On any account, it is His own essence that necessitates His knowledge; no existing thing has made Him knowing. Even if His knowledge that something has come to be is conditional upon the existence of its object—just as His seeing and hearing are conditional upon the existence of what is seen and heard—this does not preclude His necessary existence in Himself from eternity and forever. Rather, the arising of this hearing, seeing, and knowledge that something has come to be is analogous to the arising of relations pertaining to Him. Clear reason and the agreement of rational thinkers have established that new relations must arise pertaining to Him.

If it is said, “A relation has no positive existence, whereas knowledge, hearing, and sight are positively existing realities,” the answer to this objection is to reject this distinction, as has been explained in its proper place.

It is well known that the scriptural and rational evidence that the Lord knows all things is clearer than the evidence that no newly arising things can inhere in Him. Even supposing that there were proofs for the latter that conflicted with those for the former, and that affirming knowledge necessarily entailed affirming newly arising things, one would still have to affirm knowledge. For the affirmation of knowledge is true, and whatever necessarily follows from the truth is also true. How much more so, then, when the arguments used to exclude newly arising things are among the weakest of proofs?

As for the philosophers, they cannot say, “The inherence of temporal events in Him entails that He Himself came into existence,” since, according to them, temporal events can inhere in that which is eternal.

Rather, some of them supposed that the inherence of such things precludes His necessary existence. This is an obvious error, for it does not