Wyclif’s philosophical theology is based on his propositional realism, and encompasses many of the traditional problems generally associated with the medieval Sentence commentary. This suggests that the treatises that describe it may contain the traces of the commentary on Lombard he would have been required to complete for the doctorate in theology. Wyclif develops metaphysically complex accounts of the relation of the persons of the Trinity, of the natures united in the Incarnation, and of the contents of God’s knowledge to divine willing and understanding. The theological approach he attempted to articulate was condemned for its inability to accept the philosophical possibility of annihilation in creation, which was an important aspect of traditional accounts of the transub-stantiation of the Eucharistic elements into the body and blood of Christ. Admitting the possibility that substance might be annihilated, Wyclif argued, was as good as recognizing that God could both eternally know and not know that substance. A large part of Wyclif’s energies was directed toward defining the nature of God’s knowledge. He is best known for espousing a strongly determin-ist theology which, along with his repeated definition of the church as being the body of the elect, has led critics both medieval and modern to condemn him for eliminating human free will from his soteriology. This is a misinterpretation of Wyclif’s complex account of the necessity of God’s foreknowledge and the reciprocity that holds between human free willing and God’s eternal volition. He departs from the traditional position by positing a two-way relation between eternal knowledge and created action, in contingent created acts that cause divine knowledge, which is necessary, even though it is caused by created action. Wyclif’s method of addressing this was to distinguish between absolute and hypothetical, or suppositional, necessity. Wyclif’s modal theory is complex, and the species of necessity he posits as he describes the eternal nature of divine knowledge and the contingent nature of created action are manifold. The heart of his resolution is his use of ‘‘antecedent suppositional or hypothetical’’ necessity.
Consider the following argument:
1. If God eternally knows that Peter sins today, then Peter
Sins today.
2. God eternally knows that Peter sins today.
Therefore, Peter sins today.
Statement 1 is eternally true, and would be logically unavoidable, no matter what. This is an instance of absolute necessity, necessary because connected to the necessity of divine omniscience. Likewise, the argument formed by combining 1 and 2 leads directly to the conclusion according to Modus Ponens. This argument is both valid and true by absolute necessity from eternity, as is every logical, mathematical, and geometric truth. Suppositional necessity arises from the relation of truth-values in propositions that are used syllogistically to explain our understanding of how God knows created events. With antecedent suppositional necessity, once the truth of the situation described as antecedent is met, the consequent will necessarily come about, as with ‘‘God wills Socrates to exist,’’ the truth of ‘‘Socrates exists’’ will necessarily follow. The antecedent in 1, ‘‘if God eternally knows that Peter sins today’’ is not absolutely necessary in itself, although the whole of 1 is. The antecedent is dependent upon God eternally knowing that Peter sins, which is where Wyclif perceives room for nuance. He argues that truths like ‘‘God eternally knows that Peter sins today,’’ true by antecedent suppositional necessity, do not thereby lose contingency. Peter’s sinning is dependent upon Peter, and God’s knowledge follows from Peter’s choice. That God eternally knows how Peter will choose does not cause Peter’s choice. This allows room for contingency in Peter’s action without plunging the eternality of God’s knowledge into temporal constraints. While God knows what Peter will choose, it is possible from all eternity that Peter have chosen differently, thereby admitting contingency into the mix without limit to the necessity of God’s knowing. This means that while God eternally knows who will be among the elect, and who among the damned, this does not entail the freedom-destroying effect of double predestination.
Wyclif’s ecclesiology rests upon this balance between God’s eternal knowledge and human free willing, as does his hermeneutic of Scripture. He understands Scripture to be ontologically structured as universal and particulars, in which the eternal contents of the divine mind function as universal, giving reality to a hierarchy of particular instantiates. The first instantiate is the Book of Life, which contains the names of the elect, and the instantiate most immediate to us is the Bible. This makes Scripture the repository of all that is knowable, every part of which is eternally true; at the same time, the events described in it were dependent upon the wills of the people who acted, as in the example with Peter above. Wyclif’s posthumous fame for instigating the first English translation of the Bible was not based in an assumption that its truths are readily comprehensible; his Scripture hermeneutic repeatedly emphasizes the need for the reader to be adept at the ‘‘logic of Christ,’’ which entails both a moral and a philosophical awareness few were likely to master.
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