar to temporally originated knowledge. In eternal knowledge, however, these forms of knowledge must be one, since it is impossible for Him not to know what He brings into being of these three kinds of existent. Thus, His knowledge of them—glorified is He—is certain, while its modality remains unspecified, for specifying its modality entails likening eternal knowledge to temporally originated knowledge.

I say:

This statement is of the same kind as what he reported from the speculative theologians. For if knowledge of the past, the present, and the future is one in eternal knowledge, with none differing from another, then knowledge of an existent when it exists and when it does not exist would be one and the same. This contradicts his earlier statement that knowledge of the two existents must differ.

All this man’s position amounts to is that the absence of differentiation holds for eternal knowledge, but not for temporally originated knowledge.

There is no doubt that those speculative theologians say this too. They say, however, that even if temporally originated knowledge were assumed to persist, the same would hold for it as for eternal knowledge. They also say that this is a case of relations and relational attributes arising without entailing that the subject to which they pertain comes into being, as with being to the right or to the left.

This man likewise says that it is only the relations and relational attributes that arise anew. He mentioned this in a treatise of his on knowledge. Yet the speculative theologians’ position is better than his, because they maintain that He knows them