Note 4: The Semi-Pelagians,
moreover, abused scientia media insofar as they claimed that through it
God foreknew in human will that from which He would be moved to confer grace
upon these rather than those; for they thought that God could not, without unjust
acceptance of persons, decree to grant grace to one rather than another unless
there were at least some beginning o faith on the part of the human will, by
which He might be moved to do so. Whether they placed that beginning of faith
in bare nature or in nature aided by some interior aid, I do not discuss here—that
is treated elsewhere.
And when they were pressed with
the example of infants who are taken by an early death, to some of whom the
grace of Baptism is given, but not to others, they said that God had foreseen
what good or evil they would have done, if they had reached the age of
adulthood, and from that He was likewise moved to confer the grace of Baptism
on these rather than those.
This use—or rather, abuse—of scientia
media is rejected by its modern proponents. For they do not want the foreknowledge
of a conditionally foreseen good work to be a motivating cause for God to
bestow grace on some rather than others; as is evident, they say, in the case
of the Tyrians and Sidonians, whom God foresaw would be converted is the Gospel
were preached to them, and yet He willed that it not be preached to them. (Charles-René
Billuart, A Brief Refutation of Middle Knowledge [trans. Christian B.
Wagner, 2025], 39-40)
